Last lap for the legendary Nürburgring?

It has survived war, the Great Depression and losing Formula One, and it even thrived on its reputation as a killer track, but has the Nürburgring seen one fatality too many?

Threats that could tear down Germany’s most iconic racetrack are lining up after a recent fatal crash.

In a rushed reaction to the crash, the Nürburgring was closed to racing, but it was reopened it after emergency measures were introduced, including speed limits for the outright cars at three critical parts of the track.

The speed limits, for 200km/h at the Flugplatz and the Schwedenkreuz and for 250km/h under the bridge on the straight are automatically monitored by GPS, and are active during all GT3 sessions.

The speed limits are not loved by racers or fans, though the more perceptive of them understand the track needed some kind of stop-gap measure to keep its place on GT racing’s calendar.

But there are further safety measures under discussion, with the nuclear options including total closure to racing and three chicanes being forced on the iconic 20.8km Nordschleife (North Loop) in an effort to reduce speeds at the more dangerous parts of the track to keep it alive.

There are tens of millions of dollars at stake for a track which has a new Russian billionaire owner, and plays host to the permanent research and development centres of five major car manufacturers and temporary facilities for at least 10 others. It is the spiritual home of both German motorsport and the global phenomenon that is the production-based GT3 racing category.

The Nürburgring has grown from an outdated German quirk into an international legend thanks to the film Rush, Nicki Lauda, YouTube, the 24-hour race, supercar testing, GoPro and, perhaps ironically, PlayStation.

It was gamer-turned-racer Jann Mardenborough whose Nissan GT-R left the track at the Flugplatz in March, vaulted the first catch fence and plowed through the second to injure several spectators and kill a German father.

The German racing body, the DMSB, and the VLN reacted swiftly to the fatality, with a five-and-a-half hour meeting to determine immediate steps, and so did the teams, desperate to keep the track on the calendar.

They publicised a 5 per cent reduction in power as an initial gesture, but as some pointed out, that’s only about 35kW in one of the Aston Martins, which would make the cars just 2km/h slower at the Schwedenkreuz (Swedish Cross).

And the teams and drivers knew what was on the line. The first sanctioned practice run after the fatality saw the introduction of the speed limits, which nobody broke and only one driver complained about.

Even then, the VLN was still working with the family of the spectator who was killed, and who had been attending ’Ring races for more than 30 years.

“They were a long-time ’Ring fan family and they were in the right place, behind the second safety fence ,” DMSB chairman Hans-Joachim Stück said. “They attended most races together. The VLN took great care of the family at the track, got them home, took care of everything they needed and had professionals stay with them for a few days to make sure they weren’t alone or that shock hadn’t broken them.”

But whether the fatality was caused by the driver’s actions or by the inevitability of a 1920s racetrack being outgrown, Germany’s racing hierarchy has moved swiftly into action to save the track. But, still, it may be too late.

“My target is to know what we want to do by the end of September. After that, it’s too late,” said Stück, who is also the head of Volkswagen Group’s motorsport communications, with direct links to Volkswagen Group’s board.

Safety groups

The crash spurred three complementary groups to be formed to upgrade spectator safety at the ’Ring. One is a safety group made up of five current GT3 drivers, the other is a track safety group while the third is a technical group, with input from the car manufacturers and race teams.

Then there is the management of the circuit, headed by the proactive and level-headed Conrad Schumacher, and the new owner of the circuit, Victor Kharitonin.

They are each working on similar problems from different angles and levels of expertise, but they are confronted with problems, seen and unforeseen, on many sides.

Racing on the Nordschleife and the combined Nürburgring (Nordschleife and the Grand Prix track together) is dominated by the production-based VLN endurance racing series, which includes the iconic 24-hour race and its live-streamed coverage.

It's an unusually inclusive championship, with cars of varying ages (there's a famous Opel Manta still racing there 30 years after its first laps) and speeds. There are five classes in VLN racing, and the grid's horsepower and top-speed spread is enormous, resulting in some incredibly dangerous closing speeds.

While this has “potential problem” stamped all over it, the slower classes also provide the cheapest way to join the race, both as an entrant and as a rent-a-driver, which dozens of Australians have taken advantage of over the years. To remove these classes, whose speeds have remained relatively constant, while protecting the ever-faster outright cars would detract severely from the everyman character of VLN racing.

So a lot of work is being done to slow the outright machines, but without detracting from their spectacle.

“We are also working with the possibility of using customer tyres in the future,” Stück said. “No more sticker tyres designed for particular cars, which will slide more, more fun to watch and slower.

“This is a knife with two blades. The corner speeds will be slower but it would make it more difficult to drive.”

Stück has an unrivalled affinity with the Eiffel Mountain circuit, which gives his input a gravitas that other drivers can’t replicate.

He is most famous as The Gun at Le Mans in the late 1980s, winning there twice, but he also won the first of his three Nürburgring 24-hour races in 1970. His father’s legend was born there in the Porsche-designed Auto Union Grand Prix cars before the second World War, and it hosted the final race of Stück’s own 42-year professional career in 2011, when he fulfilled a life’s dream to race there with his two sons.

