The Fastest Race in the World - 1937 AVUS-Rennen - Assetto Corsa
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- Опубликовано: 15 июн 2024
- Purpose-built Streamlined cars and a corner affectionally named the “Wall of Death”. That would peak 400,000 spectator's interest in what became the Fastest Race in the World for almost 50 years, only eclipsed by the Indianapolis 500 in 1985. Auto Union and Mercedes both fitted cutting-edge 'streamlined' bodywork to their cars and the course at AVUS had a 43-degree high-banked brick covered corner added, to ensure speeds would be the fastest of all time. The historical accounts today read as something like a science fiction novel. Hold on, and don't stray above the white painted lines!
More great info on the race here: primotipo.com/2016/05/27/avus...
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0:00 Intro
1:46 Streamliner
4:48 Race
17:02 Final Thoughts 
Игры
1930s high end racing is awesomely ridiculous.
Designers were like "see that airplane engine. Put it in a car with bike tires and see what happens"
With the airplane engines, that was more common in Grand Prix racing in the 20's. In the 30's, airplane engines really only persisted in land-speed record vehicles. With these Grand Prix cars from the 30's it was actually rather the other way around. The German cars were used to develop materials, chemistry and designs that were later used in airplanes. This has, of course, a shady political background - the Versailles treaty banned Germany from developing many kinds of military technology, and the government-sponsored racing program was one of the ways to circumvent it.
To be specific, there are clear reasons why airplane and car racing engines started diverging significantly in the 30's. First and foremost, an airplane engine is basically a stationary engine for the most part, it has to run at constant low RPM for hours and hours at maximum fuel efficiency (not maximum power), it can have very large piston displacement and can be relatively heavy. Whereas a Grand Prix racing car constantly changes RPM, always accelerating, has to be very light and nimble. Of course, with fighter airplanes, the engine had to be able to go from that stationary mode into overdrive for a few minutes to deliver maximum power during a dogfight, that is where German airplane engines really benefited from the automobile racing know-how (e.g. methanol or water injection). Second of all, major developments in supercharging happened in this period, which caused further divergence of car racing engines and airplane engines. There were already three major types of superchargers: centrifugal turbochargers, centrifugal superchargers, and displacement superchargers (like Roots or Lysholm). An airplane is operating at an altitude, and again, runs on stationary RPM for the most part. Because of that, the centrifugal superchargers and turbochargers, which have higher efficiency if tuned for the particular power band, are preferred (while Germans preferred superchargers, Americans preferred turbochargers, that choice was not really clear until about 1942 when altitudes became so high that turbochargers were a clear better choice). But a Grand Prix racing car, constantly changing RPM and constantly shifting gears, needs to be more punchy, and also needs good packaging, Centrifugal superchargers are typically huge flat radial things, and turbochargers had a giant lag in these days. That's why all manufacturers converged on using a displacement supercharger, usually Roots. Although notably, in Indianapolis where the cars of course ran at almost constant RPM, centrifugal superchargers were also successful. Then again, fighter airplanes required a switch from the stationary fuel-efficient mode into a full-power mode, and that's where they employed multi-stage and multi-speed superchargers, which is something where certain Grand Prix racing know-how was useful again, because they used two-stage superchargers and switchable superchargers.
It was more like, “See that Zeppelin, make it thinner and wider and put it low to the ground with 4 tires and a screaming engine from a Heinkel HE 100 and we’ll be set for the next race.”
