History

The Hockenheimring Baden-Württemberg is a motor racing circuit situated in the Rhine valley near the town ofHockenheim in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, located on Bertha Benz Memorial Route. Amongst other motor racing events, it biennially hosts the German Grand Prix, with the most recent being in 2014. The circuit has very little change in elevation. The circuit has FIA Grade 1 license. The Hockenheimring was originally built in 1932 using roads in the forest as an alternative to the Wildpark-Circuit in Karlsruhe, which became forbidden as a racing circuit by German officials. The Hockenheimring was used for motorcycle racing and was expanded to be used as test track for Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union in 1936. In 1938 it was renamed the Kurpfalzring and that name was used until 1947. The original circuit was almost 8 km long and consisted of two long straights with a long "Eastern" corner in the forest and a U-turn inside Hockenheim joining them together. In 1965, when the new Autobahn A 6 separated the village from the main part of the track, a new version of Hockenheim circuit was built, with the "Motodrom" stadium section. In the early 2000s, F1 officials demanded the 6.823 km (4.240 mi) track be shortened and threatened to discontinue racing there, due to competition from other tracks such as the EuroSpeedway Lausitz and sites in Asia. However, the circuit was dramatically shortened, with the long, forested straights section chopped off in favour of more tight corners. In an extremely controversial move, the old forest section was torn up and replanted with trees, eliminating any chance of using the old course either for future F1 events or for historic car events. There was and still remains a great deal of criticism of the track redesign, in terms of ruining the previous unique technical challenges of the old Hockenheim circuit and delivering a new homogenised "assembly line" circuit without the character of the previous layout