Hockenheimring Baden-Württemberg, Racing CircuitDrag Strip

The Hockenheimring lies in the town of Hockenheim in Baden-Württemberg, in the flat Rhine plain of south-western Germany, and has been synonymous with motor racing since the early 1930s. The first triangular forest course was built in 1932 after timekeeper Ernst Christ persuaded the town to construct a track, and the layout gained its familiar fast oval shape with the addition of the Ostkurve in 1938. Reconstructed in the 1960s to a design influenced by John Hugenholtz, the circuit became famous for long, flat-out blasts through the surrounding pine forest, broken only by chicanes and anchored by the tight stadium section known as the Motodrom. It hosted the German Grand Prix from 1970 and was the scene of Jim Clark's fatal Formula Two crash in 1968, commemorated by a memorial stone in the woods. By the late 1990s the FIA judged the roughly 6.8 km forest layout too long and too poorly suited to spectators, and Hermann Tilke was commissioned to redesign it. His 2002 revision chopped off the long forest straights in favour of a tighter, more compact circuit of around 4.6 km, expanded grandstand capacity dramatically and prompted the official renaming to Hockenheimring Baden-Württemberg. The stadium Motodrom section was largely preserved, with corners such as the Nordkurve, Spitzkehre hairpin and Sachskurve. Financial losses led the circuit to alternate the German Grand Prix with the Nürburgring and eventually to step away from Formula One, though it still hosts a busy roster of national and international events. It remains one of the most heavily used circuits in Germany across cars and motorcycles.

Operated by: Hockenheim-Ring GmbH