@@flashpeter625 This is a great answer. But I want one thing to add. In the early 30's a new formula was introduced which limited the maximum weight of the car. This was made to prevent manufacturers building bigger and bigger eninges. I guess without such a limit the late 30's would've brought things like a minimized Mercedes-Benz T80 ^^
@@Deutschmaschine0 Yes, I imagine they would like to use *huger* engines, but only on some tracks. They did that on Avus after all, because Avus used the "formula libre" regulations. For example the Mercedes V12 DAB engine, which was used for speed records and on Avus, was originally intended for the 1936 W125 GP car, but the engine turned out too heavy, so they went with their lighter I8 instead. Despite this, the 750kg formula obviously did not prevent the manufacturers from growing the engine power. Material science was advancing fast, which allowed for lighter chassis and thus potentially heavier engine every year, plus heavier supercharging. The regulators finally got scared when the 750kg formula cars threatened to get close to a 1:1 power/weight ratio in 1938. So for 1938, the new 3/4.5-litre formula introduced maximum engine displacement and minimum weight, the same concept all modern regulations have. This meant that both Mercedes and Auto-Union lost a half of their engine displacement and gained 100kg of weight. They were supposed to be much slower. The transition to the 1938 rules was IMO the craziest one-year step in racing history. Within months, they recovered almost all of the power loss by developing V12 engines with higher revs, more supercharging, basically doubling the specific power. Mercedes had to address the narrower power band by using a new 5-speed gearbox. They improved the chassis and suspension. As a result, they lost no speed on most circuits. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to development. These new 3-litre engines were thirsty, so the manufacturers had to place huge fuel tanks, which influenced the whole design. But because it was not initially clear if the 3l supercharged or the 4.5l atmospheric engines would be better, some manufacturers worked on multiple engines at once. Delahaye used a 4.5l V12 and actually won some races over the Germans thanks to reliability and lower fuel consumption, so it was close. Alfa-Romeo worked on I8, V12 and V16 engines in the same time - and did not develop any of them well enough, which is a reason why they generally sucked in 1938. In case their supercharged V12 did not play out well, Mercedes allegedly had Porsche work on a backup engine, a 4.5-litre atmospheric V24... xD
Bonus, as you mentioned "minimized T80": For 1938, because the new rules gave more weight to play with, Daimler-Benz considered streamliner designs for regular Grand Prix races; one their own, and one supplied by Porsche. The Daimler-Benz design was, of course, conservative (I assume this was ultimately developed into the W154 streamliner), while Porsche's design was a radical rear-engined missile with tight packaging. Porsche's design was less draggy, but also less stable, so it was scrapped. Only one scale model for wind-tunnel testing was ever made. The blueprints were found in Mercedes archives. Look up "Mercedes-Benz T-90" to find a picture of the blueprint. It is glorious.
@@flashpeter625 that really was specific
One of my ancestors, Otto Merz, was killed at this track in 1933. He was in a streamlined Mercedes SSKL. He went off the course at high speed in wet conditions.
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That is a sad end to such a distinguished career in racing. I read, if I remember correctly, that Otto Merz's car is fitted with two experimental rain tires or some such thing, but they fitted one on the front and one on the rear, in the other side. The different grip levels that arrangement gave at high speeds, in the wet, might've contributed to his fatal crash.
For me the 30s are one of the most interesting eras of racing.
Engines were starting to produce copious amounts of power, but chassis, suspension or brake technology were so far from being a match for available horsepower that it resulted in some amazing beasts. Lethal weapons in almost every sense of the word.
Of course this continued for a while after the war, but by the end of the 50s racing cars were becoming more well rounded.
in 4 words
v16 with drum brakes
And bycicle tyres
-Cross-ply tyres
-drum brakes
-cars built around fighter engines with +1000nm of torque at just 1000rpm
-no sports suspension
-no advanced aero tech = 0 downforce
-rarely well rounded weight distribution
-no traction control or abs
-engines had weird fuel injection systems + engines mounted directly infront or behind the driver = big combust + big squish
yeah they really tried to kill drivers back then
I'd say that the 1953 BRM V16 still had that 1930s spirit for sure!
@@fernandoueno8668 The bloody tyres are what always gets me. They are essentially impossible to handle and could break on any broken piece of surface, and you would have wheelspin at 150mph because the tyres simply weren't able to handle.. well, anything.
Bernd Rosemeyer died on the highway between Frankfurt and Darmstadt during a land speed record attempt. You can visit the location where he died, there's a parking place there now with a small memorial if you follow the path into the bushes. Last time I visited someone had placed flowers there. Nice to see he's not forgotten.
Also, the AVUS was used as a race track until the 1990s but by then it had become a very tamed and abridged version, nothing spectacular at all.
@@MiguelGLD How late did this track use that banked corner? Can't imagine it lasted much past the early days
I believe the banking was demolished in 1967. The German Grand Prix was run with it a few times after the war!
