- It's the little toll road that winds
through the forested Eifel Mountains in Germany.
It's surrounded by walls on all sides,
and it's 12.9 miles long.
When you get on it, you end up right back where you started.
It's one of the most exhilarating and unforgiving roads
in the world, and they call it the Grune Holle.
You d-holes have been asking for this one forever,
so here we go.
The first episode of Battle Racetrack.
This is everything you need to get.
This is everything you need to know
to get "Up to Speed" on the Nurburgring.
(electricity crackles) (upbeat video game music)
Way back in the early days of motor sports,
there weren't dedicated tracks
for people to race their cars on.
And in Germany in the early 1920s,
drivers would put their racing skills to the test
on public roads.
But much like roller hockey--
- [Man] Car!
(James sighs) (engine hums)
- But much like roller hockey--
- Car!
(James sighs) (engine hums)
- But much like roller hockey,
auto racing was found to be too dangerous
for traditional public roads.
Car!
Thanks to a little thing called the Treaty of Versailles,
the reparations Germany had to pay
for World War I were really steep.
And when combined with the massive tariffs
by foreign governments,
the German economy was more like the eco-no-money.
One government official by the name
of Dr. Otto Creutz was like.
- We got no safe to race.
We got no jobs, and I'm tired all the time.
- [James] Then he had a (speaks in foreign language) moment.
- We will build the--
(car engine rumbles)
- That's a (bleep) mailman.
- We will build the longest
motor sport racetrack in the world,
and we'll make it an unemployment relief project,
thus giving our economy a boost,
while also providing a place to showcase
super-fly German auto engineering, ja?
- Track development started in the fall of 1925
with Gustav Eichler as the lead architect.
With the help of over 25,000 workers
and 40 million Reichsmarks, which is the equivalent
to $146 million in today's folding money,
they were able to complete the circuit by spring of 1927.
When all was said and done,
the Nurburgring was 17.6 miles long,
comprised of three loops, and features 174 turns,
with about 1,000 feet of elevation changes.
There was the south loop, A.K.A. Sudschleife,
which was about 4.8 miles long.
Then there was the 14.2 mile north loop,
A.K.A. Nordschleife.
And there was a little start stop loop,
also known as Zielschleife, which helped
join the two major loops together.
And the best part of the whole thing,
is that the track was also a toll road,
which meant anyone could drive it.
The Eifel Race, christened the track in June of 1927.
85,000 spectators gathered for the two days of racing,
which featured 100 motorcycles on Saturday,
and 65 race cars on Sunday.
Rudolf Caracciola won the first auto race
and also became the first ringmeister,
which because I'm almost fluent in German,
I can you tell you means ring master.
I'm also a bit of a ring master.
(elegant string music) Sparkly, luxurious, decadent.
The first German Grand Prix was hosted about a month later,
and drivers from all over Europe
were blown away by the immense length
and poo-your-pants challenges of the circuit.
After only three GGPs on the full course,
they decided to race just the north loop,
and leave the south loop to motorcycles and smaller races.
The Great Depression effed up the early '30s
with the Grand Prix being canceled in both '31 and '33.
But in 1934, the race was on and a legend was born.
(car engine whirring)
That year, race officials had put on a cap
on the car weight of 750 kilograms.
But Mercedes didn't get the memo.
So they showed up with a car weighing 751 kilograms.
The crew scraped off the lead-based paint,
revealing the silver aluminum body.
The Mercedes W25 went on to win the race
and was nicknamed the Silver Arrow.
This day, Mercedes still uses
a silver motif on their livery.
Unfortunately, just as things were heating up at the Ring,
dub-dub-two happened because bad guys
were doing bad things and had to be stopped.
So racing resumed in 1947,
and in 1951, Formula 1 joined the party.
What started off as a great marriage
between track and racing body,
quickly turned into a nightmare,
as the cars got faster and faster.
In a 15 year period from '54 to '69,
five F1 drivers died at the Ring.
It also led to Sir Jackie Stewart naming it Green Hell
after he won in the 1968 German Grand Prix.
By the '70s, the F1 cars
were just too frickin' fast for the track.
Between the steep elevation changes, jumps, bumps,
blind corners, and almost complete lack of run-off areas,
the circuit was a recipe for disaster.
In 1971, F1 drivers refused to race there
until the track was made safe.
The bumps and jumps were smoothed out.
The occasional corner was added to keep speeds down,
and of course, some safety barriers were installed.
Despite the changes, a fiery accident in 1976
almost killed F1 championship leader and legend, Niki Lauda.
After Niki's wreck, Formula 1 quit racing there altogether.
After losing the Formula 1 series,
the Ring built a more traditional
2.8 mile Grand Prix circuit known as GP-Strecke.
It was way frickin' safer, and only featured 12 turns,
which was quite the downgrade from the Nordschleife's 73.
The first race held on the new track was in 1984.
And a young Brazilian by the name of Ayrton Senna,
you ever heard of him?
He frickin' won.
He was driving a Benz.
