September 17th 2005

I've waited a long time for this. Jetlagged and unkempt, we haven't slept for over 30 hours. We're driving a strange car on foreign roads, after jumping off a 15 hour flight from Malaysia. But my first port of call on this overseas trip was too important for waiting any longer, and the excitement is keeping me awake. The little Renault doesn't have sat-nav but we've got some directions printed off the 'net and Sharon is doing an excellent job of navigating. Stay on the A3, take the A48 Koblenz exit…

It's just under two hours from Frankfurt, depending on how fast you care to drive on the unlimited autobahn. And I care to drive as fast as I can, thank you very much- I'm freed from the oppression of over-policed Victorian speed limits. Experiencing this alone is a good enough reason to go to Germany. But even so, the next stop is the real prize.

Now the turn-off onto the B412. The exit sign says "Nurburgring".

This place is so big, you see it long before you're there- but not laid out in front of you on some low-lying plains. It teases you as you get closer, bit by bit. It sweeps out of the forest, almost touching the public road, then winds back into the scenery, with cambers and curves, rising and falling.

Now I hear it…the barking of several Porsche flat sixes, and a turbocharged something. We look through the trees on our right and there is the famous ribbon of tarmac with it's red and white kerbs and ancient paved edges. and the blur of cars being driven as they were designed to be. We're still 7 km away from the centre.

We've just found motor racing's Utopia.

1926. And so it begins.

While Rudolf Caricciola was blazing to his first win on the semi permanent race track AVUS in 1926, several thousand labourers were building the Nurburgring. It was to be Germany's first, and Europe's greatest, permanent motor racing circuit. Germany desired to lead the world in automotive greatness and were prepared to pay. Those who envisioned the Eifel Mountains, west of Koblenz near the Belgian border, as the ideal place, had no trouble raising the millions of reichmarks in government funding for the ambitious project.

17.6 miles, split into two sections, able to be used independently. The Südschleife (south loop) 4.8 miles, and the Nordschleife (north loop), a mighty 14.2 miles. Grandstands for 2500 people, full pit and garage complex, Hotel, and later even the world's first electronic scoreboard. Approximately 172 corners, massive changes in gradient as it winds around the villages of Nurburg, Quiddlebach, Breidscheid and Adenau. A real driver's road which rises and falls naturally with the land, not painted onto some artificial plain dug out somewhere.

And looking out over it all, the 12th century Castle Nurburg high on a hill in the centre, making it a classic.

The total lap when using both south and north circuits was 29km. The North circuit on it's own, which was the most used configuration after the 1930's, was just under 22km.

It went for so long, through so many populated areas, yet it was all closed racetrack- totally self-contained. It either goes under or over the public roads and private land. This alone was a masterly piece of engineering.

The overpass at Quiddlebacher Hohe
The corner called Steilstrecke- photo approximately 1950. The road in the foreground with the car was a brake-testing strip. The actual circuit goes from right to left with the famous Karussel at the top of the hill

Action began in 1927 with the first running of what was to become a popular, albeit localised event, the Eifelrennen. The darling of German autosport Rudolf Caracciola won in a Mercedes. That same year the German GP was held there and it was won by Otto Merz when Caracciola's Mercedes broke down. Merz was to die at AVUS in 1933 in front of Adolf Hitler. As if there was not enough notoriety surrounding this great era of motorsport and it's region, Otto Merz himself had an interesting past. He was once a chauffeur to Austria's Archduke Ferdinand, and was present at the Duke's 1914 assasination which is considered to have triggered World War 1.

Caracciola went on to own both the Eifelrennen and the German GP, winning the GP five times and the Eifelrennen four. Bernd Rosemeyer, in his short but spectacular career, won there three times in a row- the 1936 GP, and the 1936 & 1937 Eifelrennen. He set the lap record in the 1937 GP, which was to stand for almost 20 years. The harmony of dominance by German man and machine was rudely broken in the 1935 GP. Nuvolari in the Alfa Romeo passed a very distressed Manfred Von Brauchitsch (Mercedes) on the last kilometre of the last lap to take victory.

Rudi Caracciola in the Mercedes

So arrogantly confident were the German organisers of a German victory, they didn't have the Italian national anthem. Fortunately, little Tarzio had a copy of it in his pocket. Needless to say, the assembled Nazi heirachy were unimpressed. Hitler himself was there to witness this affront to German superiority. Sadly, that was the story of the immediate pre-war era. The Nazi Reich had realised motorsport would help demonstrate German might to the world.

