Thanks to our South Pacific Editor Patrick Quinn for discovering this one, a(nother) lap (or two) of Germany’s notorious Nordschleife circuit at the Nürburgring. The clip runs just under 10 minutes and comes from a film produced in 1962 when driver Hermann Lang and competitions boss Alfred Neubauer took a 1937 Mercedes-Benz W125 back to the track for a demonstration run complete with multiple cameras rolling.
Narration by that year’s World Champion, Graham Hill, superbly enhances the video as the Englishman describes not only what you are seeing as Lang traverses the 14-plus miles, but some of his own experiences at various points around the lap. It is, of course, not a lap at speed, for this is a 25-year-old car and a driver long retired from the heat of competition, but the slower pace lets us see exactly what the track looks like instead of just being a blur as we find ourselves simply hanging on at higher velocities.
As it’s been more than 50 years since this film was shot, we realize the grand old place no longer looks exactly like it does in the film, but this is a wonderful trip down this particular Memory Lane.
