As announced late last year, the Nurburgring is receiving 1.55 miles of fresh asphalt across the Nordschleife and GP Strecke. And thanks to Nurburgring local, vlogger and racer Misha Charoudin, we can take a closer look at what’s going on.
At the Nordschleife, the track will be resurfaced from Döttinger Höhe to Sabine Schmitz Kurve. Along with the relaying, there are also some track tweaks.
One subtle but very important change from a safety perspective is the new wild animal fencing at Galgenkopf near the famous ‘Gantry’. There’s also an extended curb at Eiskurve, and some curb changes at Hatzenbach. We get a tour of all this via Misha going against the ‘Ring’s usual direction, and an up-close look at the resurfacing. Sadly, we aren’t able to smell what’s going on through YouTube.
The age of the Nordschleife’s surfaces means that the old stuff has to be excavated to a depth of one metre before the relaying can happen. At the far new Grand Prix circuit, only the top two layers of the track need to be scraped off. Here, the Hyundai N curve plus the connectors between the newer track and the older will be resurfaced.
We should note that this isn’t a one-off event – the track surface at the ‘Ring is renewed at an average of a kilometre a year. With the two circuits measuring in at a length of 15.77-miles/25.37 kilometres, that replacement rate means the new surface going down right now will need to stand up to 15-20 years of abuse.
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