Bernd Rosemeyer was made an honoury member of the SS. All German drivers were given folkloric status as heroes and posterboys of the Fatherland. There was a Nazi division specialising in Motor Sport, headed by Adolf Huhnlein, who appeared on almost every podium. Rosemeyer's widow Elly, when interviewed in 2003 at the age of 96, described Huhnlein as "Manure".   This dark part of German history, fortunately, did not mean the end for places like the Nurburgring. In fact, in a way, it almost saved the place.

By the late 1930's the Nazis were already tired of the 'Ring being the showcase venue. They considered the Rhineland region to be an underdeveloped and inferior part of Germany, and made plans for another super-circuit to be constructed in the cultural East. They almost did it too- the DeutschlandRing, all 10km of it, was completed near Hohnstein, a short drive from the beloved Baroque jewel of Dresden.

Dresden almost became the postcard region of German Autosport power

But before the grandstands or hotel facilities were built, WW2 began and the DeutschlandRing was stillborn. Subsequently the track was imprisoned and neutered by East German Communism. It was absorbed into the public road system.

You can drive around the DeutschlandRing today, with it's meagre 80km/h limit, some speed humps, and no real memories. You can do the same at the Nurburgring. But more on that later...

So, post-war, the Nurburgring lived on. The World Championship had begun and the 'Ring hosted it's first German GP in 1950. This began the era of Fangio, Collins, Hawthorn, Moss, and later- Brabham, and the great Jim Clark.


Sir Jack taking The Karussell in his Cooper

In 1956 Fangio broke Rosemeyer's 1937 lap record, at last. But the greatest Nurburgring memory of the Argentine was his come-from-behind win in 1957, reminiscent of Nuvolari's similar 1935 feat. Fangio shaved twenty seconds from the previous lap record in his Maserati, pursuing the Englishman Collins' Ferrari. Afterwards, he said "I drove in a way I never have before, and never will again".

He meant that partly because he was retiring, but mainly because that is the nature of the place. Even in those fearless times, it was recognised that to truly go fast at the 'Ring was to frighten oneself beyond what any normal driving can do. Jackie Stewart later said "Anyone who says they enjoy the Nurburgring, is either lying or never drove fast enough.."

"The Maestro" Fangio in the works Maserati 250F.

In the the post-war era the Südschleife was hardly used, apart from smaller club events, but because it housed the massive pit complex, there was a shortened loop behind the pits to rejoin to the main Nordschleife, named the Start-und Zielschleife (even this 2km loop was occasionally used alone for circuit sprints and club races. Australian Tim Schenken competed in such an event in 1975).

It was on this 22.8km configuration on which the greats made history, sometimes with one single brilliant qualifying lap.

1967- Formula Vees at the original pit straight start line



1968- 1000km Sports Car Endurance race, into the old southern loop.

The 1960's was no less epic a decade than those before. F1's greatest nearly-man Stirling Moss jostled with the likes of Dan Gurney, John Surtees, and the great Jim Clark for the title of Ringmeister.

Jim Clark was the first to hit the 100mph lap, in 1965, in the Lotus 33. His qualifying lap in the 1967 GP was an event in itself. In a style which inspired Ayrton Senna 25 years later, While Gurney, Brabham, Moss, Surtees and others fiddled around, with laps around 8 min 20sec, Clark waited. In the dying minutes of qualifying he saddled up, blazed out, and did one lap. Eight minutes, four seconds.

1967 Clark, Lotus 49, Karussell

It was only a matter of time before safety standards would close in on this classic strip of tarmac. During the 1960's, thanks to the complaints of drivers such as Jackie Stewart, the 1927 track design's quaint disregard for safety was being scrutinised. It had to change or be consigned to history.

Still, drivers, teams and manufacturers flocked there. It seemed incomprehensible not to race there. It begs the question- how much risk can you remove before you remove the challenge that made it appealing in the first place?

So, in 1970 the German GP moved south to the bland HockenheimRing whilst some modifications were made. Some humps were flattened and miles of guardrail was installed. It was safer, but still a long way from the sterile and characterless circuits of today. It was still the Nurburgring.

