The Nordschleife, or North Loop, represents the heart and soul of the Nürburgring: It was built between 1925 and 1927 at a cost of 15 million Reichsmarks, providing employment for some 3,000 workers in one of Germany’s poorest regions at the time.

The Nordschleife measures 20.8 km (13 miles) in length, with 73 curves and a maximum gradient of 17 percent. On a map, the track doesn’t look especially twisty, but when you’re blasting along the narrow roadway at high speeds, the hairpins and doglegs start to look hairy – especially when you see a towtruck getting ready to drag away a sports car that spun off the track and (fortunately for the driver) stopped in the grass before it reached the trees.