Nurburgring

Nurburgring

Everything that stands for speed, skill and dash! - The Motor Magazine, 1931

Nurburgring. Deutschland. The race track, the circuit at Nurburg, Germany. In English "Ring" evokes a circus, but on this big top there is only only mountains and trees, clouds and mist, a strip of macadam, steel barriers, fences and red and white painted kerbs. There are older motor racing venues, and more storied, but no other can claim  the unique status of the Nurburgring in the minds of millions around the world.

Thirty miles west of the Rhine, in the hills of the Eifel south of Cologne, and Bonn, the one time capitol of the country the circuit spent much of it's lifetime in, West Germany, the Nurburgring is more than one circuit. The modern day Grand Prix track is still the occasional host of the German Grand Prix, the race that was first held there in 1927. But the modern Ring is not the place that everybody thinks of when the name is mentioned. Around the world "Nurburgring" means the Nordschliefe - the north circuit, 12.9 miles (20 kilometres) of twists, turns, hills and dips. The "Grune Holle" (Green Hell)" - the nickname bestowed by Jackie Stewart - the beautiful but deadly racetrack, carved out of the Eifel mountains in the nineteen twenties. It began as an employment scheme in the troubled aftermath of the Great War, and in a few years it became the world's greatest racing venue, packing in hundreds of thousands of spectators when a big race was on. Now it is may be a relic of times past, but it is still vital, pulling in tourists to drive its corners, and car manufacturers keen to show off and borrow some of its enormous prestige. Funnily enough there is something of the Eiffel Tower about the Eifel's racetrack - it's an ancient monument of the modern age, it would never happen today and it nearly didn't then, it's a wonder of effort and a monument to the determination of one man, and it's evergreen, still packing them in a century (just about) since it first appeared.

The main driving force behind the mightiest motor racing course in the world was Otto Kreuz, head of administration of the Adenau land bureau. Hans Weidenbruck, the hunting rights owner of the Nurburg forests, and Hans Pauly, the mayor of the region, were both major supporters of bringing motor racing to the picturesque region, the better to show it off to the rest of Germany, and it was Dr. Creutz who suggested building the closed off course. Ironically it was his devotion to the local farmers and their livestock that led him to suggest this rather than any passion for racing. (Rumour had it that he couldn't drive since his wife always seemed to be doing the driving during the works. Untrue, as some images show, so she may have been enjoying having a private road to race around on). The 'Eifelrennen' (Eifel Race) was first held in 1922 on public roads in the area. Racing on closed roads was the norm in Europe - Le Mans and Reims in France, the Ards Tourist Trophy in Northern Ireland, the Targa Florio in Sicily, Pescara's Coppa Acerbo, the Masarykring in Czechoslovakia. Safety was a concern even then, and Dr Creutz proposed, and became the chief advocate for, a private race course that would not disrupt local traffic. What racing courses that had been built by the Americans, Italians, French and British were high speed courses with high bankings, long straights and wide turns. The plan in Germany was to combine the two - make a racing course that imitated the road, without the logistical and safety problems of closing down the public roads, but with far more challenge than the simple layouts of places like Monza or Brooklands.

Engineer Gustav Eichler designed the course, though in reality nature was his co-designer as the track followed the contours as much as possible. A road engineer who had never been to the Eifel but had built roads in the Swiss mountains, and the Eifel 'mountains' were more like rolling hills compared to the Alps. The project had the backing of the welfare ministry, as it promised a great deal of employment at a time of great hardship throughout Germany and especially in the rural areas. During planning the distance of the proposed lap grew from a sizeable fifteen km to twenty two km and the estimated cost crept from, 1.8 to 3.5, to 5 million marks. Eventually the spend would be closer to 7 million marks. Dr Creutz came under scrutiny from central government, but had gained an important ally in the motor industry, and knew how to ingratiate himself and his vision with the local politicians and people. By the stage that there was no turning back much of the cost was eventually borne by Berlin and the taxpayer.

Eichler recalled at an anniversary event that academics at the time had told him the classic cliche of many a big project applied - if they'd known how much it would cost, the government would never have signed off. Under construction the project was known as 'Die Erste Deutsche Gebirgs. Renn und Prufungsstrecke im Kreis Adenau' (The First German Race and Test Track in Adenau) - the Nurburg-Ring name (later the hyphen was removed too) came about through a competition to replace this un-mellifluous moniker. Work began in 1925, and took two years to complete, with around 2,500 men involved in the construction, many staying in camps around the site for months at a time.

The nearest equivalent to the Nurburgring plan was the Montlhéry course south of Paris, but that was a mere 6.5 kilometres on it's longest layout. This was almost four times the length. But times were hard in Germany, and the work was welcomed by most in the area. Undoubtedly when they had finished they had the biggest racing course in the world by a huge margin. On visiting The Motor magazine of England declared that 'an intoxicated giant' must have laid out the course (given the positive tone of their report it was presumably meant as a compliment).

The first car race meeting was the 1927 Eifelrennen on Sunday, June 18th 1927 though the first race had been a five lap motorcycle event the day before. It was a heady time for speed demons and their machines - the 200 mile per hour barrier had been broken by Henry Segrave driving down Daytona Beach in March - Lindbergh had successfully flown the Atlantic solo only a month before. It was a momentous time to be a flyer or a driver and motor racing was becoming one of the most popular spectacles in Europe and America. The giant circuit was baptised with a win in the twelve lap race for the great new driver of the age, Rudolf Caracciola. The first 'Ringmeister', the 26 year old from the Rhineland had begun his working life as an engineer and salesman for the Fafnir car company, before joining the Daimler Company, builders of Mercedes cars.

The lines between amateurs and professionals, road and race cars, were far more blurred than today. This was still a time when a car salesman like Caracciola could take a touring car, go out on the weekend and make a name for himself. Enough of a name in the early 1920s for him to convince what was now Mercedes-Benz to give him a car to race in the first German Grand Prix in 1926. This event, held in Berlin, had been a minor disaster. Thousands of spectators had shown up only for it to pour down with rain all day. One driver was killed in practice, and three onlookers were killed in a crash in the race, but through it all came the quiet Mercedes salesman to unknowingly win the biggest race of his life. Immediately he became the 'Regenmeister', a nickname his would live up to many times in races to come.

The German GP was taken the the new racetrack as soon as possible in 1927. Sports touring cars were the order of the day for the first few years of the event. The 1927 race was won by Otto Merz after Caracciola had broken down. Merz lived a short but eventful life - he was a driver in Sarajevo as part of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand's motorcade, and died in 1931 after crashing a Mercedes. Also in 1927 third place went to Elizabeth Junek (Anglised from the Czech Eliška Junková), the great lady driver of the age, still the highest ever result for a woman in a Grand Prix race. Elizabeth's husband Cernak was a banker and a racing driver - the two had begun as driver and mechanic - and was one of the first victims of the Ring the next year. His loss meant that the "Queen of the Steering Wheel" retired that year, never to return, though she set the example that would be followed for many decades by drivers like Sabine Schmitz, Ellen Lohr and Claudia Hurtgen, all women racers with distinction at Ring

Regenmeister 'Rudi' won the third German GP, and by this time it was clear that the the race had found its rightful home, but it was just in time for the the Great Depression in America to bring the curtain down on the 1920s. The effects reverberated around the world - had the Ring been proposed a few years later the chances are good it would never have been built at all. After their years of success Mercedes-Benz left racing in 1931, leaving Caracciola to win the 1932 German GP in a white-painted Alfa Romeo. Private Mercedes still turned out for the race, and Rudolf was not popular with some onlookers for 'defecting' to the Italians. Alfa, too then took their leave, albeit temporarily. There was no race at all in 1933 but already by that January there was a strident new government in power that was determined to do something about that. It would soon be the greatest of times for the German cars and drivers but one that came at an enormous price. The great successes to come at the Ring would be tainted as the honour and glory became the ultimate shame and ignominy when the racing cars gave way to tanks, marching soldiers and the atrocities of the next war.

The focus of the track is the pits, is now a reasonably grand place, with all the modern accouterments; hotels, hospitality, large garages. Once the track had an unprepossessing pits, a control tower, a pit counter and a long, low grandstand. Only the electric scoreboard, introduced in 1953, with a map of the circuit and a 'Runde' count that changed every nine minutes or so gave much away that what waited beyond the pits loop was very different. Because the circuit looped back on itself to start there was no room on the inside so the garage was to the side and the cars would be wheeled up a small spiral tunnel to get to the pit apron. Just like a car park, or given the circumstances, like Gladiators entering the Colosseum.

Over the years those gladiators changed. The Mercedes SS, the 'Super Sport', and it's later variant, the 'SSK (Kurz)' was the first great car of the Ring, winning three of the first four Grands Prix on the track. Two hundred horsepower from a seven litre six cylinder engine, were bolstered by a supercharger bolted onto the engine. The shrieking mosquito-like whine of the Merc supercharger became a signature sound echoing around the forests throughout the thirties. By then the cars became more specialised, less road car with the fenders removed and more aeroplane with the wings removed. The SSK had two seats for the driver and mechanic, headlights, a canvas folding roof, a spare wheel and a vertical grille that carved through the air with the efficiency of a truck.

By the 1930s the Grand Prix cars had one seat, and streamlined bodies discarding anything that was not necessary for speed. The Mercedes and Auto Union Silver Arrows of the 1930 conquered all before them, massively more powerful than any other cars, but ultimately they would not beat the impending war, a war they had been part of the preparation for. The crowd changed too. Doubtless many of the onlookers who crowded around the pits and track during the 1930s were dead by 1945. Maybe for some it seemed as though everything would be alright. The spectacular cars, driver and the racing enough to soften the awful strutting parades of soldiers and ominous guttural speeches denouncing the enemies of the state that rang out as the engines warmed up.

