Leipzig city park race
The Leipzig City Park Race was a motorsport event on a temporary race track in Leipzig from 1950 to 1958 . The center of the street circuit was about three kilometers southwest of the city center. National car and motorcycle races took place on the racetrack, in recent years also with international participation. Classes included racing formula 3 for racing cars and different engine capacity classes for motorcycles and sidecars .
Route description
The route length was 4,311 km and led through and around large parts of today's Clara-Zetkin-Park . Because of its 21 curves with different radii and because of the road surfaces that were common at the time, the course was very demanding. The start-finish straight up to the 90 ° left-hand bend about 500 meters away was about twelve meters wide, the rest of the route at least 7.5 meters. It was driven counter- clockwise .
The start and finish area was located southeast of the Scheibenholz racecourse in Wundtstrasse . From there, the driver turned onto Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße in order then for a roundabout on the Anton Bruckner Avenue to Clara Zetkin Park to cross. The forest area of the same name and part of the Leipzig alluvial forest were then bypassed via the Nonnenweg and then returned to the start-finish area in Wundtstraße via Schleußiger Weg . Was divided the course in seven areas designated alphabetically from Section A to G .
During the racing events, up to nine temporary grandstands were erected in the start / finish area as well as at the curves, along the course the spectators were also able to watch the races partly on the roadside . Most of the track boundaries consisted of bales of straw .
The longest races comprised 25 laps and thus around 108 kilometers.
history
Between 1950 and 1958 there were a total of 11 racing events with the suffix All around the disk wood , which were organized by the motor racing section of the GDR and at the same time functioned as national motorsport championships. With the exception of the first three events, training and qualification runs took place on Saturdays and up to 10 individual races for young, ID and licensed drivers on Sundays.
The first city park race was held from July 8th to 9th, 1950, and 200,000 spectators were recorded here and a year later. In 1952 the international motorsport comparison match of friendship took place on Whit Monday as part of the fourth parliament of the FDJ , which was later included in the count of the Leipzig city park races. The then deputy head of state of the GDR, Walter Ulbricht, and the FDJ chairman Erich Honecker were present at this event . 1953 saw the first drop in attendance, just a few days earlier the increasingly popular Peace Tour led through Leipzig for the first time . One of the most successful players in the city park races , Theo Helfrich , clinched his third victory in the sixth edition in 1954. In 1955, Formula 1 racing driver Edgar Barth achieved an average lap speed of over 120 km / h for the first time at 123.17 km / h. The 9th event in July 1956 took place without racing cars; it marked the start of the II. German Gymnastics and Sports Festival . At this point in time, both the audience interest and the media coverage of the races had already decreased significantly.
Despite a renowned field of starters with international participation from England , Austria , Sweden , Finland and the FRG as well as well-known drivers such as Kurt Ahrens senior, Kurt Ahrens Jr., Walter Schneider / Hans Strauss and Ernst Degner , only about 35,000 spectators were present at the last race.
In the history of city park races there have been several fatal accidents in which spectators or marshals were killed.
Overview of the races
- 1st city park race in Leipzig, July 8th to 9th, 1950
- 2nd Leipzig City Park Race, May 19-20, 1951
- International motorsport comparison match for friendship, June 2, 1952
- 4th [originally 3rd, corrected later] Leipzig City Park Race, 17th August 1952
- 5th Leipzig City Park Race, May 17, 1953
- 6th Leipzig City Park Race, May 16, 1954
- 7th Leipzig City Park Race, June 5, 1955
- 8th Leipzig City Park Race, May 6, 1956
- 9th Leipzig City Park Race, July 26, 1956
- 10th Leipzig City Park Race, May 26, 1957
- XI. Leipzig City Park Race, June 15, 1958
literature
- Hans-Peter Lohmann: Legendary German race tracks . Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-613-03438-9 , pp. 84-88.
- Marko Kuhn: The Clara Zetkin Park. Tracks on ice and asphalt . In: Volker Rodekamp (Ed.): On the move. Milestones in the history of sports in Leipzig (topic M. 20). Leipzig 2018, ISBN 978-3-910034-80-8 , pp. 150–157.
Web links
- The city park race at motorrennsportarchiv.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Leipziger Stadtparkrennen ; List of races 1950–1958 in the Jordan Motor Racing Archives.
- ↑ a b Hans-Peter Lohmann 2012.
- ↑ a b route map. In: Leipziger Volkszeitung from May 16, 1953.
- ↑ Marko Kuhn 2018, p. 154.
- ↑ 1st city park race in Leipzig for motorcycles, sidecar teams, sports and racing cars . Leipzig 1950.
- ↑ The engines thunder on the wood . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung from July 8, 1950.
- ↑ A reminder to the audience . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung from May 20, 1951.
- ↑ "I want to be there too". Young people who are enthusiastic about motorsport at the disk wood - international competition of friendship . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung from June 4, 1952.
- ↑ a b Marko Kuhn 2018, p. 156.
- ↑ Wild hunt for wood . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung from May 18, 1954.
- ↑ EMW Silver Arrows triumphed over Porsche Spyder . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung from June 7, 1955.
- ↑ The 125cc MZ machines are not in danger . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung from June 17, 1958.
- ↑ That was a race! . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung from August 19, 1952.
- ↑ A summer night at the disk wood . In: Leipziger Volkszeitung from August 17, 1952.