Updated: October 26, 2008

As usual, I accidentally stumbled across the September 5, 2008 New York Times online article "Around the Nurburgring in Record Time, Again".  What really caught my eye was was a YouTube video that contained old camera car footage showing the 1967 version of the Nurburgring. It was like going back in time. With the exception of the chicane just before the pits, the video is pretty much what the track looked like when I played "boy racer" in a few club sponsored events in the mid-60's. The footage preserved on YouTube is much better than the 8 mm hand held footage that I took in the 60's, IF I could still find the film and a Super-8 mm projector to show it.


There will never be another racetrack like Nurburgring as raced before and after World War II. The video doesn't include footage of the start-finish line and the old racing pits without even a hint of a safety barrier. At well over a 100 mph in small club racers and far beyond 150 miles an hour for grand prix cars, the wide combined space between the stadium seating to the left and the unprotected pits on the right quickly narrowed to a funnel while your right foot is still trying to push the accelerator pedal through the floor. Then a bright flash back into the sunlight while the exhaust still echoes off the walls as the road fades left and then with a smooth pressure on the steering wheel the car tilts into the long right hand banked 180 turn. Notes on my 1 DM map of the track indicate the 180 was "straightforward" (meaning there were no surprises). The 180 loop is followed by a quick dash behind the racing pits and then over the first of many bridges, a sharp left bend and down through the dark, dense forest. It was a tremendously thrilling way to start another 22.8 kilometer lap around the Nordschleife, the long northern loop. I think my blood boiled as we - the car and its novice driver - descended into what were the longest laps in my brief racing career.

A link in the Times article also connects you to this year's production car record lap set in the Corvette ZR-1 driven by Jim Mero. You can easily contrast the speeds in the early video with the 1967 formula car video. I recall the 1967 grand prix cars of the period were running lap times of about eight to eight and a half minutes at Nurburgring. The 2008 Corvette is faster but he track used in this 2nd video no longer includes the portion past the stadium. The pits and area near the start-finish line has been extensively enhanced for the shorter Formula 1 track used for the present German Grand Prix series that alternates with Hockenheim. Mero's Corvette achievement is still impressive and fun to watch.

The June 2008 record lap video below starts over the first bridge just about where I left off in the paragraph above, but you can still get the full sound effects of a V8 engine at racing speed and catch a few of the typical bobbles that happen on almost any typical lap. Keep an eye on the telemetry being recorded. The time? Seven minutes, 26.4 seconds, and in a production car that could be driven on the street!


Records are meant to be broken. On August 28, 2008, a 2009 Dodge Viper ACR laid claim to the fastest production car record at Nurburgring completing a similar lap at 7 minutes, 22 seconds. Motor Trend has the video (which includes a short embedded commercial). Unfortunately, the Viper video lacks the telemetry and track location graphic included in the Corvette video to compare cornering and top speeds in different sections of the track. I suspect the differences in speed and g-loading might offer an interesting comparison.

The telemetry and communications available to today's professional drivers and racing teams are simply amazing. We didn't even think about in-car radios in the sixties or later when club racing with SCCA. Someone recorded the time for each lap with paper and pencil. The standard means of communication lap times to the driver was often a cheap blackboard and chalk. Professional teams splurged on pit boards with interchangeable numbers and abbreviations. These boards were supplemented by Informal signals might include the team manager standing near a hay bale that sometimes separated the pits and the racing surface shaking a hammer or some other cryptic signal. Drivers sometimes signaled back with either prearranged hand signals of which several were sometimes less polite.

One of the secrets of Nurburgring (and Road Atlanta) in a small car is learning when and where you can keep your foot on the gas all the way down the hills (and where that's not a good idea). An "improved" NSU Wankel Spyder got over 120 mph and maybe even 125+ on the downhills, but it was still fast enough to momentarily get the wheels slightly airborne in a couple of places where the track feels like it "falls away" as you crest the hill. The car would also feel very light topping some of the other hills and bumps. I never felt like I put in a "perfect lap" at the Ring. My fastest lap at Nurburgring during a club event was in the low 12's - that's 12 minutes and more than a few seconds. Thus my speeds were much closer to the speeds exhibited by the 1967 camera car. Once you've seen the two videos, you'll know why 12+ minutes didn't seem like such a bad lap time for a tiny 998cc NSU Spyder in almost stock trim.

Very few foreigners ever really memorized the Nurburgring, but Lord knows I tried and studied films, diagrams and maps and even walked sections of the track when time permitted. Years later, I tried to do the same at all the SCCA tracks too. NSU Spyders were competitive in the under one- liter GT class with Fiat Abarths, early Honda 2-seaters, and the factory NSU Spyders could out-run the fully prepared Sebring A-H Sprites. I was not embarrassed by my lap times at Hockenheim and Nurburgring given my "amateur status." Heck, I could barely speak the language, but we always did the best we could both in terms of preparation and attitude. Nurburgring and Hockenheim proved to be good training for my later amateur racing adventures with the Central Florida Region, SCCA in the late seventies and early eighties.

By the way, you never see a full picture of the camera car in the first 1967 video, but the front suspension and narrow tires easily identify it as one of the original Formula Vee's that were quite popular in German club racing in the 1960's. The German auto club sponsored races had large fields of Formula Vee's (plenty of cheap Volkswagen spare parts available) and fiberglass was easy to patch. Early Formula Vee racing was always exciting to watch with a dozen competitive cars going wheel to wheel for the lead most of the race.

If racing is in your blood, I hope you enjoyed the video comparisons of the original and the present Nurburgring as much as I did when I found them. But I really cherish the experience of driving on the full Nurburgring track as it was originally intended for racing. I will always appreciate the hospitality of the Mannheim - Heidelberg Sports Touring Club members who helped me with their encouragement and patience with my limited German language skills.

It was a chance of a lifetime. These days it's better to drive carefully, leave a few minutes earlier and reduce our highway speeds to save gas. Driving flat out at the original Nurburgring while young and foolish was fun while it lasted!...\B)

The journey continues...