The tight and tricky downhill left at Wehrseifen.Matt Bubbers/The Globe and Mail
Driving to the famous century-old Nürburgring Nordschleife racetrack in western Germany, you can’t help but notice manufacturers’ row. All along Gottlieb-Daimler-Strasse in the town of Meuspath, across from the track’s main straight, are conspicuously placed test facilities for Mercedes-AMG, Jaguar Land Rover, Aston Martin, Hyundai and Porsche’s Manthey-Racing outfit. There are also outposts of many top-tier suppliers, including Goodyear, Yokohama, Hankook and Continental tires, as well as Öhlins and Bilstein suspension. Hyundai’s test centre is clad in blinding chrome. Aston Martin’s is black and neon-green.
These buildings are meant to be seen by visitors, because the Nordschleife is as much a marketing tool for performance-focused car companies as it is a legitimate development and testing facility. (For some brands, it’s more like 90 per cent marketing, 10 per cent development.) On any given day around the track you’re likely to see one or two camouflaged prototype vehicles out for testing.
“Developed at the Nordschleife” means as much to car fanatics as “made in Italy” does to fans of haute couture or “Swiss made” does to watch nerds. It’s seen as the ultimate proving ground, a tool used by engineers and test-drivers to hone good sports cars into great ones, and, after trying out the circuit myself recently, I wholeheartedly agree. (Others disagree, but more on that later.)
Driving the world’s most dangerous racetrack: two days at the Nürburgring Nordschleife
BMW M’s vice-president of engineering Dirk Haecker told me the track was initially constructed – with work starting exactly 100 years ago, in 1925 – as a test track and proving ground for Germany’s burgeoning auto industry. It was only later that drivers started racing there.
Looking toward the crest at Quiddelbacher Hohe where cars can get airborne.Matt Bubbers/The Globe and Mail
In the 1960s, BMW built an engineering and test centre in Nurburg, in the old town, not the new industrial park in Meuspath that houses the other automakers, a fact that Haecker is quite proud of.
“We were one of the very first,” he said. “And we use that centre 16 weeks per year for testing our new models. We do a lot of setup, working on the drivetrain and on the chassis here.”
Haecker did his first laps of the track on a Ducati motorcycle when he was 19. That was 1981, and he’s still testing and driving cars on the Nordschliefe today, just as fascinated by the circuit as ever.
Porsche development driver Joerg Bergmeister is also a regular at the track, doing anywhere from 10 to 25 laps of the Nordschleife in a typical day of testing.
“One thing is for sure: when a car survives the Nordschleife, it basically survives everything else as well. The forces and loads that go into the car, and all the compression, the jumps and everything else you have there, you don’t really get that anywhere else,” he told me.
“It’s really a perfect test and proving ground.”
The famous banked corner at Karussell.Matt Bubbers/The Globe and Mail
At 20 kilometres long, with 73 turns and 300 metres of elevation change, the track is orders of magnitude longer and more demanding than any other. It’s got every kind of corner and camber imaginable. Very high speeds as well as tight, technical sections.
It’s bumpy and rutted, with steep curbs that can kill wheel bearings, and high-speed compressions that squish the car down against the track. It tortures tires and brake pads, and tests the ability of dynamic stability control (DSC) systems to keep a driver away from the guardrails. Immense G-forces ripple through every component of a car’s suspension whilst driving around Karussell, the track’s famous banked corner.
The inside curb at Wehrseifen.Matt Bubbers/The Globe and Mail
For Germany’s high-performance powerhouses, the Nordschleife is their home turf, a place where they enjoy home-field advantage. It’s the reason, I think, that most German performance cars all share a similarly taught and precise feel. But, of course, that hasn’t stopped international rivals from using the Nordschleife too.
There have been some great battles in recent memory. Tesla’s Model S, for example, duked it out with various iterations of the Porsche Taycan, with the German car finally setting an impressive lap time of 7:07.55 in 2023. That was the record for electric “executive cars” until earlier this year when Chinese automaker Xiaomi entered the chat. Its SU7 Ultra with Track Package beat the Germans on their home turf, posting an official time of 7:04.957. Surely Porsche must be working on a way to fight back as we speak.
Matt Bubbers driving the Nürburgring Nordschleife as part of the BMW M Experience.Supplied
Corvette and Ford have been duking it out this year, with the 1,250-horsepower ZR1X claiming the title of “fastest American car around the Nürburgring” with a time of 6:49.275.
There are similarly fierce battles in the sedan category, sports cars and even SUVs. The overall record is held by a one-off prototype Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo, which clocked an absurdly quick 5:19.546 with a fearless Timo Bernhard behind the wheel. (Find the full official listings on the Nürburgring’s official site.)
But not everyone likes the Nürburgring. James May, the well-known car critic and host of Top Gear and The Grand Tour famously hated the Nürburgring as a testing ground.
“As soon as a car company comes here to develop a new model, they forget about everything else except lap times, and that is the ruination of a car,” May said back in 2011.
The very fast downhill at Fuchsrohre (or Foxhole) leads to a sharp compression and steep uphill that subjects both car and driver to extreme forces.Matt Bubbers/The Globe and Mail
Matt Bubbers driving the Nürburgring Nordschleife as part of the BMW M Experience.Supplied
But blaming the Nürburgring for ruining cars is like blaming a knife for cooking a bad meal. The track is merely one tool. And, like any tool, it can be used to create something good or bad.
As Frank van Meel, the boss of BMW’s high-performance M division, explained in an e-mail: “Lap times provide us with universally understood proof points for our performance improvements. However, lap times are not the be-all and end-all. We also view the Nordschleife as an intensive test bed and tuning bed for our platforms and drivetrains for real-world spirited driving, and this is true for all our model lines.”
When it comes to fine-tuning steering feel, improving traction out of bumpy corners or honing the suspension to soak up impacts without destabilizing the car – these elusive qualities that instill confidence in drivers and distinguish a good sports car form a great one – there’s still no better place to do it than the Nordschleife.
Like Bergmeister said, if a car can hold up to lap after lap here without overheating or breaking down, it can handle anything.
Early morning fog in the run up to Breidscheid corner on our first run of the first day.Matt Bubbers/The Globe and Mail
The writer was a guest of BMW. Content was not subject to approval.