Other places exist. Other things outside my immediate situation are playing out right now for the 8 billion people on our little planet. Later, I’ll recognize that. I’ll remember to call the family, get around to that email I keep forgetting to write, and enjoy a cold beer and a hunk of steak cooked on a hot stone at a restaurant nearby. Life, in all its rich, wonderful, annoying, and exhausting ways, will continue. I hope. Right now, though, it’s irrelevant. My brain can’t allow any deviation from what’s ahead. Sixth gear, the car underneath me leaping from curb to curb as I plummet down Fuchsröhre, digital readout clicking up and up, shift lights starting to burn bright. I’m out of gears, but the big number keeps getting bigger . . . 250 km/h, 253, 256.
This story originally appeared in Volume 17 of Road & Track.
The track ahead turns left just as it bottoms out and then climbs steeply out of sight. I know deep in my soul that I don’t need to brake. In fact, I don’t even need to lift. The slick tires, the aero, and the compression will keep the BMW M4 GT4 sticky side down. But my soul and my rational brain don’t always see eye to eye, especially around here. It’s a battle of wills, and this time—this time I do keep the throttle wide open. The compression as the car hits the bottom of the gradient pushes my neck into my chest like Wile E. Coyote after a collision with a sheer rock face. Milliseconds later, the rebound almost lifts me out of the seat, where I’m tethered by harnesses pulled painfully tight over my HANS device. I sense my eyes bulging from the forces. Guess it’s time to blink.
About now, relief should flood through me like a cool breeze. If only. There’s no time. Hit the brakes, flick the left paddle for a downshift; turn left again and rattle the curb, sending the car on two wheels; wait for it to settle and stamp the brakes hard; two more downshifts and aim right, left, right. The M4 is being assaulted, my mind is reeling, and my body will be suffering tomorrow. All in just a snapshot of the Nordschleife, the north loop of the Nürburgring. Hallowed ground? Green Hell? The two are not mutually exclusive.
Peak speed at the compression through the left turn of the Foxhole: 158.72 mph. This whole sequence of five corners—starting at around the two-minute mark into my lap—is done in 16 seconds. Before it even started, the GT4 has tackled a sixth-gear blind kink at 165 mph, jumped over a crest at 160 mph. Jumped. All before rushing through a bumpy, Armco-lined downhill toboggan run with zero runoff. If the track looped back on itself right now, it would be reasonable to declare the Nürburgring the greatest circuit ever created. It doesn’t. There’s another 8.5 miles to run.
That’s about five minutes in the brand-new M4 GT4 at something approaching competitive speeds. In that time, nothing else will creep in. No thoughts of unpaid bills or when Grogu might show his full Jedi skills in The Mandalorian. But you don’t feel trapped by the Ring. You are freed by it—all-encompassing, totally engrossing, sometimes terrifying, utterly elating freedom. This fine magazine will try to persuade you that there are other hallowed grounds you must visit, and there are. But I’m here to tell you that nothing beats this place. It may be a cliché. It may be so obvious you want to rail against the truth. But you can’t. If you love cars, if you love driving, the Nürburgring is the beginning and the end.
The history of the Ring is well known. Its construction began in September 1925 in the Eifel region of Germany to stimulate the local economy and create a track that called to mind the epic scale of road races like Sicily’s Targa Florio. Architect Gustav Eichler and his eponymous company, Eichler Architekturbüro, handled design. Racing started in spring 1927, and the track featured the Nordschleife and shorter (4.81-mile) Südschleife courses. Many early races were held on the monstrous 17.6-mile Gesamtstrecke, or “whole course.”
After World War II, the German Grand Prix was held regularly on the Nordschleife, and it became famous for its unpredictable weather—perfect sunshine on one section could become rain and thick fog in an instant. Following a nightmarish race in ’68, winner Jackie Stewart christened the sprawling circuit the Green Hell, and the name stuck. Modifications attempted to make the course safer. There were boycotts and controversies, and then, in 1976, Niki Lauda’s horrific crash put an end to Formula 1 racing at the Ring. I interviewed him 30 years later and asked if he’d returned since. “No,” he said with a chuckle. “Maybe I should. Perhaps I’ll find my ear.” These guys were a different breed.
