Lauda literally flying at the Nordschleife before it was removed from the calendar
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There’s a good reason Max Verstappen raced at the Nürburgring 24 Hours: It was everything Formula 1 can no longer be.
Watch the onboard footage from his Mercedes and you understand it immediately: the night sections swallowing the car whole, lower-class machinery appearing from nowhere and being dispatched in a blink, solid barriers inches from a car travelling at speeds that would be extraordinary even by the standards of the most demanding circuit on the calendar.
Verstappen climbed from 10th to the front, pulled away, and made it look like the most natural thing in the world. It was incredible to watch precisely because it was terrifying.
The temptation, watching all of this, is to ask why Formula 1 can’t produce something similar.
It’s a question that tends to come packaged with nostalgia: for the Nordschleife in the 1960s and 70s, for street circuits before the barriers were pushed back, for an era when the relationship between speed and danger was more direct, less managed.
The question is understandable, but, on examination, it is also one that answers itself: Formula 1 is too successful to race like this anymore.
Not every F1 team would allow their drivers to race at the Nürburgring like Verstappen did
Red Bull
That is not a criticism. It is simply one of the most significant trade-offs the sport has ever made, and one it made rationally and with very good reason, even if the cumulative result feels like something has been permanently lost.
The safety transformation that began in earnest after Imola 1994 and accelerated through the following decade was driven by necessity, as drivers were getting injured or killed at a rate the sport could not sustain morally or commercially.
What followed – the run-off expansions, the barrier upgrades, the circuit licensing standards, the car structures – has been so effective that a driver can walk away from impacts that would have been fatal a generation ago. Nobody could seriously argue that it was the wrong direction.
But those same advances are precisely what attracted the manufacturers, broadcasters and sponsors that Formula 1 now depends upon. And those stakeholders are why the sport cannot go back, even if it wanted to.
The commercial ecosystem that modern safety made possible is now the thing that enforces it.
The danger at the Nürburgring 24 Hours is real. Juha Miettinen, a Finnish GT3 driver, lost his life during a race at the circuit last month — a tragedy that received wider coverage than it might otherwise have done, largely because of who else was competing.
F1 last raced at the Nordschleife in 1976
Grand Prix Photo
GT3 racing, particularly at a circuit like the Nordschleife, exists at a commercial scale where such an accident, however devastating, does not threaten the sport’s foundations.
The same incident involving a Formula 1 driver, at a Formula 1 event, in front of a Formula 1 global audience, would be categorically different in its consequences – for manufacturer confidence, for broadcast relationships, for the entire financial architecture the sport depends upon.
The physics of risk are the same, but the stakes attached to it aren’t.
The risk calculation was survivable in the 1960s, when Ferrari and a collection of British kit-car constructors were the primary interested parties. However, it is not survivable now.
There is also a more straightforward physical argument: Formula 1 cars are not GT3 cars.
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The speed differential between the two at a circuit like Silverstone is roughly half a minute per lap. Transpose that performance to a venue with the Nordschleife’s characteristics and you are not producing a more exciting version of what Verstappen did last weekend. You are producing something extremely dangerous.
None of which makes the nostalgia illegitimate. Verstappen’s weekend was a reminder that the format Formula 1 has built — controlled, sterile by comparison, optimised for broadcast and accessibility — produces a particular kind of excitement and categorically cannot produce another kind.
There is something Formula 1 used to have access to that it no longer does, and it is not coming back.
The contrast is part of what made last weekend so compelling. Verstappen at the Nürburgring works as a spectacle partly because Formula 1 doesn’t do this.
The illegibility of it – a four-time world champion navigating GT3 traffic through the Carousel at three in the morning – derives some of its power from being extraordinary rather than routine.
If Formula 1 raced at the Nordschleife, the Nordschleife would become another venue on the calendar, subject to the same licensing standards, the same run-off requirements, the same Armco specifications that govern everywhere else.
It wouldn’t look like what we saw last weekend. It would look like the F1 version of it.
Lauda at the Nordschleife before his accident in 1976
The spiritual home of the argument. At roughly 13 miles, the original grand prix circuit wound through the Eifel mountains with minimal run-off, solid barriers and terrain that punished any mistake with finality.
Niki Lauda’s near-fatal accident in 1976 effectively ended its world championship life. Formula 1 still visited the Nürburgring not so long ago – just not the circuit that made it legendary.
The Österreichring was turned into the current Red Bull Ring
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The original Österreichring was one of the most breathtaking circuits Formula 1 ever visited – a sweeping, high-speed layout through the Styrian hills that demanded absolute commitment at speeds that left almost no margin for error.
Heavily modified in the 1990s and reborn as the Red Bull Ring, it retained the setting but shed much of what made it extraordinary. The current circuit is a shadow of what stood there before.
Brands Hatch last hosted an F1 race in 1986
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Brands Hatch last hosted a British Grand Prix in 1986 and has not returned to the calendar since, largely because its infrastructure and run-off could not be upgraded to meet modern FIA standards without destroying the characteristics that made it special.
The plunging drop into Paddock Hill Bend, the blind crests, the intimate amphitheatre – all of it incompatible with the circuit licensing requirements a contemporary Formula 1 race demands.
Watkins Glen hosted F1 for nearly two decades
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The Glen hosted the United States Grand Prix from 1961 to 1980 and was beloved by drivers for its fast, flowing layout through upstate New York woodland.
It left the calendar as the sport’s commercial ambitions outgrew what a relatively modest American venue could provide, and successive attempts to bring Formula 1 back to the site have come to nothing. It remains one of the circuits the sport remembers most fondly and is least likely to see again.
Stirling Moss leads the Swiss GP at Bremgarten in 1954
Grand Prix Photo
A forested road circuit on the outskirts of Bern that hosted the Swiss Grand Prix through the early 1950s. Narrow, tree-lined and unforgiving, it was considered one of the most beautiful and most dangerous circuits of its era.
Switzerland banned motor sport entirely after Le Mans 1955, and Bremgarten has been silent ever since. Some circuits don’t get retired, they get abolished.
Pescara only hosted one F1 race
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Pescara hosted exactly one world championship round, in 1957, and that was arguably one too many.
A 16-mile course through the Abruzzo countryside, past stone walls, telegraph poles and unprotected village spectators. Stirling Moss won that day; the circuit was dropped immediately afterwards.
Even by the standards of an era with a generous tolerance for danger, Pescara was considered a step too far, so much so that Ferrari decided to skip the race out of fear for its drivers.