Wartime stopped racing in its tracks and though the circuit still found use for vehicle testing it was of limited military use. American troops were stationed in the area at wars end, in six years the trees and weeds grew, and the facilities fell into disrepair. Luckily for posterity the French military administration that took temporary control of the had more familiarity with the history and importance of the place than the American troops and lobbied to get some kind of racing resumed. It took until 1949 for the Eifel Grand Prix to return to the Nordschleife. A proposed car race in 1947 was cancelled, but a motorcycle event eventually came happened in August 1947. The war battered crowds poured in, keen for any entertainment, and the viability of returning the Ring to its full majesty was assured. The Eifelrennen had lived on as a 'junior' race for the Grand Prix throughout the thirties, attracting similar crowds and entries for a half length race compared to the Grand Prix. After the old European championship of the 1930s gave way to a new World Drivers Championship for the newly named 'Formula One' cars in 1950. The Eifelrennen became the name bestowed on Formula Two races for many years.

Soon a new name came to the front- Ferrari. The lack of Grand Prix cars meant that the World Championship became a Formula 2 contest in '52 and '53. The silky smooth Italian Alberto Ascari became the first postwar Ringmeister, .winning a hat-trick almost uncontested, driving the F1 Ferrari in 1950 and the F2 car the next two years, though the 1950 German Grand Prix was not part of the championship, meaning the Ring missed out on joining Silverstone, Monza, Monaco and it's near neighbour Spa-Francorchamps as being a venue that has lasted from the very first championship.

German cars and drivers had been excluded from international racing until 1950. Clearly the Nazi-sponsored cars would never see racing ever again - if they could even be found, as many had been spirited away into what was now the Eastern Bloc. The top German drivers had been made members of the Nazi party and the National Socialist Motor Corps, though there was a divide between those who simply had to endure the connection with slightly forced smiles, and others who were more enthusiastic believers. Five years was evidently deemed long enough to exile the Germans, and it did not take long for the Mercedes team to make a mark again, winning the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1952. Two years later the Mercedes cars made their belated return to Grand Prix action, to finally bury the ghosts of almost twenty years previously. Though it took the virtuosity of Juan Manuel Fangio to keep the Ferraris and Maseratis at bay as three if the four Mercedes hit either mechanical trouble or the scenery. The German GP was firmly re-established, the competitive race of '54 had re-established it and the Ring as one of the highlights of the year.

As well as coining the famous nickname, Jackie Stewart once said that anyone who wasn't apprehensive at facing the Nordschliefe was either lying or not going quick enough. Some were ready, confident that their abilities would give them the edge and ready to entrust their existences to the skill of the designer and the diligence of their mechanics. Stewart - again - would tell of the final glance he would steal of his house in the car mirror as he left for Germany, wondering if he would return home. It's a story often repeated by racing drivers about many tracks but at the Nurburgring the words seemed more sincere. This was still a track where the greats could make their mark with 170 corners, many quite slow, and rewarding finesse as much as raw courage. For all that they feared it, the greats could make the Ring work for them, and few other victories were as satisfying and likely to set them in legend.

Jackie Stewart announced himself at the 1968 German GP with a masterclass in handling both the circuit and the mountain weather. A year earlier the race had been run in fine sunshine, and provided a glorious spectacle. It was a microcosm of the age - Jim Clark led in the Lotus 49 Cosworth, the fastest car and driver irresistible on such a challenging track. And then the temperamental Lotus broke, as it often did, sidelining Clark with a broken suspension joint. Dan Gurney's beautiful dark blue Eagle led much of the race only to break down on the penultimate lap, leaving the victory to go to the quietly unspectacular Brabham of eventual champion Denny Hulme.

A year later when they came back to the Eifel mountains, Clark was dead, the green Lotus was now Gold Leaf cigarette red and had grown a pair of aerofoils, and the weather was terrible. From the first practice session the rain poured down, but the rain was only the half of it. Mist and fog reduced visibility almost to nought at times. Everyone was on edge, and things did not improve on race day. After the bombshell of Clark's sudden death, out of the blue in a Formula 2 race at a different German circuit - Hockenheim - it had been a summer of almost unending lethality. Young Englishman Mike Spence had replaced Clark for Lotus's Indianapolis 500 campaign, only to be killed when he crashed and was hit by his front wheel. Veteran Italian Ludovico Scarfiotti had died in a hillclimb crash - again in Germany, and the French driver Jo Schlesser had died horribly under a burning Honda in the French GP. It seemed only a matter of 'when' not 'if' there would be another fatality.

Stewart in the English run French Matra took the lead and began to edge away from Amon and Graham Hill. For.the next two hours the Scotsman made the rest look like amateurs as he pulled away. Owner Ken Tyrrell and Stewart usually had a harmonious partnership but the foul weather put them at odds. The owner needed the driver to get out there and drive but Stewart wasn't so keen. Years later Tyrrell recalled that "It was the only time I had to make a driver drive", and it did not make him comfortable. Stewart too would remember that his owner's insistence that he practice in the wet had been a boon come race day. He knew where the standing water was collecting, where the rivers were flooding across the track, and in the lead he at least had some visibility in the murk. By races end the Matra was four minutes ahead of Hill's Lotus and Jochen Rindt in the Cooper. Two other world champions in their own right but they took background roles this time. If Caracciola was the rain master then Stewart had made a case to be the 'Nebelmeister' (Fog master)

The lap of the Nordschleife begins with the Hatzenbach, a downhill snake of tight second and third gear corners through the forest. The left, right, left, right sequence has the feel of a like a handling course, as if the track is checking out the abilities of the car and driver before letting them loose on the rest of the course. Already the feel of there being little margin for error is there. The kerbs are high, the grass and barriers close at hand. One or two of the corners have flatter kerbs that can be cut, but the driver forgets which one is which at their peril.

At the Quiddelbacher Hohe left hander the track suddenly opens out into a straighter downhill section and streams across a bridge before launching uphill - the roller coaster of the Ring begins. This is the first spot where the immense scale or the place comes into to focus, as the track crosses the regular public road underneath. The Nordschleife has no infield, just a perimeter track. It traces a path that is more akin to a rally stage, encompassing whole towns, and behind the fences life carries on as usual. There is very little comparable anywhere else. Le Mans and the old Spa-Francorchamps travel across hill and dale, but these are road circuits using the public highway not a private racetrack. There are giant proving grounds dotted around the world, and these facilities cover many acres, but these are not racing circuits. And none of them have the heritage of the Ring.

Inside the circuit is the village of Quiddelbach, the outskirts of Adenau, and the town of Nurburg, of course, and it's landmark castle. Archaelogical evidence suggests that Romans used the area as a lookout point. Some form of castle first appeared by 1166, and the site lived on for the next six hundred years. In the 17th century the protestant Swedish army overran the area during the thirty years war, and captured the castle causing heavy damage. This tumultuous time in European history is remembered further around the track at the Schweudenkreuz, the Swedish Cross, a 17th century stone cross memorialising a local mayor said to have been murdered by Swedish army deserters. Other corners on the track that recall much earlier times; Wehrseifen, (Defence valley), where the medieval militia once trained, Klostertal (Convent valley), once home to a 14th century convent, Galgenkopf, a field where the medieval gallows would be built, Pflanzgarten, after the nursery of the Counts who once called the castle home, and Tiergarten, the animal burial ground.

Looking back down the hill to Quiddelbacher Hohe was a popular photo spot in times past as the whole field would be visible streaming out into the open section. Until the early 1970s this part, like the rest of the circuit was still narrow and delineated by bushes, hedgerows and ditches. Time had caught up with the track by then. Grand Prix cars had become fearsomely fast on many parts of the Ring, and the drivers would no longer countenance the conditions. The pole position time dropped by twenty seconds in the space of two years from 1967 to 1969 as the cars grew aerofoils and tyres became more grippy. The German GP was removed for 1970 until the whole track had been thoroughly modernised.

In 1971 the GP circus was met by a Ring where the hedges and ditches had been replaced by flat grass edges and barriers. The irony that the wider and smoother track opened up the sightlines on many corners and encouraged drivers to race faster still. In 1971 another twenty seconds was slashed from the pole position time from 1969 on the 'old' track, and by 1974 the lap time was down to almost seven minutes flat. And though the cars now sprouted aerofoils they were still guaranteed to take flight over the next crest.

The Flugplatz was named after a nearby field where gliders would be flown (With the First World War limiting German aircraft manufacture gliding became a popular pastime in the twenties), but the name had a serendipity. With the long run up cars would jump over the crest, wheels sagging down momentarily as they left the road. The Flugplatz is made all the more hairy because it is then followed immediately by a fast right turn, bounded on the outside by a large bank. Runoff spaces are the exception rather than the rule here.

There has always been much to the track than just single seaters and the Grand Prix. A 1000 kilometre sports car race joined the calendar in 1953, providing another chance for the Germans to see the world's top drivers and cars in action on unquestionably the world's top circuit. The 1000 km only saw the new generation of Mercedes on one occasion. The 1954 event was cancelled when the home side wasn't ready, and the 1955 race was halved in length and limited to slower cars, this time after the Le Mans disaster of 1955, the event that set the seal on Mercedes withdrawal from all racing after two years of succesful plunder. So it was up to Fangio and Stirling Moss to take the 300SLR to a one-two on a 500 km race in late spring, the only time the type that also won the Mille Miglia in the hands of Moss, would see action on the Ring.

The world of sports car racing had come close to imploding in the 1970s after the glory days of the Ford, Ferrari, Porsche battles of the 'sixties. The old road legal racers that once dominated had been supplanted by race track-only prototypes, speeds and costs went up and the Nurburgring became ever more dangerous in these fearsome machines. The Flugplatz section ended the racing career of Chris Irwin, a promising British driver of the late 1960s, who had started several Grand Prix races, and like all young drivers was looking for any opportunities to graduate to a big team and impress.

