You read that right. The Nüburgring played a role in cycling history. That’s not motorcycling or motorcycle racing, it’s bicycle racing.

 

Given that the track is 90 years old, there’s always something new to learn about its place in history. I’m always eager to find out more about its place in motorsport history, the local impact of the track and so forth.

 

Sure, I know about Rad am Ring, the annual bicycle outing on the Nordschleife, but I was not aware that the 1927 UCI world championship was there. Find the details with some nice historic photos on Rouler’s site.

All the teams are gearing up for the 2017 VLN season and Dale from Bridge To Gantry and Ring Taxi fame has a post about this weekend’s testing.

This should be an awesome season if you have to follow most of the races via the livestream as English will be available for all races this year as I’d previously mentioned.

The first race is this coming Saturday, March 25. We’ll have more detail with direct links in a subsequent post, but you should be able to access the stream a bit before the race starts at 7:00 AM EDT from the VLN site.

I’m rooting for Dale, Luke and all of #teambtg in their new GT-86 as well as Sabine Schmitz and Klaus Abbelen over at Frikadelli Racing!

I hope to get to at least one race of the 2017 VLN season in person. In 2015 we went to the 24 hour race and last year we were at VLN 4. More to come on that.

If you want to read more about VLN, ADAC, etc. see our previous post on that topic. Also, we’ve posted previously on watching VLN races over the internet before too.

So you’ve heard about Clarkson, Hammond and May’s new venture at this point. No, not The Grand Tour on Amazon, but their new auto enthusiast social network, DriveTribe. If you haven’t already joined the Green Hell Guides tribe, by all means, do so!

Once you’ve done that, here are the other best Nürburgring tribes currently on DriveTribe:

• Bridge to Gantry: Dale Lomas of the popular Bridge to Gantry blog and Ring Taxi fame has his tribe all set up.
• Nür: Chris Enright has established a quality community already of solid Nürburgring content.
• Nürburgring Now: the fine folks behind this popular website have their tribe up and running as well.
• Northloopers: this community from the UK is active on DriveTribe.
• Skylimit Events: the well known organizer of drift and track day events at The Nürburgring, Zolder and Spa is here too.
• Nürburgring Nordsch-Life: with a focus photos and viewing spots this one deserves a to be in your list of tribes as well.

There you go, so have at it! It’s easy to sign up now that no code is required.

The coverage of the Zurich ADAC Nürburgring 24 Hour Race is in progress now, but the race starts at 10am EDT. Here’s the international coverage in English:

In my last post we discussed how the VLN races are popular endurance racing series run on the combined Nordschlefe and GP track. Watching VLN races is one of the best things to do at The Nürburgring. They're great fun to be a spectator at and can be combined with a tour that includes driving the track yourself, visiting museums and road tours in exotic, sports or classic cars. If you want an idea of what a tour that coincides with a race looks like check out our video from last year's 24 hour race.

That's all fine and good, but for those of us who don't live an easy drive from the track, what's to be done? Read on to find out how to watch VLN races away from The Ring!

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If you're US-based like Green Hell Guides, or just not familiar with all the various motorsports bodies in Germany, you may have seen these acronyms in association with races that are run on The Nordschleife and wondered what exactly they were. You may have asked, "so what the heck are ADAC and VLN, anyway?" If so, this is the blog post for you!

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