Opel racetrack

Remnants of the route in January 2011

The Opel racetrack is a former racetrack that was built by Adam Opel AG in 1919 in a forest about two kilometers south of Rüsselsheim am Main at Schönauer Hof . The site is owned by the city of Mainz , which operates a waterworks here.

Use from 1919 to 1946

Due to its design as an oval course , a track width of twelve meters and the high banked bends , it was considered the fastest racetrack in Europe in the 1920s. Average speeds of up to 140  km / h were possible. The Opel racetrack was used for public bicycle , motorcycle and car races and attracted up to 50,000 visitors at peak times. Jimmie Simpson , Guido Mentasti and Hermann Lang started here . It was also the test track of Adam Opel AG , which repeatedly tried out new developments there, including the Opel RAK1 rocket car . Due to the technical development in automobile sport and the opening of the Nürburgring and the Hockenheimring , fewer and fewer racing events were held on the racetrack from 1930. After the end of World War II , the site was temporarily used by the US Army .

State since 1946

Since 1946, the use of the Opel racetrack was given up completely, but the facility was not demolished. In 1949 the lease with the city of Mainz expired. As a result, holes were made in the slope in order to plant trees there. In the 1960s, part of the home straight for the new construction of the L3012 state road was demolished. The slope is partly overgrown today, but still easy to see; in particular the steep wall curves are almost completely preserved. In the meantime, the historic facility has been integrated into the Rhine-Main Regional Park as an industrial heritage site. Meanwhile, a small, accessible platform with information boards protrudes into the north curve.

Web links

• The automobile and technical history of the Opel racetrack by Werner Schollenberger, accessed on October 23, 2016.
• The Opel racetrack at www.ruesselsheim.de
• Cultural monument OPEL racetrack with the kind support of the Kulturdenkmal OPEL Rennbahn eV association, which is in the process of being established in 2018/19

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} 50,000 spectators once came to the Opel racetrack. FAZ online , August 12, 2004, accessed on November 3, 2011 . 
2. ^ Opel History 1920–1929. (No longer available online.) Opel Media, archived from the original on May 23, 2016 ; Retrieved November 3, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Coordinates: 49 ° 57 ′ 54 ″  N , 8 ° 24 ′ 59 ″  E