This chilling, grotesque, and irresistible F1 history is just part of the Nürburgring’s greater story. Back in the Twenties, an unusual but wonderful decision to make the vast new track a one-way toll road created something unique, something so much more vibrant than a closed racing facility that hides its secrets from all but the very few. This place always belonged to the people, and Touristenfahrten laps drew enthusiasts to the area in ever greater numbers. Rudolf Caracciola, Tazio Nuvolari, and Bernd Rosemeyer may have been the first Ringmeisters, but thousands of other personal narratives were written every year, one lap at a time.
That one-way toll-road status survives to this day. There’s still racing on the Nordschleife. In fact, the purpose of my laps today in the BMW M4 GT4 is to prepare for the upcoming headliner, the Nürburgring 24 Hours, where the big old beast and the new GP track are combined to make up a 15.8-mile lap. For the most part, though, it’s a facility for anyone to enjoy. Turn up, pay €30, and off you go. It’s like showing up at Wimbledon, sticking your credit card into a machine, and watching the barrier to Centre Court rise with no questions asked, Roger Federer waiting on the other side of the net.
Somehow, the reality here is even more special. It starts when merging onto the A1 autobahn from the southbound A61, south of Kerpen. Just seeing “Nürburgring” on a road sign sets butterflies swarming. This particular stretch of autobahn is lightly trafficked and derestricted. It’s the gateway to a beautiful, surreal bubble of freedom and unabashed car enthusiasm, and so it seems fitting you should pass through it as fast as your wheels can travel. On this occasion, I’ve driven from the U.K. in a BMW M5 CS. I don’t quite touch vMax, but an indicated 190 mph makes my intentions clear to the Grüne Hölle. I can’t wait to see you, old friend.
The remaining 35 miles or so heighten the sense that you’re headed to a kind of promised land. With every passing village, there are more and more race shops. Murals on the sides of hotels depict the track and the cars made famous there. Signs advertise the price to hire fully prepped track cars—everything from an entry-level Suzuki Swift to the latest Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Race cars are huddled together around what look like normal residences. Soon you start to catch glimpses of the track through the trees or running parallel with the road before it plunges back into the dense green. Sometimes on both sides. Remember, the circuit might be 12.9 miles in length, but it sprawls over acres of thick forest and swallows up whole towns. The Nürburgring is everywhere.
Fanatics queue at the ED Tankstelle on the section of the B258 that runs parallel with the Döttinger Höhe main straightaway. Manthey-prepared GT3s fight for pump space with homebrew VWs and Renault Sport hatchbacks with lurid graphics and serious Öhlins. There are endless BMWs, from ratty E30 3-series to M4 GTSs and CSLs and just about every other shape you can imagine. The license plates are more varied still. From the U.K. to the far reaches of Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, the Ring’s siren call is strong. Listen closely and you’ll hear American and Australian accents too. Those rental-car operations you spotted a few villages back are doing great business.
Supercars? A few. A lonely McLaren in a sea of Porsches and BMWs. Maybe a Ferrari. Rarely a Lamborghini. You want to know what cars work on track over and over again? Visit the village of Nürburg any day. People here want to stop for fuel and nothing else. Exotic fragility isn’t viewed as character but simply wasted time.
The local heroes and the pilgrims from far and wide will need patience today. It’s freezing cold, but the sky is blue and the forecast is for unbroken sunshine until dusk: dream conditions for April in the Eifel. Touristenfahrten begins at 5:15 p.m. Until then, the only sound will be a handful of turbocharged inline-sixes. BMW’s marketing department has rented out the Nordschleife to set an official lap time for the new M2 and brought along an M5 CS and an M4 CSL too. Although the CS and CSL have previously completed an official timed lap, the team believes there’s more to come, and shaving every last tenth is a point of pride.