Irwin took the offer of a drive at the Ring in 1968 in the Ford P68 sportscar. Intended as a successor to the highly successful Le Mans winning GT40, the new Ford had a short wheelbase and long swoopy tail; intended as a low-drag, but downforce-generating shape. In the early days of high speed aerodynamics the end result was not quite as intended, with the front end sticking much better than the tail. Combined with the small wheelbase, the end result was twitchy handling and unstable. In the age before blanket TV coverage exactly what happened is unclear, whether the driver lost control the tricky machine, or the car simply took off of it's own accord.

Unlike so many others in that deadly year, Irwin survived the crash, though a closed car the tiny cockpit of the Ford offered little protection, and the driver suffered a severe injury to his scalp and damage to one side of his brain. He escaped any disability and mental impairment, but could never drive again. He and his wife were to discover that the racing fraternity weren't quite so close when dealing with a disfigured young man no longer able to race but still resolutely alive. To crash, burn and die horribly was the expected outcome from big shunts, and of course those who did so could be buried and then lionised as eternal young men in memoriam, without anyone needing to think too hard about the gruesome details of what could and did happen. This is just what had happened a few hundred metres down the road in 1966, when another young English contender, John Taylor, driving a Brabham had collided with another car on the first lap and ended up in the ditch on fire. With modern levels of rescue the driver would probably have survived but in 1966 Taylor died a month later from his burns.

A more successful American import was the Chaparral 2D, all the way from Texas. The pure white roadsters had seen some success on the American scene and the small team came across the Atlantic with a roofed version of their car. They were every inch the underdogs with their one car versus the Ferraris and Porsches at the 1966 1000 km, but the driving talent wasn't too shabby with 1961 World Champion Phil Hill and one time F1 winner Jo Bonnier. It looked to be a cakewalk for the lead Ferrari P3 of John Surtees - the winner of the GP in 1964 - until the Italian suspension broke, putting the Chaparral into the lead. The class in the cockpit paid off and by the races end Hill and Bonnier were there minutes to the good.

The team nearly won again the next year, only for a broken gearbox to take them out of the lead after winning pole position. Oil money may have been paying for the cars but they were spending a fraction of what Ford were paying out to win at Le Mans and it often showed in the reliability department. Ingenuity didn't need much money though, as Chaparral's lead driver-engineer Jim Hall was demonstrating. The 1967 2F had very clean aerodynamics and on the back of the car, rather than a very long tail like everyone else favoured was a large aerofoil mounted on struts. The wing pushed the back tyres hard onto the ground - a very useful thing on such an undulating circuit - and the design included a mechanism to flatten the wing angle on the straight sections. Though it couldn't last to conquer the Ring the 2J did take a famous victory at the end of the year at Brands Hatch. When the Formula 1 cars returned for the soaking 1968 race they were all sporting Chaparral-style wings. Not a bad influence for a team who rocked up in the Eifel with three mechanics, a manager, engineer and a pickup truck and trailer.

Wonderful it may have been, but the Chaparral couldn't claim to be the first at the Ring with the idea. The entrants at the 1000 kilometres in 1956 at been astonished by the sight of a little Porsche 550 Spyder in the paddock with a huge wing mounted over the windscreen scuttle, like some bizarre convertible roof. They were even more astonished when its Swiss-German driver  lapped 4th fastest, right up there on times with Fangio in a big Maserati. The driver, one Michael May, was a young engineering graduate not a multiple world champion. May's cousin had the bought him the Porsche to race and his ingenuity was paying back the favour in spades. He even designed an adjustment lever just like the Chaparral to flatten out the wing on the straight. What he couldn't do was stop the protests that immediately began - the wing was argued to be dangerous, especially in a crash, and a obstruction to drivers following. Quite why the racing fraternity of the time suddenly became so concerned about safety when drivers died at the wheel left right and centre in the fifties (including James Dean aboard his Porsche Spyder the year before while driving to the races in California) may be partly attributable to the extraordinary lap times this upstart was producing. May was told by the organisers that he had to take the wing off. Realising that it could be a good move to not rock the boat among all these precious racing driver types he complied - and soon found himself in demand at Porsche and others for his obvious savvy at the technical matters.

By the late 1960s Porsche had come to prominence in the World Championship and at the Ring, with the 906 and 908, prototype sports cars that were practically Formula 1 racers with fibreglass bodywork and space-age looks designed with wind tunnel assistance. The men from Stuttgart won five 1000km races in row from 1967 to 1971, including three for 'Quick Vic' Elford, whose total haul of six Ring wins in major sportcar races (including three in the 500 km races that were also a feature of the time) put him right up there with the Caraciolla's and Moss's of the world, though Elford never had much luck in Grands Prix on his favourite circuit.

When Porsche tried to bring their even more powerful 917 to the Ring in 1969 the drivers resisted, thinking the car far too unstable and difficult to control on the track. Rather than try to get the 917 to work on the circuit, in 1970 Porsche took a different route and modified the 908 chassis into the open top 908/3, almost a go-kart with a body, ideal for the Targa Florio road race in Sicily and the Ring. Some brave privateers took to the track in the 917, forcing this car designed for the long straights of Le Mans around the 1000km, but they could not win.

All of this speed and expense came to a shuddering halt in 1974 with the global oil crisis. Ford left after winning Le Mans another time in 1969, rule changes left the Porsche 917 on the sidelines after 1971, and Ferrari left sports car racing for good after 1973, focusing solely on Formula 1. The saviour of sports cars were the Silhouette racers - based around road cars, but stripped down, with lighter panels, wider tyres and wheel arches, and, of course, huge wings. They prefaced the era to come when road cars would be matching the speeds once reserved for racers, and the Ring was their gestation ground. Take the Porsche 911 RSR. The standard car was boosted with a turbocharger, fuel injection, a massive intercooler. To fit all this in the back bumper was cut away and covered over with a huge 'whale tail' spoiler. The rear tyres were so enormous they relied almost entirely on the flared out fenders to cover them.

If Porsche wanted to use racing to make the cars in their showrooms more glamourous they played a blinder with the RSR. Things got even more lairy with the 935 of 1976 where the bug eyed lights of the 911 were flattened off to create a flat snout, and the engine turbo boost allowing over 800 horsepower, in a weighing less than 1000 kg, meaning the boxy Porsche could easily beat the Formula 1 cars of the day in a drag race. These cars entered the World Championship but were also available for private teams to use in the DRM (Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft), the national sportcar championship, which allowed world championship level cars from 1977. Up against the Porsches came the Zakspeed Capri, taking the Ford Capri coupe and sending it for an extreme makeover. Like Porsche they added massive wings and fenders, and a turbo. The details were exhaustive- the engine was shoved way back into the cabin, moving the driver back for better weight distribution. In time, they copied F1 practice and added a ground effect venturi tunnel undertray and side skirts. All these innovations would become standard practice in 'tin tops', resulting in touring cars that could easily outstrip the old Ring lap times that F1 cars could do in the 1960s.

If ever there was an iconic car seen taking off over the Flugplatz it was the BMW CSL, the "Batmobile". This was not as extreme as the RSR and the Capri, it was a genuine touring car that BMW based around their two door sporting saloon of the early 1970s. The lightened and tuned racing version, with it's rakish flared arches and boot lit wing, dominated the European Touring Car championship in the late 1970s, and could get so much of a jump over the crest it looked like it was taking flight for real. The CSL was ideal for the Ring, winning in the Grosser Preis der Tourenwagen in 1973, '75, '76, '77 and '79, before it had to be pensioned off for the simple reason that the road car was no longer in production.

Having made it through Flugplatz the circuit enters second fastest section after the main straight at the end of the lap, with the fastest cars edging close to 190 mph, all the while turning through slight lefts - no unnatural ruler straight lines as on a modern circuit, it's as if the Ring has grown naturally from the land around. The left turns sharpen before the sharp right at Aremberg, the most westerly point of the track. The tightening braking zone - another Ring speciality - is a place where many amateurs have got it wrong as they run out of grip and find themselves facing the long ribbon of barrier on the right. Assuming they have slowed down sufficiently the drivers then feed the power gently through the sharp right semi-hairpin Aremberg turn, avoiding the big kerbs on the inside that spin the car like a top.

The fast left, the Schwedenkreuz, has a reputation of being one of, if not the most dangerous corners of the lap, because it combines all the tricky characteristics - it's blind, it's far from flat, or indeed flat out, there's no run off and it leads straight into a braking zone for a different direction corner. As well as one particular unfortunate Renault Megane driver - who takes the dubious claim for probably most spectacular tourist crash ever as his hatchback somersaults nose over tail after messing up the approach and headbutting the guardrail - the corner claimed the life of Gerhard Mitter, a some time F1 and sportscar driver whose BMW Formula 2 car broke and flew off the road here during the practice sessions at the German GP weekend. Because of the long lap, where cars would  pass by spectators far fewer times than at other races, the German GP organisers added Formula 2 cars to the grid to run their race concurrently and bolster the spectacle. F2 was nearly as well supported as F1 at the time, with most of the top teams and drivers at least dabbling with the junior category. In the days before million pound guaranteed TV revenue contracts, computer simulations and endless testing, racing as much as possible could only be positive for a racing team, even if it always carried the risk of losing a driver.

The track runs under a bridge and down the Fuchsrohre (Fox hole), even for the most experienced "Ringmeisters" a nerve wracking section down through a dark forest hollow, and back up into a curved braking zone for the next segment. Doubtless one of the scariest bits of the track, with the trees closing in on both sides, additional debris fencing around the barriers has helped delineate the corner in recent years but it still presents a very narrow channel to negotiate.

The driver must be careful not to be carried away by the rush of speed down the Fuchsrohre drop. Like a driver coming off the motorway into town streets it's easy to be too fast into the Adenauer Forst (forest) chicane. This seems an anomaly for the Ring in that it is flat and twisty, more like a modern Autodrome. Though there is still no room for error as a too-late-braking trip across the chicane and the kerbs all but guarantee a journey to the barriers on the left, and some unwitting entertainment for any onlookers who have climbed up the hillside to the small viewing spot on the outside. Out of the Adenau chicane the track leads in another edge of the seat, nearly flat out, turn, Metzgefeld. This is followed by a second, tighter left. If the the right wheels go onto the grass or the driver gets crossed up, it's all over.

