A1-Ring

History

The Österreichring opened in 1969, taking over from the Zeltweg Airfield circuit, which sat just across the expressway and was considered dull and bumpy. Set in the Styrian mountains, the track offered dramatic scenery. It was consistently narrow, only 10 meters wide, but extremely fast. Every turn was a high-speed sweeper; with a five-speed gearbox, drivers never dropped below third gear, and with a six-speed box, never below fourth.

The lap featured 65 meters of elevation change between its lowest and highest points. Like many fast circuits, it punished engines, but the relentless high speeds made it even tougher on tires. Many drivers considered it dangerous, particularly the Bosch Kurve, a banked, downhill 180-degree right-hander with almost no runoff. By 1986, when turbocharged Formula One engines reached over 1400 bhp in qualifying, Derek Warwick’s BMW-powered Brabham BT55 was clocked at 344 km/h approaching that corner.

Other challenging sections included Voest-Hugel, a flat-out 180 mph right-hander, and the Sebring-Auspuff Kurve, also known as Dr. Tiroch or Glatz Kurve, a 150 mph turn that was critical to nail because it led onto a long straight. Much of the circuit was simply road with minimal protection, a condition that persisted until the final Austrian Grand Prix in 1987. That race was restarted twice after two increasingly serious crashes, both stemming from the narrow pit straight, similar to an incident in 1985 when a start-line shunt eliminated three cars, including championship leader Michele Alboreto’s Ferrari and local driver Gerhard Berger’s Arrows-BMW. During practice for the 1987 race, McLaren’s Stefan Johansson narrowly escaped serious injury when, cresting a blind brow before the Jochen Rindt Kurve behind the pits at over 150 mph, he hit a deer that had wandered onto the track.