He went on to win his first F1 race just a year later
at the Portuguese Grand Prix.
Portuguese Grand Prix.
- [Woman] Portuguese.
- With the new track came the return of F1,
but all was not well for the Ring.
They were going broke.
F1 president, Bernie Ecclestone was charging
so much to license Formula 1 events,
that lots of tracks were losing money.
So to generate revenue, the track charged spectators
more for tickets, and spectators were like.
- Nah, we'll just watch it on TV.
- While F1 was a financial strain,
other series helped generate some revenue.
There was the 24 Hours of Nurburgring,
which started in 1970 as part of the VLN series.
There was, of course, the DTM, or German Touring Car series.
And in 1986, the Ring hosted the first-ever
Truck Grand Prix, which is still one of the track's
biggest annual events, in more ways than one.
Get it?
Trucks, they're big. (laughs)
But still, the Ring was having trouble
staying out of the red.
That is until the German auto industry stepped in.
See, starting in the late '60s,
consumers wanted sportier cars
and manufacturers were churning 'em out.
But manufacturers needed a proper testing ground
for development and research.
And the Ring offered every type of driving condition
in one, beautiful, little package.
Up until the '80s, only a few manufacturers
used the track as a test facility.
The M Sport division of BMW started testing there in 1972,
but for the most part, the track sat vacant.
Not to be outdone by the ultimate driving machine,
other German manufacturers
built research facilities next to the track.
And since cars break often when driven on the edge,
parts manufacturers moved into the area
to supply the engineers.
That's how Nurburg became one of the dopest car towns
on the planet.
By the start of the '90s,
the track was packed with test mules.
To help keep the track safe, management set aside
16 weeks of track time, exclusively for industrial testing.
By the mid 2000s, manufacturers, media,
and consumers became obsessed with the Ring.
I'm obsessed with the Ring, you might be too.
(car engine whirs)
Even traditional land yacht brands, like Cadillac,
were testing and developing new sedans and coupes there.
The 2009 Nissan GTR's successful reemergence
was almost entirely predicted on its seven minute, 28 second
lap around the track, which at the time,
was faster than any other massed-produced vehicle ever.
Since then, almost every new sporty car sold
advertises it's lap time around the Ring.
In fact, the 2020 Road & Track Performance Car
of the Year was a Hyundai Veloster,
that was almost exclusively designed
and honed at Nurburgring.
With all these cars testing at the track,
manufacturers needed drivers.
And one of the most notable drivers is Sabine Schmitz,
also known, The Queen of the Ring.
Sabine claims to have driven over 20,000 laps
on Nordschleife, and it shows.
She won the 24 Hours Nurburgring in '96 and '97,
as well as the VLN Championship in '98.
It was a good three years for her, very exciting time.
(tires screeching)
Sabine, along with other high-performance drivers,
actually offer taxi services for those willing
to fork over some dough to experience
the full-speed sweeping turns
and crazy G forces of Fox Hole,
or the technically complex Bergwerk Corner,
or the (bleep)-your-pants,
throw up-in-your-shirt, piss-in-your-shoes jump
at Pflanzgarten 2.
(quirky music)
I just wanna apologize
to my German-speaking audience out there.
I'm doing my best.
No disrespect. (laughs)
(car rumbling) (people laughing)
But let's say you're more of a hands-on kinda person
and you wanna take your own car around a track.
Well luckily, that can be arranged.
For $35, depending on the day and week,
you can drive the Nordschleife as part of (sighs)
Touristenfahrten.
(flatulence toots)
Which means public driving in German.
Not only are you liable for damages to the track,
there's also towing and ambulance fees,
and lost track time due to stoppage,
which can be almost $2,000 an hour.
Say you can't bring your car because it doesn't fit
under the seat or in front of you or in the overhead bin,
you can still enjoy Touristenfahrten by renting a track car.
The cars come with roll cages, sticky little tires,
and for a few Euros more, you can even hire a navigator.
Plus you can buy expensive insurance packages
that help you avoid even more expensive repairs
when your rented Renault Clio
goes flying off the track at Quiddelbacher Hohe.
Trying.
Another little bit of advice?
If you want to drive the Ring,
you better do it sooner than later.
Many racetracks are suffering financially,
but due to its size, this track is especially hurting.
In 2012, the track went bankrupt
because they built a bunch of tourist attractions
and then the tourist number really didn't increase.
Then the engineering firm, Capricorn Group,
bought the place for 173 million bones.
But since their all Capricorns,
they couldn't make up their frickin' minds,
so Russian billionaire, Viktor Kharitonin
bought the majority ownership of the track in 2014.
So now you know a little bit more
about the Nurburgring.
And maybe, just maybe, if you're a good person
and do good things, you will someday find yourself
burning rubber in the Grune Holle.
We have a second channel.
It's called Donut Podcast.
We are so, so stoked about this.
It's my favorite thing to do.
Our first podcast is called "Past Gas",
where me and the boys dig deep
in the craziest stories and people in automotive history.
Check it out at Donut Podcast
or stream it anywhere you stream podcasts.