Countless over enthusiastic punters have come unstuck in this way. Underestimating the tightness of the turns, overestimating the grip from their tyres. Trying to correct only makes things worse, in some spectacular cases turning a minor scrape into an enormous shunt. Instinct tells drivers to try and save a spin, only for the car to bite and send them head-on into the guardrail. If they can simulate damage then video games usually under represent the effect it has on a car. Even a small tap on the guardrail will be enough to immobilise a normal road car. This part is one of the few sections where the original path has been altered very slightly as the track once made the whole one long left curve rather than two separate corners.

Round the sharp left and down the hill at Kallenhard, the barriers close in as the track twists and turns hugging the contours. This is all single line, heavily cambered stuff, more suited to the Tour de France or a bobsled than motor racing. Gravity pulls the car down but the faster cars can get trapped behind slower ones as everyone has to take the only line around the bumps and blind corners. Should they be minded to look (inadvisable!) there is an excellent view from the hill, out over the town of Adenau and long into the distance. The brakes had better not be worn out by the descent as the road heads into the sharp right hairpin Wehrseifen. Once overlooked by crowded spectator banks in the 1930s, the trees have grown up over the decades. The track reaches the lowest point, Briedschied, over the road into Adenau, almost three hundred metres below the height of the pits. And what goes down...

The original plan for the track had designated this area to be where the start line would be as it was where the largest town in the area met the track. But the owners of a mill got in the way, refusing to sell their land. There is an access point onto the road here but the Briedschied is a quick corner - not ideal for those rejoining the Ring. Drivers get the full G force in the dip as the first twenty or so metres of the climb back up are done in one corner, Ex Muhle ('Muhle' being the aforementioned mill). This is a ridiculous grade that would never fly in a modern circuit and in typical Ring style there is nothing simple about it, the driver commits the fast right turn and has to hold the back from spinning out over the humpback crest.

Now the circuit runs along a short straight into the most fateful corner in the history of the track, Bergwerk. For all the dangers of the track manifested elsewhere, it was the next fast left that saw the end of the Ring in the world Formula One. The corner is where, on lap two of the 1976 German Grand Prix, Niki Lauda's Ferrari snapped hard right into the bank and burst into flames. Already by then the days of Formula 1 on the Nordschleife seemed numbered. The ultimate lap times had gone from eight minutes in 1967 to just under seven in 1975 - Lauda being the one to set the pole lap. It was proposed by Lauda is during the summer of 1976 that the drivers boycott the circuit. With all the lack of run off, the fast jumps and all the rest, Lauda's main point of contention was marshalling in the event of an incident.

As he would inadvertently prove in the worst way with his crash, the 12 mile track, with little access for emergency vehicles, was not a place to crash and need rescue. As it was the world champion was outvoted by his fellows, and the race went ahead. Rain, as so often before, threatened, and most of the racersstarted on wet-weather tyres. After one lap though, the threat had abated and most of the field came in to get a tyre change. It was charging back from this early pitstop that the Ferrari crashed, tearing off the side, exposing the fuel tanks. It sat in flames for almost a minute on the side of the road at Bergwerk, with the driver also missing his crash helmet.

The following cars of Harald Ertl and Brett Lunger of had both crashed into the Ferrari as it spun back across their bows, fortunately for Lauda, as the drivers could all jump out and join the rescue to pull him out of the burning fuel. With the fire quelled the official rescue was over five minutes coming, all the while the burned driver was laid out on the grass waiting for the ambulance. The burns to his face and hands were severe, and would leave scars across his forehead and scalp,  but it was the damage to his lungs breathing in the hot fumes that really demanded urgent medical attention. He did recover, making a miraculous return only a month and a half later at Monza, but the days of F1 on the Nordschliefe were finished. Though he had held a hard line on the viability of the circuit, Lauda himself never lost his inimitable sense of humour about what had happened. When sighted by some fans returning to the site of the crash decades later with a film crew he told them he was "looking for his ear".

Today the annual 24 hour race is patrolled by an army of marshalls and support vehicles. Single seaters of any speed would never be tolerated at the Ring because the lack of access roads means that the tow trucks and medical cars have to use the live track to access crashes. Not such a problem with GT road-based cars, but potentially lethal with any low-slung open wheel racers. Practical concerns also rule out a shorter race these days. With such a long event, the 24 hour race can be interrupted by long safety car periods to allow barrier repairs and crash cleanup, and sometimes these cautions can last for a good portion of what would constitute and entire Grand Prix.

In racing terms the Bergwerk is a very important corner because it leads onto along, fast uphill and good exit speed is vital. Kesselchen is a several kilometre climb up a wooded valley. This is as remote from civilisation as the Ring gets, we could be in the Canadian Rockies or the Swiss Alps for all we would know from the surrounding wooded hillsides. At the top of the hill the road swerves around the hillside; right, left, left and then hard right, Klosterthal, all taken very quickly with no room for error. This corner again showed the difficulty of marshalling the circuit. After Formula 1 had left the Ring the 1000 kilometre sports car race continued be run for several more years. In 1981 a contretemps on the first lap left the Porsche 935 of future Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal damaged and sat on the outside of the right hander. Unable to be recovered the Porsche was left there,
with full fuel tanks, jammed into the barrier on the edge of the corner. A while later another Porsche, this one driven by Swiss sportscar veteran Herbert Muller, ran wide on the corner and smashed into the stationary 935.

Another car had spun ahead at the same time, so perhaps Muller had been distracted or was trying to avoid the spinner ahead. The fuel aboard both cars exploded into flames. Since the unfortunate driver made no attempt to escape the open top car it was assumed he'd been killed or incapacitated in the impact. The track was blocked by the fire and eventually the race was called short as the tarmac was melted in the corner. Two years later the 1000 km was run for the final time on the Nordschleife. Appropriately it was won by a Porsche, one of the stalwarts of the Ring since the 1950s, co-driven by Jacky Ickx, the five-time Le Mans winner and double victor of the Grand Prix on the Ring.

Belgian Ickx had first made his mark at the Nordschliefe in 1967 when he qualified his Formula 2 Matra third fastest of all, despite lacking 1.4 litres of engine capacity compared to the big boys. The rules stated that he had to line up behind all the F1 cars he had outpaced in eighteenth. By the fourth lap he was already fifth and would even spend a little time up in fourth. Eventually the a joint in the car's front suspension broke but the point had been proven and a Ferrari drive was on offer for Ickx in 1968.

The Ring was always a place for a young wannabe to make a name against the big boys. A generation earlier Bernd Rosemeyer made his mark in the 1935 Eifel GP. Even more impressively he was driving one of the less fancied Auto Unions. Though the mid engine layout would be the future the handling was unconventional to say the least and the V16 was down on power compared to the Mercedes. To add to the problems a stone broke the tiny windscreen. Helmets were not mandatory in those days and, his skull cap had blown off and one lens of his goggles were smashed. He led all the stars for much of the eleven lap race until the V16 dropped two cylinders, just enough to slow the car down on the final straight and Caracciola came past to win by only a few seconds.

In 1969 Ickx won the last GP to be held between the hedges and ditches, helped by Jackie Stewart's championship winning Matra having gearbox gremlins, but by then the defending winner was already in second place. In 1972 he doubled-up in a Ferrari, starting from pole position, leading every lap, setting the fastest lap and winning. Doubtless everyone present would have been amazed to be told that the dominant display would be the last win F1 for Ickx, but it was. Ferrari's pace nosedived the next year and Jacky left for unsuccessful spells at Lotus and McLaren before finding a career resurrection with Porsche.

At the top of the hill a very steep concrete surfaced shortcut leads straight up the hill. The 'Steilstrecke', a long disused incline for hillclimb trials. The track loops back on itself along the hillside to form the famous 180 degree hairpin with its half banked bowl - the Karousel. The concrete inside was originally a ditch - hence the split cambers as the inside is banked and the top is flat. G force presses the suspension down as the car bounces through the rough concrete. Overcook the turn and come out of the bowl and a journey to the barriers is assured as the banking is no longer there to guide the car. The advice of the old-timers during the Grand Prix years was to aim for a prominent fir tree that stands on the outside of the Karousel, to drop into the concrete channel, though the other trees have grown up since then to make the marker less prominent.

Karousel is the most famous photo spot on the track, the only part of the circuit that is unmistakable for the layperson. It is a curiosity of the Ring that for all it's fame, and length, so little of the track is really iconic and distinctive. How many motorsports fans could name every corner, or even half of them? That is another curious facet of the place, that it was built as a facsimile of a road rather than a very long racing circuit with lots of very fast and wide corners. In the 21st century circuits are deliberately designed to encourage overtaking, with very wide, constant radius corners, and straights drawn with a ruler, with no interaction with the natural surroundings. The Karousel stands out on the Ring for it's very artificiality, it's gimmickry that contrasts with the natural feel that was built into the track.

In the years after the Grand Prix left the Ring became the world's premier performance road car testing site, as the rest of the world's motor racing circuits became ever more distant from the real world of motoring. Now a large encampment of testing facilities sits on the outside of the circuit bearing the names of a whos-who of car manufacture; Aston, Jaguar Land Rover BMW... Today, a fast lap of the Ring holds far more cachet than a lap of Silverstone or Spa.

Along with all the perfectly posed panoramas Karousel did form the backdrop to one of the circuit's most famous snapshots. In the blink of an eye an anonymous onlooker in 1935 captured one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the German Grand Prix. It was a year after the Nazis had come to power in the country and begun shovelling funds into any kind of propaganda-boosting technical exercise that would shine prestige on their policies. Grand Prix racing had faced an breathtaking armada of incredibly powerful cars from Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union, all bankrolled by the government. Pride of place would be the glorious homecoming of the Silberpfeile at the Ring. It consisted of nine gleaming cars, five from Mercedes and four from Auto Union.

