24 Hours Nürburgring

The 24 Hours Nürburgring is a GT and touring car endurance racing event on the Nürburgring, inspired by the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Spa 24 Hours. The venue of this event is held on the Nürburgring Nordschleife (north loop). The event unconventionally accepts entries of low powered production cars and not so experienced drivers alike, which makes it for a tougher excersice to the top racing drivers competing in GT2 FIA compliant Racing machines as the abundant traffic in the already vastly difficult and dangerous Nordschleife adds as a huge difficulty factor. This is the highest class of racing currently held on the track and thus it is of special significance for car manufacturers due to the prestige involved as a racing pedigree testing event as the entered GT2 class cars are directly derived from commercial road going sports cars. Conversely, the related 1000 km Nürburgring sports car racing (introduced in the 1950s) race admits higher end Prototypes that are not in relation with any commercial car, and is held since 1984 on the shorter and safe venue used for Grands Prix.

Nürburgring Nordschleife - "The Green Hell"

The Nordschleife - 33 left turns and 40 right turns meander through the "Eifel" - is unique. The complete race track is 25.359 km long and full of every driving challenge you can imagine: Some of them are well known all over the world, like "Karussell", "Brünnchen" or the endless straight "Döttinger Höhe" with the tricky left turn at the end. Some Grand Prix drivers founded their reputation and fame by winning on the Nordschleife - like Jackie Stewart (1968) or Jacky Ickx (1969).

 "The Nürburgring is the circuit, on wich every race driver just wants to win, once."
(Jackie Stewart, F1-champion 1969, 1971 and 1973)

"For me, the Ring is the most beautiful and most difficult racetrack in the world. By the way, the Nürburgring is also my son´s favourite."
(Hans Stuck, father of Hans-Joachim Stuck - one of the most popular drivers in Germany - F1 with Brabham in the 70s)

"I think, the Nürburgring is THE racetrack, on which a driver can work wonders, in case he knows the Ring by heart."
(Juan Manuel Fangio, five times F1-champion)

"The Nürburgring - patriarch among all racetracks!"
(Dan Gurney, American F1-hero, founder of All American Racers)

"I am happy and proud that my name is on the list of winners of the Nürburgring. This is to be my favourite memory of my career as a grand prix driver."
(Jacky Ickx, runner-up in F1-championship 1969 and 1970 - drove for Ferrari)

The racetrack

Some facts