Eifel race

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The current logo of the Eifel race

The Eifelrennen is a motorsport competition that has been organized by the ADAC in the Eifel since 1922 . It was held from 1922 to 1926 on a 33.2 km long circuit of public gravel roads that led from Nideggen via Wollersheim - Vlatten - Heimbach - Hasenfeld - Schmidt - Brück back to Nideggen. With its 86 curves and a height difference of 265 m to be overcome, the route was similar to the Targa Florio in Sicily . In 1927 the race was moved to the new Nürburgring .

history

Beginning as a "Eifel Tour" in Nideggen

The Eifel race started on July 15, 1922 as the " Eifel Tour " from the parking lot of Nideggen Castle . There was not yet a classification according to sports, touring or racing cars, as well as private drivers and works drivers . The paddock was a fenced in meadow at Nideggener Castle. The drivers slept, exclusive for the time, in the tower of the castle. It had rained in the first race and everyone drove through ankle-deep mud on the course.

Already at 5:25 PM started the assisted cycles . In addition to the motors with 1.5 to 2 HP, they also had pedals to pedal with. They had to drive two laps (66.4 km). Overall winner of the automobiles after 5 laps (166 km) in the class up to 18 hp was the Düsseldorf works driver Kurt C. Volkhart on a Steiger with 2:07:00 hours. Second overall was his works colleague Alfred Noll , the fastest in the class up to 10 hp with 2:18:00 hours. Fritz and Hans von Opel were class winners in the class up to 8 hp and third overall and completed the route in 2:19:30 hours.

Rudolf Caracciola , who was 21 at the time , took part in a car that his uncle had built for him in his Fafnir workshop in Aachen . In contrast to his later great successes with Mercedes and Alfa Romeo, however, he did not achieve his goal.

In 1923 the race was canceled during the period of passive resistance against the occupying power .

The second Eifel Tour lasted three days, namely from July 17 to 19, 1924. On the first day of the race it rained almost continuously. After that it was just dusty. The roads were not yet paved. Franz Bieber from Munich won the motorcycle race on the first day on a BMW .

The second day was stormy with showers of hail. The Nideggen hotelier had a wooden grandstand with a roof built for 3,000 spectators below the Danzley, a rock in the serpentines from Nideggen to Brück , which was a victim of the storm . Wetzka and Haide from Vienna won in 5 hours 10 minutes on the 330 km long track (10 laps).

The third Eifel tour from June 18 to 20, 1925 already cost the ADAC 70,000 Reichsmarks (corresponds to approx. 268,000 euros today ), a very high sum at the time. Italian drivers from Genoa and Germans from Cologne fought fierce battles. The Italians won. The race claimed three lives. Gustav Münz from Düren drove a converted Ford Model T and had to interrupt the race several times due to damage.

The fourth Eifel Tour took place in 1926. The Düren celebrated Gustav Münz as the winner, but after examining the results, Felten from Wermelskirchen was declared the winner. Nevertheless, Henry Ford personally congratulated Münz in a historic automobile postcard .

Since 1927 "ADAC-Eifelrennen" on the Nürburgring

Driving through town at racing speed was dangerous and road closures were a nuisance for residents. That is why plans arose early on to build a permanent race track in the Eifel, which was implemented as the Nürburgring between 1925 and 1927 .

Opening race on the overall course

Mercedes-Benz S, as it Caracciola drove in 1927, 2007 at the Oldtimer Festival of DAMC 05

On June 18 and 19, 1927 the new "mountain and test track" was inaugurated with the "Eifel race".

After the festivities, the first motorcycle race started on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. with the class up to 350 cm³, won by the Düsseldorf racing driver Toni Ulmen on a 350 Velocette (5 laps = 141.5 km in 1: 40: 51.0 hours) .

Then in race 2 the solo machines up to 1000 cm³ started together with the sidecar . The fastest motorcyclist was Toni Bauhofer from Munich , who drove six laps or 169.8 km in 1: 53: 4 hours on a BMW in the class up to 500 cm³; Average: 89.2 km / h. In the team class, Düsseldorf club mates von Ulmen, the duo Heinz Kürten and co-driver Hans Theisen on an Andrees team also won with a driving time of 2:16:32 hours.