@@andrewhayes88 What Jake says, until '67. After that it was completely flat, just a regular turn and not a great turn either. The tower and grandstand are still standing, and you can also find some left-over guardrail if you care to look for such remnants.
Damn... Wish I'd seen that on my last trip to Frankfurt.
Let's not forget the bricklayers, who put that curve up one brick at a time!
*uck the bloody bricklayers - who gives a sh1t? I might as well say let's not forget the people that made the valve caps for the tyre tubes ffs! Bricklayers indeed rofl ..
@@ThePaulv12 we can acknowledge that it's a lot of work to built that and you don't have to be a dick about it.
@@Daniel-xo5ej Thank you.
@@vitameat It's a GAME. You guys are losing your grip on reality.
A GAME. What is it? A GAME..
@@ThePaulv12 you displaying some fatherless behavior.
The world record trials that would claim Bernd Rosemeyers life are a pretty fascinating story in onto itself. The cars used were developments of the respective streamliners (with canopies added to the cockpits) but because the W125 and type C were effectively obsolete at that point (new regs for 1938; which yielded the Mercedes W154, which I consider the linear ancestor of all post-war F1 cars), Mercedes effective decided to go for broke and more or less started a technological arms race with Auto Union for the record. MB started by essentially covering up all the radiator inlets and using dry ice for cooling. Even so, the engines weren’t gonna last terribly long at full blast, but hey, they were museum pieces anyway. Auto Union were a bit taken aback by this and turned to Ferdinand Porsche to see if he couldn’t work a little magic to see if he couldn’t squeeze more out of the type C.
What he came up with was...well...fundamentally, revolutionary. He came very close to creating a proper ground effects car fully 30-40 years before Jim Hall and Colin Chapman. He did so without really a lot of the research and development into aerodynamics that either of those gents had to draw on and the undertray of the car didn’t completely conform to the Venturi-style that became the norm in the late ‘70s, but the skirts and the notion of creating a vacuum effect to push the car down into the pavement the faster it went were all in play.
By all accounts, what followed was the first ground effects accident, with the vacuum bubble delaminating (the exact reason still being a mystery - a small bump in the road or the implosion of some of the rear wheel bodywork being usually cited) and the car went up, flipped and pretty much exploded from the force of impact (wasn’t enough fuel on board to creat a blazing inferno.) Rosemeyer was hurled clear (no seatbelts) and though he looked all but uninjured was dead before anyone got to him. For my money, he was the Ayrton Senna of the pre-war era - a masterfully virtuoso driver taken much to soon.
(As an aside - I think if someone could recreate the cars and settings of the 1939 Tripoli Grand Prix, that would make for a great video. Oh, and the Alfa Bimotore anywhere against anything. Cuz it’s just kinda bonkers.)
Great remarks. I thought the cause to be cross winds as Porsche stated later that these cars were very wind sensitive for obvious reasons. Had he knew about the windy weather he wouldn't have allowed Bernd to go he said in the aftermath.
@@jamesbehra2690 The wind is the explanation I've seen as well, which would certainly seem plausible. Auto Union had to go later, as Mercedes-Benz had the first runs of the day.
The modified Type C Streamliner would definitely be an interesting machine to recreate, likewise the Type D Streamliner that ran in Practice at Reims for the 1938 French GP.
@@jamesbehra2690 there are several permutations of this aspect as well - the crosswinds (which were substantial) supposedly caused the rear wheel cover to cave in, which tore up the skirt, which caused the vacuum bubble to go pop. This seems most plausible and was somewhat substantiated by photos from the trap cameras that showed some odd discoloration in that area that was either the aluminum in the process of deforming or a trick reflection of the sunlight/shadows (the picture was really rather poor and didn’t exactly allow for conclusive determinations.)
The other theory is that winds managed impact the car directly into the side which caused the rear wheel to lift off just a little, which caused the bubble to pop and the continuous winds then got underneath the car and basically picked it up and smashed it into the road.
