Nuerburgring
Motor Racing Circuit Of 1927 Whose 20.8 Km Nordschleife Is Open To The Paying Public On Touristenfahrten Days; The 24 Hour Race And The Modern Grand Prix Track Share The Site · Nuerburg, Rhineland-Palatinate
The Nuerburgring is two circuits in the Eifel hills: a modern Grand Prix track opened in 1984, and the Nordschleife, 20.8 kilometres and more than seventy corners of 1920s road course through forest and over blind crests. The Nordschleife is why people come, because on Touristenfahrten days anyone can pay at a barrier and drive it in their own car. That is not a guided experience. It is a one-way public toll road with no speed limit, run under German road traffic law, with armco and concrete close to the edges and far less run-off than a modern circuit. Cars crash there every week the track is open, people are seriously injured, and people are killed. Most ordinary motor insurance excludes the Nordschleife, so a crash can leave you paying for your own car, the recovery and the barrier repair. Spectating, by contrast, is cheap and genuinely brilliant, and the 24-hour race in May draws a crowd of roughly 200,000 onto the hillsides.
Nuerburgring, Nuerburg, in the Eifel hills west of Koblenz, Nuerburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
There is no simple opening time here, only a daily calendar. Touristenfahrten sessions run most afternoons and evenings in season, roughly April to October, and longer at weekends, but every session is interrupted or cancelled when a car crashes, and race weekends close the Nordschleife to the public entirely. Winter brings long maintenance closures. The ring boulevard, museum, shops and karting keep ordinary visitor hours on a shorter winter timetable. Check the circuit's own published calendar the day before you travel, and again on the morning - it changes.