As well as money, organisation, raw power and driving talent, the Germans also had home advantage as they could test at the Ring most of the year (excepting the winter months when snow would settle on the road). The opposition mainly consisted of the Ferrari Alfa Romeo team and a brace of Maseratis. A single British ERA and a Bugatti filled out the entry, but these once-proud front runners stood no chance at all. Alfa Romeo's P3 had been a trendsetter only a few years earlier, pioneering the single seater without a seat for a mechanic - thus being the spiritual ancestor of all subsequent Grand Prix car, and with it's light weight and good handling it was very successful. By 1935 the German arms race put the three litre, eight cylinder car around one hundred horsepower down on power, about a third less. The Alfa's biggest asset being it's driver, Tazio Nuvolari, "The Flying Mantuan", winner of virtually everything in the late twenties and early thirties; most of the Grands Prix, the Mille Miglia, Targa Florio, Le Mans and the UK Tourist Trophy.

While victory was almost assured the Germans had allowed the Italian opposition a chance by making the German GP a home at the Ring. All the power of the Silver Arrows was less effective on large parts of the twisty course, and on a real driver's circuit the talents of Nuvolari weren't entirely wasted in the Alfa Romeo, even though it gave away so much power to the Germans, especially on the long straight at the end of the lap. The weather did not cooperate with the occasion, but the rain was a blessing for the Germans their only real weakness being tyre wear. Back when tyres were still moulded from natural rubber rather than synthetics all the horsepower from the engine could chew up the tread very rapidly.

The Sunday race crowds weren't deterred by the pouring rain and mist. Nuvolari took the lead at the start, though it meant little as the starting lineups were determined by a draw at the time. The start was marred by one of the Auto Union mechanics being struck and badly hurt by one of the team's cars while trying to start another car that had stalled. The kind of mess that would occasionally be repeated for decades to come in racing until more stringent starting protocols were finally adopted.

Caracciola's Mercedes soon took the lead from Nuvolari that seemed to be the end of any opposition to Germans. The rain stopped but the track was awash and Nuvolari spun at Bergwerk on lap two, putting him back in 6th. The lead was a battle between the Mercedes and Auto Union as Rosemeyer took the fight to Caracciola. The gaps opened up. Then on lap six Rosemeyer stuffed the Auto Union into the ditch at Breidscheidt damaging a wheel and clogging up his throttle with dirt. He fell back to fifth after the wheel change. By the next lap Nuvolari was back up to third overtaking Manfred von Brauchitsch, but the Mercedes had too much power on the straight and demoted to Alfa back soon enough.

The track was drying and the race was hotting up. Nuvolari seemed to go up a gear, and came past in the lead on lap ten. Rosemeyer was back up to third and the four leaders were all in sight of each other. This was sensational stuff for the 1930s crowd, more used to huge gaps and most of the cars breaking down. The race was twenty two laps (compare to 15 by 1965). Pitstops were a requirement. Much like a modern GP everyone hurried in at the same time. And much like today the race complexion was changed by a foul up. Things went wrong for Alfa as their fuel pump handle broke. They had to pour the fuel in with the churn. While their driver shouted at them to hurry as all his efforts evaporated, the German cars were in and serviced in one minute. One and a half minute later the agitated Nuvolari jumped back in and screamed off, back in sixth again.

The pitstops worked out great for von Brauchitsch. He had the lead and pushed on hard. This was perfect for the watching Nazi party officials. Of all the drivers the chiselled von Brauchitsch was the one who fit their  requirements the best - aristocratic, nephew of a Field Marshal, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and friend of Hitler, no less. Unknown to onlookers Caracciola was struggling with fatigue - doctors would later find a tapeworm in his bowels. Rosemeyer was back at the sharp end but again his throttle cable was sticking and he had to stop in the pit again. Nuvolari was going like a man possessed. In Italy some reckoned the little driver had some kind of demonic pact such was his take-no-prisoners style. The reality was that Nuvolari, five foot three with the stature of a jockey could not physically muscle his cars around and so concentrated on carrying as much speed as he could. He was ahead of his time, minimising braking, flicking the wheel deftly, kicking up the dust in just the right place on the corner apex and exit, holding his speed in the corners without any aggressive over driving.

In the drying conditions the lap times had dropped by a minute and half. There were concerned looks in the Mercedes camp. Nuvolari was second. With five laps to go he was now only a minute behind. David was catching Goliath by up to twenty seconds a lap. Adding to the woes the white tyre wear marker strip was peeking out of the leading Mercedes's rear wheels. The choice was between a rock and a hard place - sacrifice the lead for a wheel change, but come out second and with no guarantee of repassing the Alfa. The driver did not come into the pit, as if he couldn't face deliberately handing the lead to Nuvolari. How would he explain himself if he couldn't then get back past? He pressed on.
Last lap. The lead was 45 seconds and still falling.

Click. The shutter at Karousel caught the moment as the Mercedes right rear tyre finally flew apart. The cameras at the finish line couldn't capture the astonished hush as the humble red car with its featherweight occupant flew by the flag to win. But it wasn't the silence of disgust or embarrassment, but astonishment. The German winning machine was unbeatable, or so it had been said. Perhaps it wasn't as symbolic a triumph as Jesse Owens winning four gold medals in the Berlin Olympiastadium would be the next year but the crowd's warm reception for Nuvolari in defiance of how they were expected to act was the same. Most famously, there was no record of the Italian anthem to play on the rostrum. Why would there be after all? Nuvolari then spared the officials blushes since he carried the disc with him in his bag.

Rosemeyer won the GP in 1936, restoring German honour after the humiliation the year before, and further frustrating Mercedes. Auto Union were supposed to be the junior partner in the nationalistic enterprise, but now their dashing driver was winning both races and the public's adoration. When he married Elly Beinhorn, the globe-trotting aviatrix, the week before the race, the two became the most famous celebrities in Germany, though the bride had been thoroughly annoyed by the presence of uniformed Nazi officialdom gatecrashing the wedding and foisting unwanted membership of the SS on them both.

Despite the Nazis nationalistic policies foreigners were allowed to drive the Mercedes and Auto Unions. For one thing having the best drivers available was a greater guarantee of victory, and it showed how inferior everyone else's motor industry must be if the neighbours - and even Nuvolari himself by 1938- had to drive German cars to be competitive. For the home race, though, strict orders were in force that the German drivers were to win. The law of unintended consequences was in full force in 1938 for as Seaman dutifully followed von Brauchitsch around at a respectful distance he was taking far less out of his tyres and burning less fuel. Seaman was promoted to second when Nuvolari spun off at Brunnchen in the Auto Union and saved time by not changing wheels at the first pit stop.

When the Mercedes came in for their second pit stop everything went wrong with their plans as von Brauchitsch's car went up in flames when fuel was spilt on the tail. Nobody was hurt, and the fire put out, but while all this was going on the team had eventually to wave Seaman out to take over the lead. By the time the singed former leader rejoined the Englishman was two minutes up the road, and victory was assured when von Brauchitsch steering wheel came off at Schwedenkreuz. He was unhurt and denied any suggestion that he not fixed it back on properly after releasing it to escape his burning car... The podium was nearly as awkward as 1935, as the tense young Briton awkwardly waved a Nazi salute from under his garland.

Even as he did so, and the officials had to report back to the furious Fuhrer about the pitstop fiasco, the Nazis had started work to replace the Nurburgring with their own track, to be called the 'Deutschlandring'. In the east of the country near Dresden, prisoner labour was put to work on a circuit that was half the length of the Ring, but much faster. Expanding on a section of an old hillclimb course in the area the course ran over some fields, over a road, much like the Adenau Bridge, and into a very fast and long left hand corner diving down a hill. It would have been one of the most exciting, and dangerous corners in the world, comparable to the Burnenville section of the Spa-Francorchamps course. The return leg ran through long series of tighter turns along a wooded river valley before reaching the base of the original hillclimb again. The Nazi-Ring was completed, in twice the time as the original Ring, but never raced on. A million spectators were supposed to crowd into the fields and line the roads but war came to Europe months later. The never-used race track became part of the road network after the conflict, almost entirely intact and free to drive around for the curious, but long forgotten by all but historians and local petrol heads.

Back west to Nurburgring we go, and after climbing all the way up from Adenau several miles earlier the track reaches Hohe Acht. Now there is a sense of turning for home, as the track turns right while the endless trees continue into the thousands of acres of mountain forest. It may be the home stretch but there is no time to relax, in fact the next few miles are the most busy and breathless of all, as corner after corner follow, one after the other with no respite.

Hohe Acht itself is proceeded by a well-cambered exhilarating left into a blind right over the top and past the marshalls post. Around another quick right and the roads drops down, diving down left and then right over a rare low kerb. This is the Wippermann (see-saw), the downhill right followed by a very short straight and an uphill right, all with no run off space at all. In the age of 1950s sports cars the drivers could drift through these corners. Now such finesse has been replaced by getting hard on the throttle as soon as possible. The performance of cars outgrew the track as soon as slick tyres, hard springs and downforce arrived. Many parts of the Ring, such as this, went from challenging to frightening.

The Ring continues without pause into the Eschbach, Brunnchen, and Eiskurve sequence. Almost a copy of the Wippermann, only a little tighter and slower. Drivers can easily become a little lost here, finding the corners hard to differentiate, but it is vital to do so as they are blind corners and must be committed to at the right speed. This is the nearest that the course comes to the public road at this point and is a popular congregation spot for the spectators who crowd overhead on the banks. The Brunnchen was once a large jump out of the first right hander. Cars would exit the corner and the road fell away from under them. Done right the drivers would land on a small bridge and immediately set about the uphill right. The reconstruction of the track for 1971 erased the jump completely, turning the Brunnchen into a duplicate of the Wippermann. In a reflection of how times change driver Chris Amon could describe, without any qualification, the post 'sixties Ring as much less challenging than it's former incarnation. Multiple Le Mans winner Derek Bell, describing a video lap in the 1980s Porsche 956 - as fast a car as would ever race around the Nordschleife - could call the flattened Brunnchen as "not very exciting anymore".

