The real problem about the Nurburgring Nordschleife and (possibly?) the solution.

James May categorically said that the Nurburgring is a track that ruins cars. The prime example of that was the BMW M4 GTS featured, as you may already know, in the very episode it was reviewed.

Even though I have never, ever visited that historic track I cannot stop believing that that is more than true, at least today. I’ll explain why that is (personal opinion) in a bit.

But first, what is so special about that bit of road in Germany? You may have heard many automotive journalists saying that the Ring is he most challenging tracks out there. However cliché that sounds, fortunately or not, it does hold true. The Green Hell is a combination of several corners, fast or slow, left or right handers that keep you alarmed at all times for what may lie ahead, especially if you are inexperienced, but also long straights that can punish you if you do not brake in time with the help of the above. The Nordschleife also features elevation changes that are more than rare in the world of motorspors. If you look at it that way, the result is more than challenging. So what, I hear you ask, there are plenty of tracks you can think of that boast similar traits, in fact especially in the world of motorsport every track is supposed to challenge you to push more and more to the limit in order to come on top, so why don’t we see manufacturers video taping their cars’ lap times on Silverstone, then uploading the results online, with the press covering going mad? Simple, because 2 seconds at Silverstone could be more than 10 seconds on the Ring and that is more than an understatement. And it is all because of one card up Nurburgring’s sleeve, one you already may have been thinking I’m stupid I left out, its length. As Alex said in the recent video about the IS 200 track build an average improvement of 10% on a track is the same as chopping a whole minute of a 10 minute Ring lap time. It’s just numbers I know, but as you may have already noticed, numbers sell, a lot.

So automotive manufacturers will want their cars to be 20 seconds than their competitors in such a track, so that they can sell more even if on a more reasonable course, the difference will be far smaller, always comparatively speaking. That means, if you are a company that hunts that record, to spend all of your R&D funds toward improving your car ONLY at the Green Hell. And if you tune a car to be fast around the Nurburgring, it will be damn fast around there, but ONLY around that specific track. So in a lap time around Spa the car you tuned to break the record in the Nordschleife (which let’s just assume it did) it will leak time compared to the car that posted a modest, but still fast time around both tracks.

So it’s not the track that actually ruins the cars, but the people who actually want other buy them for the bragging rights, around that track. Car manufacturers then should invest more in creating a setup for their cars which is not perfect for one track, but is modular for all tracks, companies like porsche have managed this and not only with the 918, but also with the 911 GT3 991.2 which is a car that is pretty fast around every track including the right (it managed a 7:12 for crying out loud!)

The image was taken from Google so you don’t get bored by the constant monotony of the text, which I’m sure you did. I’d try to make the article a little more decent but I’m writing from my phone and it is pretty difficult to do so.

In general these were my opinions why that (in)famous track called the Nurburgring Nordschleife does ruin some cars, in my first article in Car Throttle. Please feel free to point out my (inevitable) mistakes on the article or to add things you think I missed, thanks for reading!