@@Villoresi If I remember correctly, on a certain stretch of the road used for the record attempts, there is a clearing, while most of the stretch is lined by trees. Mercedes team manager Alfred Neubauer consulted a local weather station for the weather and wind conditions at the day of the record breaking, and got the reply that the wind would pick up later in the day, so they did their runs early. Rosemeyer though, wanted to break the records set by Mercedes and went out again, despite being warned that the wind is picking up. So when he reached the cleared part, the sudden gust of wind (obviously, the trees lining the sides of most part of the road sheltered the car from wind) destabilized the car while travelling more than 160mph.
@@jamesbehra2690 I think it may be Robert Eberan-Eberhorst, by 1938, Porsche had left Auto Union to concentrate on the Volkswagen project, and Eberhorst took over.
Next the Fiat Lingotto test track on top of the factory!
insanely good idea
Has anyone made that track?
With cars like the S76 Beast of Turin and the Eldridge Mefistofele... A man can dream...
Don't think there is a track for that yet
There really needs to be
I am impressed by just how sketchy the brick wall seems to drive on
It's literally driving on a wall
@@Panzer_Runner "*Wall* of death"
Exactly - I tried it in Papyrus Grand Prix Legends (I think 1996 or thereabouts). Despite graphics obviously were very much behind this the AVUS-track to my recollection actually looked more 'alive' than here. And YES, that banked corner... what a wrestle it was, driving a twisty 1967 Lotus F1 car by keyborad. Flipped off' that corner many a jolly time ;- ]
My grandfather was motorsportsdriver and a couple of times champion here in Denmark back when AVUS was in use. Happy he didnt drive that one.
I once saw an actual Audi Streamliner in person. This Thing is sooo wide an looks like something Alien made. Cant imagine how people felt seeing this in the 1930s
Today most people immediately understand that a shape like this is designed for speed. But in the 30's, when aerodynamic designs only started appearing, the concept of making the vehicle faster by putting more material on the bodywork was completely new for the vast majority of people. It must have been a wild time, and it was all about speed. Explosion of land speed records, fast trains, hydroplanes races, fastest ship across the Atlantic, fastest airship across the Atlantic, etc. Imagine you are born in 1907 in a city with most vehicles being still horse-drawn, and 2 people in the city have a rickety car. But by the time you are thirty, this thing goes up to 380 km/h on a circuit in front of you for 30 minutes.
Also, you seen aviation go from basic barely flying, to super sonic flight and even space travel. Also being able to see sputnik flying over is a vastly clearer night sky (not covered in light pollution), cities going from small to massive, and even taller buildings. Then there is things like radio going to TV, etc. That was the absolutely wildest time to be alive
To further put that speed into perspective, most commercial airliners and military bomber aircraft weren't that fast in 1937.
Yeah. Bernd Rosemeyer's wife, famed aviator Elly Beinhorn, once watched her husband do those runs with the streamliners, and she is terrified by it.
Insane
To be fair those cars probably didn’t really hit 240 MPH.
@@matthewanthony4606 they did
It really depends on which airplane you are talking about. The Italian SM.79 Sparviero and the Soviet Tupolev SB-2 were quite famous for being able to fly just as fast if not faster than most fighters during the Spanish civil war. They could therefore even fly missions without escort fighters flying at roughly 200-250 miles an hour.
Legends say drivers would use their massive balls to balance the cars on those baking curves.
Ahah that was great!
Cliche
Balls joke, very clever. Do a fart joke next time.
i didnt see prue leith or greg wallace anywhere there!
They had to shift their balls around the car just like drivers do nowadays with brake balance
AVUS is the abbreviation for Auto-Versuchs-und-Übungsstrecke: Car Test and Exercise Track.
It was used as an inner city motorway when no racing was going on, but it was primarily constructed and built as a test- and race track.
Thank you. I did not know that. I've "driven" this circuit playing Grand Prix Legends and I wondered what AVUS meant or stood for.
@@joshuarosen6242 Parts of the Track are still in use as a highway close to Berlin under the same name
@@randolfehret2335 I didn't know that either. RUclips can be informative. Thank you. If I drive in Berlin, I shall seek it out. I'd love to drive along it in real life.
14:07 This actually kinda happened!
In 1951 there was a series of two races held in a street circuit in Buenos Aires just before the start of the season. Mercedes wanted to trial getting into Grand Prix racing again but didn't have a brand new car, so they used their cars from the 1939 GP season.