In a modern GT car the thousands of drivers a day, and the crowds watching above, would beg to differ. The uphill right has gained the nickname "YouTube corner" as it is the most popular place on the circuit to record cars on tourist laps, mishaps, spins and drivers finding one of the few gravel beds on the course (though it is minuscule compared to the standard at most race circuits). If drivers run wide into the gravel they run the great risk of spinning inside, where there is no such run-off. Even if they avoid the barrier it's a dangerous spot to rejoin as the corner is completely blind. The rise internet has been inextricably linked with the renaissance of the Ring, as many YouTube channels share almost every going-on on the track, and any auto manufacturers activities are scrupulously catalogued. The circuit itself does not permit video recording from cars themselves without permission, but any on-board hot lap that has been officially recorded becomes the proof of any car's ultimate performance on the track.

The popularity of the Ring with all kinds of car makers, including the ones who are more known for family cars, has led to a backlash in some quarters. There are plenty of other challenging test tracks in the world, often in nice sunny places rather than the murky German forest. Some renowned names - Ferrari, Lotus, Koenigsegg, Bugatti - don't make much mention of the Ring and it doesn't hurt their car's performance. Plus the laps times that are recorded do have to be taken with a raised eyebrow sometimes as companies have admitted deliberately tuning their 'Road legal' car for the track. And finally, the other obvious problem with constant testing is that it takes up time and excludes the public.

Millions of people are now very familiar with the circuit thanks to its inclusion in videogames. Or rather, they think they are familiar with it - this is another problem according to those with experience. It takes many many laps to get familiar with all the cambers, bumps, and blind corners, but games can give rookie visitors the impression that they know the place better the they do. Specialists like local racing driver turned TV presenter Sabine Schmitz, the 'Queen of the Ring', have ten of thousands of laps around the track to become competent enough to drive it fearlessly. Even the smallest touch with the barrier can write off the average road car, and there's no reset button.

Still the circuit does not let up, as it is time for the Pflanzgarten. The trees still surround the track, casting shadows on the fast approach down a not-quite-straight with big kerbs so common on the track. There is a little jump into the Pflanzgarten, a third uphill right followed by a left over the crest, but faster still than the Wippermann and Brunnchen. The corner became infamous in 1958 as the place where the young English Ferrari driver Peter Collins was fatally injured in the 1958 German GP. The battle for the lead in that race had been between Collins and eventual World Champion Mike Hawthorn aboard the Ferraris, and Tony Brooks in the Vanwall. The naturally talented Brooks took to the Ring like an old pro. Brooks had won the 1000 km with Aston Martin in 1957 joining Ascari, Farina, Moss, Surtees, Brabham and Ickx, as a multi-discipline Ringmeister. Collins was fresh off a victory in the British GP in the wide open spaces of Silverstone. When Stirling Moss's Vanwall broke it was left to Brooks, and he took up Britain's honour as if he was the undisputed team leader.

The same two Ferrari drivers had been humbled by a Juan Manuel Fangio masterclass the year before. The Argentinian maestro had started on pole position in the Maserati 250F, looking for a hat-trick at the German GP. He started with half filled fuel tanks, a strategic choice to build up enough of a lead to refill and change to fresh tyres without losing first place. Utterly standard practice in modern motor sport, where the question isn't whether to stop for tyres, but for how many times. Fangio led the first twelve laps, and was the required thirty seconds ahead of the Ferrari pair when he came to a stop in front of the Maserati mechanics and the grandstands. All seemed to go well until one of the mechanics dropped one of the rear wheel nuts under the back of the car. There was no quick delivery of a replacement as their would be today. Precious seconds were lost as the crew fumbled for the errant nut and reattached it.

Just like Nuvolari twenty two years before Fangio had to wait while his team fumbled away his efforts on the track before jumping back into his mount and roaring away with a mountain to climb. Now forty eight seconds behind the two Ferraris with ten laps to go, the maths were clear and it looked like an impossible task. What happened next went down in folklore as Fangio put the hammer down in a way that rarely happened in such a dangerous era. Later, he would describe how he would deliberately keep the car in a higher gear than he normally would in more cautious circumstances and fling the Maserati through all the turns and over the crests at the very edge of the limit. He 'never drove like that before... and never did again'.

Down the gap came. Fangio was helped by the fact that the two Ferrari's were playing games, feeling unassailable, letting Fangio catch up. No signals were forthcoming from their pit telling them that the Maserati was closing up for several laps. When Ferrari did wake up, the game was on. Fangio had halved the gap in his first two laps out of the pit. On one lap he went 24 seconds faster than the 1956 lap record, and ten inside his own pole position time. He looked a little incongruous as a hunter - the two Ferraris sat much lower than the Maserati on the track, with the drivers all but hidden inside their cockpits. Fangio's brown-helmeted head and shirt sleeves stuck far out into the wind. but appearances were deceptive. On the penultimate lap Fangio slid past Collins in the nordkurve behind the pits, and then took Hawthorn later the same lap - as no camera captured to moment, the best guess from the driver's descriptions later is at Briedscheidt. It was the 46 year old Argentinian's 24th and last win (sixteen years later Jackie Stewart would also win his final victory on the Ring, and set the new benchmark of 27 wins). Everyone ended the race wreathed in smiles as well as the garlands - the winner, obviously, had reason to be elated, but so too were the two young Brits he had thrashed, both clearly in awe of the maestro and what he had done.

A year later, Fangio had retired, and the aftermath was more sombre. The sadly underrated Brooks had won a victory much in manner of Fangio - he too had been behind the same Ferrari pair by half a minute and passed them both after a concerted push, but the death of Collins took the shine away from the race. The loss of his team mate left Hawthorn distraught, and in no mood to continue racing beyond the end of the year. No film exists of the incident though a photographer snapped the three leaders the instant before the Ferrari skidded wide and tumbled into the trees, and also caught sight of the disturbing scene afterwards as bystanders waited with the fatally injured driver beside the capsized car for help to arrive.

Though Collins was a Grand Prix winning driver - only two weeks before in Britain - the dangers of the Nurburgring had taken him after only one slight mistake. The picturesque photos so redolent of the era masked the tightrope the drivers were walking every lap. In the 1930s for all the speed of the cars in a straight line they skidded and scrabbled through corners. Chassis and suspension design moved forward since the 1930s. Engines were less fearsome but more efficient with better gearboxes. Some cars now had disc brakes rather than drums. Point to point these cars were quicker. Speed could be carried through a corner much more than in the 1930s.

In their powerful but wayward cars, sliding around on thin tyres, steering with a giant wooden wheel more akin to bus than a modern idea of racing car, they had to set up for a corner long before they go to the turn in point. Get it wrong and there was no saving it, and perhaps even a few awful seconds to realise that a crash was coming. In those cars where the driver sat more on than in the cockpit, and certainly wasn't strapped in, the feeling must have been much like a cycle racer overcooking a bend on a mountain descent. Once it is clear you are in trouble there's nothing to do but hang on and brace. Already in 1954 the dangers of the increasing speeds had been shown in a practice session as the young Argentianian Fangio apprentice Onfre Marimon had gone straight on at the bottom of the hill at Breidscheidt in the Maserati and been fatally thrown out of his car and into down the bank - the first fatality at a championship round.

Once out of the Pflanzgarten the road runs over the top of another large crest and then opens out into the Bellof-Esses. Once a section that would have involved carefully steering around the corners had now become effectively another straight, albeit still haunted by the big kerbs delineating where the corners notionally are. The esses are named after the late Stefan Bellof, still the lap record holder in racing. Driving a Porsche 956 at the final 1000 km sports car race on the Nordschleife in 1983 Bellof went round the Nordschleife in 6:11,13. He didn't use the full lap as the old pits loop was being rebuilt at the time, so the lap was set on the 'Touristfahrten' (ie, the lap without the Grand Prix pits in it that the public can drive). The old Nordschleife with the original pits loop, with the large 180 degree Sudkurve hairpin measured 14.19 miles (22.84 km). The tourist lap is 12.93 miles (20.81 km). Bellof was was forty seven seconds quicker than the fastest ever Formula 1 lap, Lauda's pole from 1975, 6:58.6, that included the extra mile. It took the F1 cars about thirty seconds to do the extra distance, meaning that Bellof probably would still be quicker overall all things being equal.

Nevertheless it was a mighty impressive time in a car conceived for Le Mans and suited to wide open racetracks, with huge tyres, rock solid suspension and downforce created by ground effects suction under the car. So much downforce that the car had problems 'porpoising' on the bumps - bouncing up and down almost uncontrollably, and on many parts was guided by the cambers like a slot car. Compared to Bellof the rest of the field looked parked - Jochen Mass did a 6:16, and Ickx a 6:27 also in the Porsche. 1982 F1 World Champion Keke Rosberg - less familiar with the track and the cars admittedly - was half a minute slower than the German wunderkind. He and co-driver Derek Bell were miles ahead in the race when Bellof's talent ran out and he crashed in the section now named for him. Two years later his luck ran out too at Spa-Francorchamps when he never emerged from another crash in the 956.

It took until 2018 for Porsche to break their own record with their 919 Evo (a souped up version of their Le Mans car), but since this lap (5:19.55) was not done at any kind of race meeting Bellof's lap record still stands as the official race record. The top ten fastest modern road production cars can do the Tourist lap in anything from 6:44 to 7:14. The massive weight advantage Lauda's 1975 Ferrari F1 car had over a road car being more than compensated for by decades of advancement in every other area of technology, and far more practice time for the drivers.

After the Bellof S, things become a little easier and it's nearly time for the drivers to breath again as the final long straight beckons. Through the Schwalbenschwanz (Swallow's Tail), a fairly straightforward left hander followed by the 'mini Karousel', a ninety degree left with a similar concrete half cambered surface to the Karousel. This is one of the least popular turns on the circuit for drivers as the banking turns what would be a medium speed left into another bumpy challenge to a modern car's suspension and keeps every car on the same line, preventing overtakes. Through the double right Galgenkopf, the second long right hander a double apex curve that demands precision. Turn too much and the speed scrubs off, turn too little and the barrier beckons.

