Quite some people don't know that two thirds of the original Südschleife still exist until today. This is how it looks like:
Note the very dense forest so very close to parts of the track in the middle of the video. Looks like a tracking trail, not like a race track!
In the long video, Niki Lauda says in one snippet that the term "green hell" also owes to the fact that in the old times, they had no beam barriers left and right of the track, and if a car left the track and flew off, due to the thick forest everywhere, it was swallowed by the green and simply disappeared, and that you had to be lucky that somebody hopefully would see the accident and pull you out, else you could have been searched for for hours.
Already in the 30s, female pilots where racing on the Ring.
Tragic: the founder and initiator of the construction of the Ring, later was bullied out by the Nazis who abused it as if Hitler had built the Ring (most Germans of the Nazi time thought so). The original founder was sent to prison for a year over false allegations, and when released was banned from ever going back to the Ring. He later committed suicide in despair.
Many people in the first film said that while living there, the Ring's events and ordinary business gave a time structure to their lives the full year long, and from childhood years on, until today.
This track is unique in the world, and second to none. It's not just the track. Its the history, the atmosphere. It's the heart of the whole region. It'S a shame that these bastard politicians thought they would needlessly need to change that and turn it into an event park and ruining the whole fiscal and economic situation of it. As if anyone would drive to the ring to ride a rollercoaster, with Fantasyland and a much bigger theme park nearby! And more important: as if it needs anything more than the Ring itself to attract people and make them go there!
Politicians. Don't get me started again. Tack their mouths to the exhaust tube and drag them with you for a round or two!