Our last-gasp entry to the 24-hour race is piggy- backing the marketing department’s event. This is a vital test in the near-production-standard M4 GT4 before the N24 for me and my teammates: journalists Christian Gebhardt and Guido Naumann, plus the M division’s project manager for driving dynamics, Jörg Weidinger. We’ve got a significant power disadvantage to an M4 Competition road car, thanks to the balance of performance governing endurance racing, but on the flip side, we have Pirelli slicks, front dive planes, a swan-neck rear wing, fully adjustable suspension from KW, and a lighter curb weight. Inside and out, the vibe is very much junior GT3 racer.
Viciously steep gradients will hurt the performance of the GT4 more than they would an unrestricted road car, so if we’re to hit our target lap time of 7 minutes, 25 seconds, it will be all about commitment in the corners. The GT4’s peak speed will be around 165 mph, whereas the CSL can reach more like 190 mph on the Döttinger Höhe. Engineers look on with the cheery complexions of people who aren’t being sent out in an unfamiliar car, on the most demanding track ever conceived, in temperatures hovering just below freezing. Even deep in the forest there will be nowhere to hide from their wretched data.
It’s been five years since I last raced at the Nürburgring, and although I feel at home in the local surroundings, I’m not sure it’s possible to ever experience that comfort on the track itself. There’s just so much of it, and the curbs defining its layout come at you so fast. The Armco whistles by even faster, and in places it almost seems to lean into the track to try to grab you. So I’m nervous. The GT4’s yoke-style steering wheel feels fantastic, but I haven’t studied the PDF detailing its various functions nearly enough. Here I can adjust throttle maps, stability control, traction control, and loads of other stuff I can’t quite remember. The engineer senses my hesitation. “Jethro, press the N button and upshift paddle to select first.” I knew that. I did. “Copy.” There’s another moment’s silence. “You are free to go. Enjoy. Remember to ease yourself in.”
It’s just me and the Nordschleife. A brand-new set of hard slicks are preheated but cooling against a surface temperature that has barely spiked above freezing. For just a second or two as I roll away from the barriers, I do allow myself to think, “Holy shit! This bloody place is all mine!” But that’s it. For the next hour or so that it’ll take to complete eight laps (one race stint), my entire life is what’s happening right in front of my nose. This is the all-consuming experience of driving the Nürburgring at speed. How could it possibly be that special?
By the time you’ve tackled the Hatzenbach complex very early in the lap, that question has been answered. The speed, the precision demanded of the driver, the way the track feels at once narrow and hemmed in by its steel straitjacket, but also vast and organic as it flows with the topography—it’s intensely thrilling and deeply intimidating. But there’s no sense of awe in the moment. You don’t feel anything. You just act. Every track demands concentration, but the stakes are higher here, so not only are you trying to push the car and be smooth and precise, but you’re also trying to watch for consistent feedback and listen for any strange noises that could pitch you into the barriers. Senses are on high alert.
Hearing those tiny telltale messages isn’t easy, as the surface—smoother than ever but still bumpy as hell—really does make the GT4 work. It thumps over curbs, gets pulled into strange cambers and dragged to places you don’t want to go. The track is alive, and it animates the car like nowhere else. Because one corner flows so quickly into the next, there’s never a period of equilibrium.
The first few laps are a shock. Everything feels too frantic for comfort, and the lap time refuses to come. I’m not just a second or two off. Think tens of seconds. The Döttinger Höhe provides a brief moment to regroup. I radio the team to give fuel readings and tire pressure. Now, take a deep breath and remember that just a few miles per hour more at a few crucial corner apexes can exponentially increase speed on the long uphill sections that follow. Instinctively, I tighten the belts over my shoulders again and mutter, “Fucking get on with it.”
The dialogue continues: encouragement, coaching, one or two moments of relief when the car only just hangs on and plenty when I berate myself for being too timid or too messy. The timing beacon approaches and my nerves build like a wave of panic. If that lap wasn’t quick enough, I’m in a world of trouble. I’m not sure I have much more to give. The dash display flashes. I can’t catch the tenths, but the big picture is enough: 7:21. I’m in the game. Then the radio sparks into life. “Four more laps, Jethro. Four more laps.” Elation and dread fight for attention. “Copy,” I reply, before diving back into the forest. I’m hooked again. Every other track can burn. As long as the Nürburgring survives, the world is just fine with me.