Onto the Dottinger Hohe, a 1.3 mile straight that finally allows the driver some respite, though they do have to contemplate the Antionusbuche kink at the end, the fastest corner on the track taken flat out at 190 mph or so depending on car. Even here the course was once defined by hedges, creating a narrow channel bringing to mind a railway track well into the 1970s, when sanity finally prevailed and the straight was greatly widened and the tourist circuit entrance added mid way along. Another minor change was added before the pits with the addition of a chicane in 1966. Though added for safety to slow the cars down a bit before they blasted out onto the pit straight the chicane also presents an additional challenge as drivers have to jam the brakes on one more time before the lap is done.

James Hunt won the last German Grand Prix, in 1976, in just over one hour and forty minutes. The great increases in speed and Lauda's near-fatal crash had spelt the final end. The German Grand Prix was carted off to the featureless forest straights of Hockenheim, where it had also been decamped in 1970 while the Ring had been upgraded. Even without the headlines, and had the race carried off without incident, F1 was not long for the Nordschliefe as only a year later another quantum leap of performance was unleashed as F1 cars grew side skirts to create underfloor ground effects downforce, and turbochargers appeared to double the power. In the space of five years the new generation of F1 machinery made the front runners of only a few years past - cars that could lap the Ring a smidge under seven minutes look incredibly antiquated. In 2007 a modern F1 car did return to Nordschliefe as the BMW-Sauber team staged a demonstration run with Nick Heidfeld driving. The lap time was unrepresentative (over eight minutes) as as the car was far from flat out most of the time. The team estimated that were the driver trying the lap would be close to what the Porsche 919 Evo
achieved, around 5:15 or so.

The German national touring car championship, the DTM,  ran the Nordschleife from 1988 to 1993. The protagonists included Mercedes Benz, Alfa Romeo, Audi, and BMW, making for a long distant coda to the great battles of yore. Soon even touring cars were deemed too fast, though these were road cars on steroids, with little to compare with the card at the dealers other than the body shell. The final winner of a top level motor race on the Nordschleife was Italian, the 4 wheel drive, 400 horsepower, carbon fibre-body Alfa Romeo 155 DTM, driven by some-time F1 driver Nicola Larini.

1976 wasn't the end for the Nurburgring and the German GP as a whole. In 1984 a new 'GP strecke' was opened, looping away to the south west of the Nordschliefe. All of the old pits loop was swept away and a new track was built down the hillside. It was a fine piece of construction to the latest standards of the time, but it was not greeted with great enthusiasm by the F1 drivers when the European GP (a convenience title that allowed new circuits to be trialled) was held there in 1984. The main criticism was that it was lacking in inspiration - that the wide medium speed corners and wide runoffs could have been anywhere. The Neu-Nurburgring incorporated nothing of the Nordschleife and nothing of it's character. Being mostly smooth open corners looking like they were laid out to fit into a small space, akin to a Scalextric layout in a front room. The 'Ersatzring' was one unflattering nickname bestowed by journalists. However one prominent voice of support came from Niki Lauda, who was in the race, driving for McLaren, and he declared the circuit to be 'ideal' for modern F1 racing.

Again, times change. The German Grand Prix came back to new circuit in 1985, only to move away again to Hockenheim. It took until 1995 for another Grand Prix to come to the Ring, another 'European' race.  Now the Neu Nurburgring is reasonably well regarded. It does at least have some gradient, passing places and one or two quicker corners - not qualities that are shared by some 2000s- era F1 spec tracks. It also keeps the place on the radar of international motorsports rather than an anachronism that is purely a car test track. And had the decision been made inthe 1980s to incorporate parts of the old track in a truncated form maybe the other sections would have been sold off or abandoned as at many other great vintage racing circuits that now exist in truncated form (Zandvoort, Osterreichring, Clermont Ferrand etc.)

Michael Schumacher was the first ever German World Champion in 1994, this becoming an instant icon in his homeland. Ever since Wolfgang Von Trips had led the points standings throughout 1961 (a fateful year for Germany all round) in the Sharknose Ferrari, only to be killed at Monza on the verge of the prize, the Germans had waited for a world beater. Jochen Mass won a race for McLaren in 1975, the sole German win until Schumacher won his first race in 1992. Hans Joachim Stuck - son of pre war Mercedes driver Hans, drove throughout the seventies but never won. Stefan Bellof was the great teutonic hope, but the Spa crash forever left his career as a great 'what if?'. A month before Bellof's death another German F1 driver, Manfred Winkelhock, who once took flight in spectacular fashion in a Formula 2 car at the Flugplatz in 1980, was also killed in action, and also in a Porsche 956. Once again the irony of the fickle nature of fate can be seen. The driver walked away from his somersault without a scratch only to die after hitting a wall at Mosport park, Canada, a two mile circuit often described as a mini-Nurburgring for its plunges and crests.

When Schumacher came along his was a public eager for a hero, flooding in and providing the impetus for the Neu-Ring to be returned for a European GP in 1995. And 'Schuey' gave them a race to remember, chasing down Jean Alesi's Ferrari and passing in the final chicane with only two laps to go. Also in 1995 at Hockenheim he was the first home winner of the German GP since Caracciola in 1939. Perhaps it was the final exorcism of the demons of races past, putting to bed both the age of SS-uniforms on the grid, and the decades of races being reserved for the citizens of West Germany. A year later, Ferrari and their sponsors at Phillip Morris tobacco waved their millions at Schumacher and installed the most prized asset on the grid in their cars. After a wobbly start, the Schumacher-Ferrari combination turned into a juggernaut, and the home races were no different - nine times the Ferrari won on home ground, though technically since many of those races were in the European GP, Schumacher didn't dislodge Rudolf Caraciolla's six German Grand Prix wins from the pre-war days.

The Neu-Ring still could not replace Hockenheim and four years passed before another European GP appeared. Again, it was a barnstormer. It was a wet race - once the dread of drivers but with safety improved immeasurably their main concern in 1999 was not spinning out of a good position rather than not spinning off because they might never climb out of their car. After Michael Schumacher had broken his leg weeks earlier at Silverstone the crowd were without their darling, but his younger brother Ralf was present, and he was one of several favourites who had potential victory robbed from them by ill fortune. Firstly their was a contretemps at the start, sending the car of Pedro Diniz rolling over into the grass at the first corner, worryingly tearing off the roll hoop, though the cockpit sides held up and the driver was uninjured.

Then Frentzen's Jordan-Mugen Honda led the two Mclarens, until it broke coming out of a pitstop. Ferrari performed a comedy of errors worthy of the teams of yore by leaving Eddie Irvine high a dry on the jacks for agonising seconds as they realised they had set out a pitstop without an important feature - new tyres to put on the car. David Coulthard led, and threw the win away spinning off, handing over the lead to Fisichella in the Benetton, who did exactly the same thing. Then Ralf fell off too, only his off track excursion came from a puncture. The sixth leader turned out to be Johnny Herbert, driving for Jackie Stewart's team, in it's third year. They had put the wet weather tyres on at just the right moment, unlike McLaren who had put their other car - Mika Hakkinen, leading the championship he eventually won over Irvine - onto wets far too early, sending him to the back when they had to change back to regular dry weather tyres. Hakkinen came back to finish fifth, Ferrari's gaffe left Irvine out of crucial points. Herbert, ten years from his debut in F1, made no mistakes in the rain and put Jackie Stewart in the company of Jack Brabham as being a winner of the German GP at the Ring as driver and constructor.

In the 2000s the Neu-Ring became a mainstay of Formula 1, hosting the European GP until 2007, and then picking up the German GP again, alternating with Hockenheim. It all came close to falling apart, however, and the Ring was nearly lost for ever in what should have been it's time of renaissance. In the 2000s the growing popularity of the Nurburgring with tourists, and the costs of hosting Grands Prix, came close to causing its downfall as the owners and the local government dreamed up a massively misguided scheme to build a resort next to the start line, with hotels, a mall and a theme park.

Naturally this included a roller coaster ride: The 'Ring Racer' was supposed to be the fastest in the world with a launch speed of 135 mph. There was lots of fanfare; Michael Schumacher took a front seat ride on a press day, though this was at a mere 99 mph launch. When the testing ramped up the speed the launch mechanism failed in very expensive fashion, badly damaging the station, and blowing out glass panes in the nearby buildings. When Ring Racer finally opened it had been four years since its initial announcement, during which time a Ferrari themed ride in Abu Dhabi was already running with a 149 mph launch. After four years waiting the ride was for all of four days before the winter season set it. What riders it had were nonplussed. It was fast- and felt it as it rushed along the front of the grandstands, but the ride was over inside a minute and apart from a couple of turns there was little excitement - hardly worthy of the setting. The ride, the oversize and underused resort and shopping mall bankrupted the owners. Adding to the problems was an embezzlement scandal in the local government as taxpayer money had been spent when assurances were given that all the money was private. It was all a far cry from the noble intentions of.the beginnings of the Ring under Otto Creutz when the centrepiece of the facilities was an elegant alpine hotel. New owners were found, and the possible loss of the Ring averted, but they never reopened Ring Racer, leaving it idle and awaiting a revamp.

On the GP track in 2002 the first chicane section was reprofiled into a double hairpin, supposedly to improve passing chances, once again to mixed reactions, adding a few hundred metres onto the the combined Nordschliefe/GP Strecke lap of 15.77 miles (25.38 km). In 2015 the World Touring Car Championship was returned to the Nordschliefe, holding two three lap races on the same weekend as the 24 hour race, officially bringing a World Championship race back for the first time in decades. The 24 Hour Race itself, once a motley collection of amateurs, a real 'run what ya brung' event, is now much more serious affair, with a good collection of GT3-spec machinery on hand run by major teams. Cars such as the Porsche 911 GT3, Mercedes GT3 and Audi R8 are by far the slowest at Le Mans, but are plenty quick enough round the Nordschliefe, lapping it combined with the GP circuit in just over eight minutes, only losing out in absolute terms on the longer straight sections.

