Topographic relief maps of real circuits, built from public elevation data and the real track centreline, coloured by racing sector for a four-filament print. Each one also stands your phone up.
Every contour comes from public elevation data and every corner from the real circuit centreline. A pipeline pulls the open data, drapes the track onto the hillside, and splits the surface into the three racing sectors, so the four colours show how a lap is actually timed.
Elevation comes from national LIDAR where it exists and open global models where it does not; the source is named on every plate. Laps are OpenStreetMap traces, checked against the terrain rather than trusted blind. Sector boundaries are measured from timing and position telemetry, which is why the colours on a plate change where the timing loops are and not where a corner happens to be named. Two plates are exceptions. Monaco’s centreline is sampled too coarsely for that fit to land, so its splits are placed by hand until it is rebuilt. Sepang last held a Grand Prix before the telemetry archive begins, so its splits are fitted from a published map of the timing loops instead, and land within 4.5 m of the line.
Each plate is the real ground under a real lap. Every number below is measured from the same data the model is built from, including the profile, which is that circuit’s own elevation along the lap, drawn from the line in racing direction.
The tunnel. The DEM reads the Monte-Carlo headland as solid ground, so the road dives into it; an abstract gold arch bridges the gap along the Portier curve.
| Lap | 3.31 km |
| Relief along the lap | 52.7 m |
| Elevation source | EU-DEM v1.1, 25 m |
| Plate | 173 × 218 mm |
The two banked corners, found in the data rather than drawn. The build cuts a cross-section every few metres and promotes anything over 7° into its own part: exactly Hugenholtz and Luyendijk.
| Lap | 4.24 km |
| Relief along the lap | 8.7 m |
| Elevation source | AHN4 LIDAR, 0.5 m |
| Plate | 188 × 165 mm |
The sopraelevata, the 1955 banked oval. Every bare-earth DEM strips a viaduct by definition, so it is built as geometry from the OSM plan and the documented gradient.
| Lap | 5.77 km |
| Relief along the lap | 12.0 m |
| Elevation source | TINITALY, 10 m |
| Plate | 124 × 209 mm |
The climb to Turn 1, found in the terrain rather than indexed: the build takes whatever run before the corner exceeds 5 %, and gets 246 m rising 24.1 m at a peak of 13.0 %.
| Lap | 5.49 km |
| Relief along the lap | 29.4 m |
| Elevation source | USGS 3DEP LIDAR, 1 m |
| Plate | 214 × 131 mm |
The basin a quarter of the way round, found rather than placed: the build goes to the lowest point on the lap and walks outward while the ground keeps rising, and gets about 16 m down and 15 m back up at a sustained 4 to 6 %. Ships with two nameplates, SEPANG CIRCUIT and BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX, for the 2026 round run here.
| Lap | 5.54 km |
| Relief along the lap | 29.0 m |
| Elevation source | SRTM, 30 m |
| Plate | 214 × 182 mm |
A circuit outside the series can be built from the same pipeline. Club and national tracks included, and the layout you actually race rather than the one the map happens to draw.
To have your own circuit built, in the configuration you race, get in touch.
Modelled and measured, waiting on a plate worth photographing. The reason differs by circuit: some have never been printed, some were printed before their sector boundaries were re-measured and carry boundaries the model no longer has, and the newest are on the bench now. Each card is the exported model itself, drawn in the filaments the file assigns.
Eau Rouge and Raidillon. The steepest thing in the series, so red chevrons climb both sides of the corner that defines it.
The climb out of Turn 1 and the long drop through Campsa, on a circuit that reads flat on television and is not.
Styrian hillside, and the second-steepest lap in the series. Geometry is built; sector calibration and gallery art still to come.
The Corkscrew, found rather than indexed: the build starts at the highest point on the lap and runs until it has fallen the documented 59 ft, then refuses unless that run overlaps the road OSM calls The Corkscrew. Contour rungs mark the drop and the circuit crosses over them.
The reservoir the circuit is named between. It is its own blue part, sunk 0.6 mm below the ground, and that recess carries a boundary the colours cannot: blue against the flag's green is the weakest pairing on the plate.
A digital elevation model is fetched around the circuit, wide enough that the relief outline never clips flat against the grid edge. Bare-earth LIDAR is preferred; radar models get read sceptically, because over woodland they measure the canopy and not the ground.
The lap is assembled from OpenStreetMap ways in racing order. Where a circuit has no single relation, corners are sequenced by hand and the result is checked against the published length.
The terrain becomes a heightfield with a vertical exaggeration chosen per circuit, judged by the surface slope it produces rather than by the multiplier. A flat circuit needs more; a steep one needs almost none.
Sectors, ribbon, nameplate and markers become separate watertight parts in one shared coordinate system, written to a 3MF with a filament per part.
The relief is a heightfield and every added face is vertical or up-facing, so nothing overhangs and nothing needs holding up.
| Material | PLA or PETG, four colours |
| Layers | 0.16 mm (0.2 is fine) |
| Perimeters | 3 |
| Infill | 15 % gyroid |
| Supports | None. A skirt is plenty; the base is flat |
| Bed | 256 mm |
| Variants | Phone stand, title card, wall mount |
Two ways, and the first one is free.
The models are free to download. Print them on your own machine, in your own colours, on any four-colour setup that clears a 256 mm bed.
Five circuits are listed so far, on Snapmaker and on MakerWorld, and each one is linked from its own entry above. The rest go up on the weekend their circuit is racing, which is when a plate of it is worth the most to the person printing it.
A plate takes six to eight hours on a four-colour machine, and not everyone who wants one owns a printer. Racing Lines does not sell finished plates yet, and whether it starts to is a question of how many people ask. Say which circuit and I will keep count.
No money changes hands and nothing is promised. It is a headcount, and it decides whether this becomes something you can buy.
The non-commercial term binds downstream use, not the author: commissions and prints sold by Racing Lines are unaffected. To use a model commercially, ask; the answer is often yes.