It has all kind of racing information from 1930s. Car data, races, drivers, track maps, speed record attempts, results etc... and nice pixel cars.
I especially liked the old track maps and the short race discriptions. It has also the current 2007 F1 GP standings calculated with pre war point system.
When I look at the track maps, it makes me wonder what the heck was wrong with the Germans. They had 2 tracks at the time and in totally opposite ends of track design - one was called "the green hell" and the other one had "the wall of death"
Nordschleife was not designed as a race track, it was a public road. No racing logic existed in the design, it simply followed the landscape from A to B like any public road.
The Nurburgring was built with racing/testing in mind (which is why there were originally different configurations including the Nordschleife and Sudschleife). It wasn't just built as a way to get from A to B.
That map can NO WAY be to scale. It's MUCH longer than that - only 1km shorter than the Nordschliefe.
Or think of it this way - if it was straight, you could put 48 quarter mile drag strips and an eighth miler - and still have a hundred metres or so to spare.
"The new North curve was built with a surface of red bricks and had a banking of 43 degrees. With the track turning up into a low vertical wall with no other safety arrangements on its high side any driver that went off could expect a long airborne ride. It is therefore no wonder that the curve soon got the nickname "The wall of death". "
"On the straights the cars could reach 380 km/h while the North curve could be taken with 180 km/h. "
"During the fight with Caracciola in the heat he did his last lap in 4:11.2. With an average 276.39 km/h (171.78 mph) that was the fastest racing lap of the pre-war era. As a matter of fact, no Formula 1 race has ever reached that lap speed so it remains the fastest lap ever done in Grand Prix racing. It was not until the early 70s such speeds were seen in the Indy 500. "
Amazing cars and drivers when you remember that the cars had awful tyres, suspensions and brakes compared to modern F1 cars... and no wings.
A very unworthy and unnecessary :bump: (especially since the website has only seen minor - though numerous - updates since OP), but sorry, I just couldn't resist, after discovering this site only today(thanks to Wikipedia). This era isn't well known by most racing enthousiasts I belive, but it is absolutely passionating. Hard to find much precise and reliable sources on the matter however, we are speaking of things that happened almost 80 years ago. We have to put ourselves in this context to realise how amazing this website is, considering the amount of content, including race resume, illustration of cars, track maps, detailed result tables, and I could go on for a while. The amount of work put in to this must have been huge.
One of the most recent addition, the schema of the great Bernd Rosemeyer's fatal crash:
I'll also post here the interresting conclusion of the analysis of the 1935-1939 Euro ... hampionship points system, which makes a very interresting and potentially controversial analogy to the 2003 points system awarding top 8 for the first time:
Some more interresting reads out there, but it takes so muchtime to discover all contents.
This is awesome. I actually thank you from bumping since I probably wouldn't never seen this otherwise. Many of the facts there just seem unbelievable, such a big difference to the modern world racing or even the more known historical eras. It's almost like from some kind of a scifi movie, just without lazors and stuff.
Racing movies in general are quite rubbish but I bet someone could make a hell of movie from racing in 30's or so.
Never really liked that film, especially because everyone seems to think that it's for real. The sound is just dubbed and the car ain't even going fast, just braking speed limits and some other road laws. The sensation of speed is just created by the camera which is mounted very low. I even doubt the car is a Ferrari, because it ain't going any fast but it still wobbles quite a lot.
I actually did a fast research after my post and how I understood it was a big Mercedes, but the roads weren't closed so it was actually illegal. But I dunno.
Well Gendarmerie or something captured the film (or banished it from being sold/viewed) so I guess it wasn't on closed roads. It's not EASY to tell it's fake, as its an old film, the sound could easily be slightly out of sync with the video, but I like the idea of it. And the sounds are damn good, and when you think about it, for the time it was made, the editing skills are damn good!