Alongside Lang they also got Fangio to drive one of their cars, against mostly local opposition in Ferraris and Maseratis from the period.
The Mercedes (from more than a decade earlier) locked out the front row of the grid and led most of the two races, until mechanical issues prevented Fangio from taking the win in any of them, handing the victory to Froilan Gonzalez in a Ferrari.
Despite not winning, it showed Mercedes clearly could get back into Grand Prix racing with few tweaks and still be competitive, so they set to work on a new car and entered the 1954 season. We all know how that ended.
Really interesting, thank you for sharing! I will have to read up more on that
Don't forget Tripoli, 1939. The Italians thought that they had everything under control...
but Mercedes had other ideas.
Yeah, two Mercedes Benz W154/39s beaten by a 2 litre supercharged Ferrari 166. Must've been quite a spectacle seeing that...
That's what I like about Ferrari driver Jose Froilan Gonzalez. He seem to have gotten Nuvolari's knack for giant-killing feats on track. Later on in the season, he gave Alfa Romeo its first defeat *since 1946,* when he won the British GP. Then in 1954, once again, he had Mercedes Benz in the receiving end of his acts when he won a wet British GP, in a Ferrari that's not really that competitive. Unfortunately, the death of his compatriot Onofre Marimon at the Nurburgring later in the 1954 season had a huge effect on him, since afterwards, he raced less and less, mostly restricting himself to his home GP until 1960.
When did Mercedes crash into a crowd of people again? I know they stopped competing until pretty "recently"
@@andresvalverde5182 That was at Le Mans in 1955. They were out of racing as a works team for ~30 years after that. It should be noted, deaths at the '55 RAC TT at Dundrod also played a role in their withdrawal.
It's one of the interesting things about the AMG SEL 300 6.8 "Red Pig" Touring Car, that they kind of had to keep up appearances that this wasn't a serious effort by Mercedes itself, though there was plenty of staff crossover.
I love the way you talk about the history or story of what you're about to drive. Racing history just isn't as talked about as I wish it was! I love this!
Probably because it's celebrating White history and it's now politically incorrect to do so?
@@British-Dragon-Simulations it doesn't have to be. There are plenty of great storirs of minorities in racing. And there should be more. I love racing and I won't let it be ruined by racists or closed minded people.
@@British-Dragon-Simulations You could even satisfy some of those postmodernist revisionists, for example by telling the tales of women living the dangerous public life in interwar racing. One example for all, Eliška Junková, who won a Grand Prix race in a Bugatti. But in general, I think that people who are interested in the history of racing, do not care about postmodernist drivel. So I feel free to discuss this history in honest manner, including the really controversial subject of the German state-sponsored racing program. Not that I care, but I never faced any backlash for that.
Anyone who looks at the interwar culture has to realize that racing of all kinds was incredibly popular. Crowds up to hundreds of thousands spectators showed up, sometimes even for regional races. There were no bigger events. Racing drivers were the rock stars of the era. Speed records of all kinds made the front page.
One could say that it was a culture of belief in technology, transportation in particular. That belief was shattered by the second world war. No historian of the 20th century can miss this.
The DTM raced there until the late 80s or early 90s. Thats still insane to me.
Edit: Minus the death turn ofcourse.
It was also much shorter, being 2.5km (1.5mi) vs 20km (12mi)
@@ethanporciello8807 Oh. I didnt know that. I thought that they used a smaller version but not that its 1/8 of the original.
@@Armageddon_71 Yep, the "modern" Avus had chicanes and right angle turns, a similar taste as Norisring or some circuits on old airfields.
@@flashpeter625 Ah, good to know. Hopefully more turns than the Norisring though.