Emasculating the 'Ring- some of the humps at Brunnchen being removed in 1971

Safer it was, but still doomed. Niki Lauda's famous fiery accident in 1976 at a corner called Bergwerk saw to that. After 1976, for Grands Prix, the 'Ring was history.

In it's time, the 'Ring certainly hosted notable fatalities. The GP claimed the lives of Viktor Junek (1928), Ernst von Delius (1937), Onofre Marimon (1954), Peter Collins (1958), Carel Godin de Beaufort (1964), John Taylor (1966) and Gerhard Mitter (1969). The Eifelrennen claimed more.

However, somewhat ironically, it had a reasonable safety record, compared to others. The main circuit did continue to host club and Le-Mans style World Sports Car events up until 1983. The allure of the place was too great, modern safety standards notwithstanding. A classic motorsport video is "In Car 956", in-car footage from Derek Bell's Porsche 956 in 1983. It includes a lap of the Nordschleife. It was a poignant event, being the last World Sportscar Championship race on the old Nordschleife, now completely separate from the South pits section whilst contruction of the new track took place. The video is still sold and it's worth it, just for the Ring footage.

In that same event, on pure Nordschleife, in the world-beating Porsche 956, German Stefan Bellof stopped the clocks at 6min 11sec. The exciting young Bellof also drove for Tyrell in F1, and going by some indicators, it is quite conceivable that he would have been greater than Senna.

The Ring's fastest ever

I had the privalege of witnessing Bellof dominate the same prized field at Sandown in December 1984 for a rare World Sportscar Championship race.

He was killed at Spa the following year, crashing on the famous Eu Rouge curve, aged 27. His lap record was on the same layout of the 'Ring which is driven today. Nobody has ever gotten close to this time. I suspect nobody ever will.

Finally, and sadly, all 7km of the old Südschleife was terminated. Determined to recover a world championship Grand Prix, the owners demolished the great southern loop in 1983 and replaced it with today's bland, sterile, modern Nurburgring. All of the old pit complex, garages and grandstands were levelled. Some called it an act of vandalism. Some sections of the old South Circuit which were not buried under the new track remain, hidden and overgrown. You can find them if you look hard enough. Thankfully, the Nordschleife's 22 kilometres remained. More thankfully, it was not left to rot into crumbling tarmac.

Once the new "Ring" was built, the Nordschleife, on it's own, had no pit lane. So, it was joined at the hip to the new circuit with a couple of short additions at the corner called T13.

The sterile new "Ecclestone" circuit hosted the European GP (the German GP being at Hockenheim) until 2006. In the future it may alternate the German GP with the HockenheimRing.

Meanwhile, twice a year, the mighty Nordscheife lives- hosting both a 24 hour and 4 hour sports car enduro. It's a logistical nightmare to staff 23km of racetrack in this day and age. But they do it because they want to. They do it because they should. Because a piece of road like this should be used...and not for sightseeing. The race cars which compete in these events are not timid. In the 2005 ADAC 24H rennen, over 200 cars entered, from production cars and exotics, to outright DTM hybrids. There are many old circuits in the world which have an allure about them. Perhaps some even with more great memories and legends than this one. But one last thing makes this place so special.

It's still there. And you can drive it, flat out.

The Touristfahren days which began in 1927, still continue, despite modern insurance and liability spelling the end for every fun activity under the sun. For how much longer though, is anybody's guess. That was the reason for my pilgrimage in 2005.

September 18th, 2005

It's nerve-racking. I tried to get an early start to beat the rush, but the track opened late today, and by the time the touristfahren session began, the car park was packed. I've been waiting forever. The boom gate goes up, and out I go.

...the rest is a blur.

I peddled that silly little hire car with every ounce of nerve, but nothing prepares you for the place. First, there's the steep rises and falls. The descent from Aremburg into Fuchsrohe is frightening- a fast, downhill, left-right-left slalom which bottoms out violently and rises again. At Werhseifen the road disappears beneath you. The Karussell rattles you to pieces.

Then, there's the traffic. I'm in a hire car. They're in Porsche GT3's and BMW M's, they're on motorcycles, and they look like they've done this before. They attack the corners whether I'm there or not. They chew me up and spit me out at racing speeds. It's a blur which lasts just over ten minutes. It's the most frightening thing I've ever done.

I hope I get to to do it again.

Satellite Photo of the circuit
courtesy of