I am building the track in question and would like to answer Lex for my reason for building the astoturf track. First it's indoor, and like Codman said, the landlord wouldn't appreciate 2 tons of dirt being dumped into his building. Another reason is I want the track to be both on and off road, how this is accomplished, the jumps and obstacles are modular. This way I can remove them and make a on road track. We here in Canada don't have the luxury of manufacturers sponsoring our tracks, no one has offered to sponsor my track and believe me I asked everone, I take that back, only Schumacher did. So to maximise the usage I had to attract both categories of racers to make the most of it.
Don't think this is a bush league project, you won't find any straight boards layed flat to jump over. All the jumps and obstacles will look just like a dirt tracks, from tabletop jumps to rythum sections. I'll ask Codeman to post the vid of the completed track, only then you'll see what I mean. I am also going to add a british flavor to the track with coblestone section as well as a wall turn. Let me see someone make a wall turn out of dirt, any on I've seen have been made of wood and carpet. Come to think of it don't most dirt tracks use carpet on their jumps to keep them from deteriorating from use, so we've all raced on carpet off road to a certain degree.
One last thing I'd like to add. Most tracks try to keep their suface as hard packed as possible, no one really races on loose dirt off road. If you look at the leisure hour track, were the ROARS took place this year, the track was so hard and smooth it could have been made of cement and no one would have noticed the difference.
That being said, don't nock it t'ill you've tried it. You might like it.
If you're ever in montreal Lex come see the track, I'll let you use it on the house