@@Armageddon_71 Actually even simpler and faster than Norisring. It was the start/finish straight in the historical location, a 180 hairpin, back straight with a chicane, a right kink into an unbanked fast corner in the north (kinda below the former brick wall), and back onto the start/finish straight. In late 80's it was just below 5 km. Then they kept shortening it by moving the hairpin closer, and also made the chicane more severe to slow cars down before the north curve. It ended at 2.7 km in mid 90's. You can see the final layout here in the broadcast of the 1994 DTM race on AVUS: ruclips.net/video/Jgfelm-GtVo/видео.html
If you look at the racing footage, you can see that the concrete barriers were really awkward in many places. Crazy racing, a lot of accidents. You can see a terrible crash at 7:12 in the video above from 1994. In 1995 the DTM second race on AVUS was cancelled after many cars piled up, and DTM never returned. Later in 1995 a driver was killed during a Super Turismo race, and the series never returned. Alexander Wurz had a crash here in Formula 3 as well. All of that was basically the end of high-level racing there, and in 1998 the circuit was discontinued.
This is my favorite “is no more” track. It was just insane. To see one of these races and cars IN PERSON at the time must’ve been a sight to behold. You really don’t know what you had till it’s gone...
you missed the fact that the GP program of the 1930s were a very cleaver and clandestine way to improve german engine technology. direct injection & supercharging were technologies that transferred to piston engine fighters / bombers too!
Sneaky smarts!
The direct fuel injection is the initial design in the V12 engine of the 1938 Mercedes Benz W154, but it never went into it. Instead, they put some a special carburetion system, with an extra carburetor opening up in higher revs to get more power, which just ended up giving Mercedes Benz headaches...
Oh I say, those rotters!
And the long straight emulates takeoff conditions for the engine.
i think everyone knew what they were doing, but no one had the will to do anything about it.
So it was basically speed racer in real life? That car even looks like it...
Well speed racer is based off old motorsport
Fuck do you think Speed Racer is based on?
They actually had planned to build a second wall of death at the other end of the circuit in 1940... but that didnt happen for obvious reasons... I would love to try the double banked layout in a sim!!!
Now THAT would be wild...
@@The52car ya bud. It would have been the fastest track in the world for a longggg time if it had been built.
It would be some weird European NASCAR/indyvar oval then like thr monza oval. Not that I'm complaining.
Someone would mod into assetto Corsa and gran turismo 7 if gt7 Comes to pc
FINALLY SOMEONE CREATED THE AUTO UNION STREAMLINER WHICH WAS IN GT4!! Can't wait to test it!!
they need to just remake GT4 for the ps5
@@dbspaceoditty absolutely... how many memories. Hours after hours spent with GT4, these are one of my best memories of my childhood... today there are highly advanced simulators, and I'm a great fan and supporter of AC, but if I look back... there was something magic in that game... it was so fun and ahead of its times :,) Every time I see the intro with the Ford GT, Le Mans with it's Dunlop Bridge, and the glorious music of Moon over the Castle playing, gives me goosebumbs and I'm not ashamed to say that very often, a tear drops down...
There won't be any racing game like Gran Turismo 4, NEVER, no matter how SIMs will be advanced in the next future, phisically or graphically speaking! *GT4 FOR LIFE!*
I think Legion will update it soon, it's a GT6 model and there's usually updates to it. Chances are he'll do the other Streamliners as well
@@BenKill yeah, I'm a great fan of Legion too, he makes some remakable models for AC. I appreceate especially the sportcars models as a great fan of endurance and the golden era of Le Mans.
I'm sorry, did I step into an alternate universe where Spirit of Speed 1937 is actually good?
LOL
@@DanArnets1492 seriously, its a damn shame that it’s a load of garbage.
@@DanArnets1492 yeah, loved that game-had it on pc and the dreamcast port where you could only drive some tracks in 'in cockpit' view-loved especially belting round brooklands-as far as i know the only game ever to feature that amazing track
@@stevespooky9894 I also had that on pc and drove it with a joystick, ah the good 'ol days! :)
@@13opacus ah...yes... memories! lol!
I have said it before, but I love your historic recreations. You add so much by integrating your background info with your real-time in-car commentary. This is what keeps me coming back. Please keep it up!
I HAD to subscribe to this. It's like the history channel for racing. No one else does this. You got me man. Keep it coming!
I'm a simple woman. If I see a GPLaps video, I click like. If I see a GPLaps video about pre-war racing, I SMASH that like button.