Seen on the map, the newer GP track sits on the the South West side of the Nordschleife like an appendix, but this was not the first track down this hillside. The giveaway is in the name Nordschleife. Why be so geographically specific if there wasn't also a Sudschleife? And there was; when the whole was built in 1927 a 4.82 mile (7.75 km) circuit was constructed south of the pits with a little connection allowing the Sudschleife to use the same pit building. Though the shorter sibling, the Sudschleife was still longer than both Spa-Francorchamps and Road America, the two longest permanent circuits that see regular use in Europe and the USA today. It was notably quick and perhaps even more hairy in places than it's northern counterpart. Instead of taking the Sudkehre loop as the first corner the track branched off to the left, dove under the public highway and set off for two miles of downhill turns. The first challenge was a Hatzenbach-style set of swerves, the Brankekopf - only faster and without the minor protection offered by a bank on one side.

Then came a small straight to a right hander, Aschenshlag, another fast right leading to a wider left, Seifgen. The bottom of the hill was Bocksburg Straight towards the village of Mullenbach, where a hard ninety right took the road to a climb up back up the hill. Back up on the level with the pits the track went into the Scharfer Kopf, a hairpin that immediately doubled back in a wider left leading back to behind the pits.The whole lot, Nord and Sudschliefe could be raced as one 17.56 mile (28.26 km) lap - the 'Gesamtstrecke'. This was the longest ever layout of the Ring, and in fact was the circuit that the first few German Grands Prix were run on. This short lived arrangement was abandoned after 1929 and the south loop became used mostly for smaller events.

The first half of the lap must have been something to inspire dread and exhilaration in equal measures for the drivers. The never-ending drop built the speed, and any kind of decent lap must have required commitment and a severe lack of imagination considering the trees lining both sides of the road. The drivers couldn't be too cautious as any locked brake or confidence lift could easily unsettle the car and send it bucking and spinning off. This is the great challenge of the Ring as a whole - being competitive required many great leaps (sometimes literally) of faith and pinpoint accuracy to set up for whole sequences of unseen corners to come.

The surface was damaged in the war as American tanks used it to traverse the area when they rolled in, but repairs were made and by 1947 it was the Sudschleife that hosted hosted the first post war motorcycle event that reinvigorated the Ring. Full blown Formula 1 championship racers never came to the track though oddly the 1960 German GP was held there. The F2 rules were an obvious attempt to give a boost to Porsche, who ran well with their smaller cars and engines but hadn't yet set about making a GP car. It worked - Jo Bonnier won in his bulbous little Porsche 718, but given the blanket of gloom that coated the race, very few people could see it. This was a curious time for the race; in 1959 the race moved for one time to the 'AVUS' in Berlin. The Automobil Verkehrs und Übungsstraße, a 10 kilometre stretch of Autobahn had been the first ever motorway built in Germany, and getting two the price of one the government of the time had built corners at each end to allow it to be turned into a bizarre racetrack. To begin with a lap of the Avus had been nineteen kilometres (12 miles) - almost as long as the Nordschliefe, but with 168 fewer corners. Avus had been the location of that rain sodden 1926 German GP but when the Ring came along the year after it instead became the favoured place to show off the pure top speed of German cars.

The huge straights allowed the Silver Arrows of the 1930s to touch the magic double ton - two hundred mph. In 1936, to add more speed, the top curve by the startline was replaced by a huge brick banking tilted over at forty degrees. The obsession with speed led to Mercedes and Auto Union building streamlined versions of their cars to lap the Avus at enormous averages that wouldn't be matched for decades. The two German teams were obliged to compete with each other for speed records, though the smaller Auto Union team was always up against it versus Mercedes. It was on another Autobahn near Frankfurt in January 1938, that Bernd Rosemeyer crashed to his death in January 1938 chasing a Caracciola speed record. After several scintillating years of Grand Prix virtuosity the most popular man in Germany couldn't hope to escape when the streamlined Auto Union 'Rekordwagen' flew off into the trees well north of two hundred miles per hour.

In the post war years the bottom end of the Avus track was curtailed at half the length, cutting the track neatly in two. It was on this layout that Tony Brooks doubled up on his German GP wins in 1959, this time in a Ferrari. But nobody was impressed by the German GP being two drag races connected by a wall of death routine. The latter disparagement had become all too true when the F1 stalwart Jean Behra was killed in a Porsche RSK sportscar crashing into one of the marshal posts at the top of the wall (all but inevitably there had never been any barrier built at the top even though every other banked speedway track of the age at the very least had a guardrail by the fifties).

After the Sudschleife Formula 2 interlude normal service resumed in 1961 when Stirling Moss won on the 'real' Ring in his Rob Walker Lotus. It was Moss's last of his sixteen GP wins and another moment of genius as he held back the much faster Ferraris just as he had at Monaco. By next year he had retired after a near fatal crash at Goodwood in England. The irony was rich- having mastered the Ring on many occasions with nary a scratch Moss was laid low by one of the 'safe' British airfield circuits that were already leading the way into a more controlled and less adventurous future. At around the same time the Nordschleife was being tamed, the ridiculous banking of Avus was dismantled and turned into a regular flat turn again. The outline of the turn is still there as a lorry parking space, Avus having held its last race, in even greater truncated form in 1998. The old control tower is now a hotel, with the Mercedes Benz logo preserved atop it, along with one of the grandstands standing by the highway.

Hockenheim, the circuit that replaced the Ring, had been built in a similar mould to Avus the 1932 - twelve kilometres of almost unabated speed in a triangle through a forest. On the eve of wartime the circuit was rearranged to become a long elongated oval, and even quicker. An autobahn had cut across the track in 1965 leading to the construction of  the 'Motodrom' stadium section bookending the two straights and the quick 'Ostkurve' at the far end. It was to this track where Jim Clark came to race in the Formula 2 Deutschland Trophae in April 1968 along with most of the usual F1 rivals in those days when F1 drivers drove almost every weekend. More bitter irony - having become a Ringmeister in 1965, and led handsomely before his Lotus's suspension gave up in the summer of '67, the world's greatest driver died skidding into a tree on a anonymous track in a race that counted for nothing. The sudden death of Clark was a major wake up call that things had to change. The old way of doing things - where drivers like Fangio and Brooks could lay back and only push when they needed to had died out. Even the greatest talents couldn't escape a mechanical failure when such fast cars met such basic circuits

By 1970 two chicanes interrupted Hockenheim's straights and barriers had been placed around the perimeter to shield the trees. In 2001 almost all the old forest loop was discontinued and planted over, while the modern F1 cars took to a drastically shortened course. A course that, in fairness, at least provided a few overtaking spots, and let the spectators see far more laps. But, like Neu Nurburgring, Neu Hockenheim could have been anywhere, with no evidence of its ancestry in its DNA. Though the German car industry still churns out high speed cars descended from the former kings of the Ring, Avus and Hockenheim to fly down its Autobahnen, the days when motor racing in Germany meant either extremes of driving skill or speed have seemingly been buried for good.

Some of the great speed kings of the 1930s lived on into the age of the modern Ring, long enough to take joyrides in their old cars for the benefit of the curious spectators who could see in person the legends of old - Hermann Lang, Hans Stuck, Paul Pietsch, Louis Chiron, and of course Fangio. In age at least he was a contemporary of the pre-war aces, but his only came to Europe when he was approaching his forties. Still, Fangio, forever a representative of Mercedes Benz following his two World Championships with the cars in the fifties would wheel out one of the 1930s cars that by rights he should have been driving, were the world a smaller place back then. Not present were Nuvolari and Caracciola. Long gone, their exploits on the track contrasted with their personal health. Nuvolari left the race in 1953, aged sixty, from a stroke. Caracciola was even younger - fifty eight, when he died from liver failure in 1959. Rosemeyer and Seaman never lived to the see the outbreak of the war that had been the inevitable endgame to all the technological posturing that the Nazi's had been so keen to engender at the Ring.

The last man standing, at the grand old age of ninety-seven, was von Brauchitsch, unlucky on the track, but the only one of the Silver Arrows racers to live into the next century. Last woman standing, though, was Mrs Rosemeyer, Elly Beinhorn, who once took up the invitation to drive the Auto Union around the Ring, as well as sharing a hair raising lap sat perched on the side of her husband's seat. Despite this and many other hijinks she made it to one hundred years old.

While these drivers and the Nordschliefe and these names were immortalised in films and photographs, little can be found of the Sudschleife in action. It was never as used much after the 1960s as the other layouts and eventually went completely as the new Grand Prix pits were built, erasing the connections to it. Nothing remains of the first left and the tunnel under the road- it is all a car park now. Much of the first half of the lap was repurposed into a public roads, so it is still possible for the curious to see what the circuit was like. At Mullenbach the old bottom turn has becomes a back road as the main road leaves the course of the track. The uphill section back to the pits remains, abandoned behind the trees and hedges like an old piece of Roman road. Here the narrowness of the old track is apparent. It barely seems credible that this is what once passed for a racing track suitable for cars that we would still consider quick today. After Scharfer Kopf the connection to the pits has gone, swept away by a new road for the GP track beyond.

The Sudschleife offers a eerie glimpse into what might have become of the whole Ring had the GP track not be built and F1 racing retained in the Eifel. The Flugplatz, Karousel, Bergwerk, Hohe Acht... would they be abandoned and forgotten, explored by a handful of curious souls? Like the old Hockenheim, and the spot where an unknown failure sent Jim Clark spinning off one spring day, would the Ring be forested over and erased entirely? Maybe not, given the long history and all the legends created on the old track, though seen as a narrow crumbling strip of overgrown cracked tarmac invaded by hedgerows and weeds, ringing only to the sound of birds twittering rather than Porsches and BMWs perhaps people would have a hard time believing it really was the place where all those races happened.