Yet he’s more realistic than most about what needs to be done to secure its future.

“The track management has to ask the FIA to come next year to sanction the track and if the plan to make it safer isn’t ready by September, it probably won’t be ready in time to be sanctioned,” he said.

“We need to be clear that the drivers understand what they’re taking on here, but we are in trouble if that impacts the spectators. When you start doing something to the track, we are only talking for spectator safety, really.”

Stück has called for a radical reduction in down force for outright GT3 cars and, if that’s not enough, chicanes before the Flugplatz, the Schwedenkreuz and down the long, long main straight that leads past Nürburg Castle.

“The cars are outgrowing the track,” Stück warned.

“They talk about reaching the lap records of F1 or Group C times there, but there’s a reason those cars don’t race there anymore. If you are reaching these times, it is too fast. If it was too fast then, it’s too fast now. You can’t land a 747 on a grass strip.”

Pre-war telephone

Indeed, parts of the Nürburgring’s infrastructure aren’t that much more developed than grass airstrips. Marshals at five of the racetrack’s most distant flag posts still have to wind up a pre-war, wooden box-style telephone to contact race control in an emergency.

Then there are some longer-term contractual issues that are beginning to raise their heads. The ’Ring opened in 1927, but work and planning began a long time before that. Agreements were signed with local farmers for permission to use their private lands, and most of them were signed to 100-year leases.

The first of those 100-year leases will roll through for renewal not long after 2020. Most farmers want a slice of the pie but some don’t want the track in their backyard at all, seeing few benefits from the near-constant testing and regular racing that jams up their rural roads every other weekend.

Then there’s the overseeing bureaucratic authority, which is currently the small local council (Rhineland-Pfalz), leaving it open to the whims of fast-changing opinion. Most people in motorsport see that the ’Ring’s status as a global racing icon means it should probably be answerable to Berlin, but the locals aren’t willing to relinquish control.

They don't see why they should, given they tipped in $312 million in 2012 to meet its debts after its ambitious owners failed. It was sold to Dusseldorf automotive supplier Capricorn Development, for €77 million in 2014, but even they couldn't meet their obligations and sold to Russian pharmaceutical billionaire Kharitonin months later.

There’s yet another long-term problem, too. Friday free practice from 4pm to 6pm isn’t actually governed or sanctioned by the VLN. It’s officially a private test session and it’s track time “owned” by a private organisation, and is contracted to remain that way for years.

Critical incidents

The upshot is that the race organisers can introduce whatever safety or speed limit rules they want, but teams pay the session “owner” directly and simply use it as a test session. And the “test session” has half the sanctioned number of flag and fire marshals mandated by the VLN, so it’s hugely lucky that it has generated no critical incidents of its own.

But those are background discussions when the core issue is speed.

While he’s no longer an active racing driver, Stück still does “taxi” rides there in an Audi R8 GT3 car, demonstrating to people what it takes to be fast on the ’Ring. And what he has noticed has him worried.

“There needs to be more production car in the aerodynamics of the race cars,” Stück insisted.

“I have a new R8 LMS Plus taxi ride car and it’s so much faster in four years than my old one.

“It’s easy to do 260km/h through the Schwedenkreuz, in sixth gear, even with a passenger in the other seat. It’s just a touch on the brake and then full throttle. That’s how much down force there is, and the race cars always find more.”

There is a flip side to changing the aero rules for the ’Ring. If the French-based GT3 rule makers don’t agree to change the world’s GT3 formula to accommodate the category’s flagship racetrack, then teams would have to develop special versions of their GT3 cars for the Nürburgring to share garage space with “normal” GT3 cars. And that gets very expensive.

But while lowering down force seems like a logical, easy way to go, Stück doubts there’d be a consensus to do it.

“There’s an idea that I asked at the DTM a year ago, to lift the ride height 25mm for everybody.

‘Driver skill’

“It would make the cars slower in the corners, make the braking areas longer and it would make them slide more and the spectators like it when the cars slide. They can see the driver skill then.

“It would be safer and more spectacular and isn’t that what people want? If the loss of speed is the same for everyone then it’s not a negative to you, is it?

“Everybody at the DTM found reasons not to do it, but maybe GT3 needs to do it. If we don’t do it or something like that then the clock is ticking on racing at the Nürburgring.

“They don’t want to talk about reducing power or reducing down force, but you have to do something proactive or somebody will do something proactive that you won’t like.”

The word that keeps cropping up as “something proactive” is “chicane”. Or, more specifically, three chicanes.

“Before the Flugplatz, in the bottom of the dip, there is a big car park and you could make a chicane there and it’s big enough to put a nice chicane in there,” Stück insisted.

“And another one you could have on the wide grass just before the Schwedenkreuz and the last where the public access parking is on the straight at Antoniusbuche.

“They put three chicanes in at Le Mans,” Stück said. “That track layout with Mulsanne Straight was more legendary than the Nürburgring and it’s still there.

“We can make a faster chicane there, like they’ve done at Le Mans. Those are not just chicanes, but they are very challenging corners.”

The clock is ticking . . .