I love the history lesson you bring to these videos
The way you commentate and explain the history, the maneuvers you pull, this is a top notch homage to car culture and I hope your channel gets 100k soon you deserve it man
I'm so glad I have found this channel thanks this video is amazing way to talk about history!
Your content is fantastic, I get sucked into your videos all the time and learn all kinds of new stuff. Keep up the good work.
I do love the nostalgia of this channel , it's just awesome to see cars +tracks of a bygone era , always great to learn things about historic Motorsport and seeing all the hard work that goes into modding and creating these masterpieces is so good , And it's all delivered in a interesting and fun way too 👍
Crazy era. The thing that brings it home is you hammering away at 200mph, easy peasy, but then having to absolutely baby it through the corners because bias play tires and drum brakes.
That car in the old layout of Monza, would be insanely bonkers.
Yes! Do something like the circuit layout they used in "Grand Prix."
Awesome video. I loved you talking us through the course while racing.
Wow Im so glad I discovered this channel. Amazing work.
I drive this stretch of Autobahn several times a week, this was really cool to watch, thanks for posting!
The golden era of racing!! love everything about 30s my favourite driver Prince Bira :) great video as always!
The golden age is now. Back then was the wild west.
In the 1930s, it wouldn't be another 30 years before my family got their first car. They either biked, walked, or road horses everywhere. Imagine seeing a car fly by at 400kmh when the fastest you've ever gone is a gallop?
Parts of the circuit still exist. The section in front of the grand stands in particular. I was in Berlin 2 years ago, and suddenly realized where I was. Berlin! What a town.
They also started building another huge banked turn at the south end, but it was never completed. Then embankment for it was never removed and can be seen on google earth.
@@tippyc2 i cant see it on google earth tho the part where the turn is is blurred out on street view and on satellite its all forest
@@vinzlaros You probably didnt go far enough south. 52.4452N, 13.2003E.
@@tippyc2 yup my bad i was looking at the point that says Model sudkurve
Both straights still serve as a regular highway. I drive on that piece of tarmac on a regular basis.
Love your videos and how to put things into context. Great job as always. Reading that article, it was so upsetting to see the gorgeous Mercedes W125 and W25 race cars with swastikas painted on them. But the shot of the brick layers on the banking was pretty cool.
Love the historical commentary :)
Your presentation style and content is incredible. Please keep it up loving every video
I enjoyed this for multiple reasons
1.) The history lesson. I love getting to learn something about history, but especially Motorsport associated with a sim.
2.) The video itself was smooth. Everything about it, the recording of the gameplay, the commentary, and the driving.
3.) You sound like Rick.
Subscribed
Look forward to watching all of your historic races, then I try to drive the same races and fail miserably. Life is a learning curve and history a great teacher.
Extremely dangerous circuit and cars. Thank you for this evocation.
The content we really need. Thanks mate
Absolutely bananas. Funny how it was the genesis of the idea of a specialist car for a specialist event. I think we've all imagined our route to work as a closed rally stage, but I wouldn't want to drive it at 200+
Ide do it of there was no traffic and I had the right car for it. There is no greater thrill in the world than speed.
Love your work. Great historical intro. 👍🏻 the wall of death! 😂
Really enjoyed the end of the video when you had the camera point of view as it was televised. Love the look.
Hey man I recently stumbled upon your NASCAR 1 stream and I really liked your channel. Very good content, you deserve more subscribers!
Great video mate, very interesting 👍
You don't need to have many corners in a track with these cars: I see you have to keep turning the steering wheel all the straights long! 😉
How old are you?
Torque steer was a big issue back then. The slim little tires combined with 500HP beasts of engines created some funky handling characteristics
I love the way you actually sound tired at certain points in the lap. It speaks to the excellent immersion that AC offers.
Its probably more my relief that I didnt fly off the circuit! Glad you enjoy the video Bob!
A beautiful day in 2018. My favorite Team became Cup Winner in Football (Nah, Scocer to you unholy American :D ), and the next day I drove home to Frankfurt. The final is in Berlin since 1987. So I drove home, with a big smile in my face. After a while, a huge Grandstand is on my right. This moment I suddenly became aware of the AVUS. I know her from the name for a long time, but I didn't think of it on this beautiful weekend. It was like a sign.