The race of the sports car over 5000 cm³, the Rudolf Caracciola with a supercharged Mercedes-Benz Type S in a time of 3: 33: 21.0 hours for 12 laps on the overall course or 340.8 , started on Sunday at 10:00 km won. This corresponded to an average speed of 96.5 km / h.

From then on, all Eifel races were held on the Nürburgring - mostly in spring - for both cars and motorcycles, but no longer on the overall course, but either on the Südschleife (1928 to 1931 and 1958 to 1968) or the Nordschleife .

First "Silver Arrows" at the Eifel race

At the Eifel race in 1934, the term Silver Arrow was allegedly coined, which from then on referred to the successful Mercedes racing cars. According to the not uncontroversial legend, the Mercedes mechanics scraped the white paint off the cars the night before the race so as not to exceed the maximum 750 kg of the racing formula at the time, so that the shiny silver metal of the body was exposed. The winner of the race in the class of cars over 1500 cm³ was Manfred von Brauchitsch in a Mercedes-Benz W 25 (15 laps = 342.150 km in 2: 47: 36.4 hours). A total of three car and seven motorcycle classes competed in the race.

Boycott 1974

Boycott: Will there be no other starter?

At the 1974 Eifel Race, which was to alternate between racing cars and motorcycles, the top motorcycle riders were boycotted because of the compromises in route safety required for mixed operation and criticized by both sides: bales of straw to protect motorcyclists are a fire hazard for cars, they could possibly catapult up in an impact, and guardrails are life-threatening for motorcyclists, it said. The latter confirmed a fall of the Englishman Bill Henderson, who sustained serious injuries. The race was started by race director Kurt Bosch anyway, but only a few drivers then took part. The result of the boycott was that there would no longer be any mixed racing events with motorcycle and car races.

Cancellation due to snowfall

In 1985, the Formula 3000 with 15 cars and drivers like Christian Danner and Emanuele Pirro was to start at the Eifel race in May , along with others . Heavy snowfall and ice on the access roads to the Nürburgring made the event impossible. According to estimates by the ADAC, the economic damage caused by the cancellation was around half a million DM (corresponds to around 460,000 euros today).

Development after 1985

Since 1986, runs in various racing series have been part of the Eifel race, such as the German Touring Car Championship and the Sports Car Supercup for Group C racing cars . There were also races of the Renault 5 Cup, Formula 3 , the Porsche 944 turbo and the Porsche Carrera Cup etc. In 2004 the last traditional Eifel race took place, which was also a 1000 km race . This ended the series of events in which the previously current cars of various categories and until 1974 also motorcycles started.

After a break of four years, the ADAC, as the organizer, announced the Eifelrennen for the first time for historic vehicles that can be seen in this new type of traditional event both in sporting competition and in demonstration drives.

From 2011 to 2013 the ADAC Eifelrennen was organized by the Düsseldorf ADAC local club DAMC 05 .

ADAC Eifelrennen winner

The list names the winners of each of the most powerful car classes.

literature

  • Michael Behrndt, Jörg-Thomas Födisch, Matthias Behrndt: ADAC Eifelrennen. Heel Verlag, Königswinter 2009, ISBN 978-3-86852-070-5 .

Web links

Commons : Eifelrennen  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Facsimile close-up view - Der Motorfahrer No. 30 from August 24, 1922 - page 424 (1922). Retrieved June 7, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b William Kirschner: The course of the race . In: ADAC Motorwelt . No. 25 . ADAC, June 24, 1927, p. 4-6 .
  3. ↑ Jürgen Nöll: Honor where honor is due! In: Wheelies . May 2005, p. 44 ( alteisentreiber.at [PDF; accessed on May 4, 2020]).
  4. ↑ "ADAC Eifelrennen for the Jan Wellem Cup" ( Memento from February 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), event homepage, accessed April 4, 2011.