So damm good memories, thank you!
Awesome vid dude 👍
I like the way it's a game, but a documentary at the same time 🤪
Amazing content and great research!
greetings from argentina.
Americans are always proud of the Indianapolis oval. And in modern times Daytona and Talladega.
Many American oval fans are not aware of the Avus, Monza, Brooklands, and Montlhéry ovals in Europe in the last century
But some of us are!
You deserve more subcribers, my man!
This is amazing content. racing history, while you’re racing 😍
Just discovered you content. Love the history lessons. Thank you.
Fascinating stuff. Most enjoyable. 😊
Back for a second watch. Glorious:)
Nice of you to put in the effort mate!
New to your channel but really love the videos!
I'm actually amazed by the speedometer here. The way it bounces around after changing gear, I didn't know they used to do that, but what attention to detail. It really shows just how diverse AC can be. I can't wait for the sequel 3 years from now.
I really like your historical shows.
New sub' here, really enjoying the content!
Thank you so much for the cool history lesson!
I wish someone did sound updates so that we got the proper v16 sound
The first I’ve seen of your videos. If you don’t have it already I recommend the book Racing Cars by Richard Hough. It should be available on Amazon. Based on the content of this video I think you will LOVE the book. I pretty much grew up with from the time I could read. I have two copies now because I drew too many mustaches on the pictures of the first when I was little. The original copy I have was my dad’s and it was around the house as long as I can remember and I’m 58 now.
Listening to your commentary I almost feel like I’m seeing the book live.
Great video! Beautiful story, elegantly told.
Really makes you wonder how racing cars could've evolved if that damn war hadn't been there to break things up.
By the way, as you mention, AVUS (a shortened version) also hosted the 1959 Formula One German Grand Prix (for the last time). Jean Behra in his self-built Behra-Porsche died there after falling off the banking (that's why it was the last time). You could see why they called it the "Wall of Death"... I drive that track sometimes on F1 Challenge (which is also converted from rFactor I think, either that or the other way around) and I ALWAYS spin when I enter the banking. Maybe I should slow down more...
Oh, and AVUS continued to be used without the banking for DTM/ITC until something like 1996 (which was of course a lot less spectacular without the banking), until it was finally left alone and I guess turned back into a regular section of highway. Some say that Lausitzring is its spiritual successor, in terms of speed and also danger (see Alex Zanardi's horror crash there in 2001).
Love the video!!! Just so good!
A second banked corner was supposed to be built on the south end of the track as well, pretty much identical to the north turn. Work on it had already been started with lots of earth movement to form the base of the banking, but the actual track surface / brickwork has never been done, as the beginning of the war stopped that project.
While the north turn banking was demolished in the sixties, the unfinished south turn is still in pretty much the same shape as it was left when the project was abandoned. The banking itself seems to be covered in trees now, while the infield area is a large clearing in the forest. You can clearly see it on satellite images like google earth.
The sound effects in this are amazing.
Yay my hometrack. I've been there for the last few DTM races before it was shut down.
It became a simple track but always loved seeing the cars jump over the kerbs after the hairpin.
I just started cutting out a nice thick mounting plate for my old G27...
Well done... Thanks... Now I have to do it... Thanks...
Imagine if you will....the wall turn was paved and the track was updated for modern safety and racing. Can you imagine what potential racing would be like? 😳😱
Too high a slope the car suspension will break or snap at the turn as the car go so fast and turn too fast for the suspension to handle
@@masternilla6652 - That's basically the reason F1 stopped using the Curva Nord of the Pista di Alta Velocita at Monza for the Italian Grand Prix. Too much strain on the suspension (and g-force on the drivers), and if they beefed it up to handle that one section, the suspension was virtually non-existent for the rest of the course.
Incidentally, though, Olympic velodromes (bicycle rack tracks) have bankings that will often exceed 35°. In fact, I once rode a purpose-built track-racing bicycle on a 200-meter wooden track located in Shakopee MN - it's long gone, a victim of the Canterbury Downs horse-track project - that had corners banked at a maximum of over 55°. You had to be going like hell or you'd actually have fallen off the track, and you didn't move the handlebars even a fraction of an inch. Just hold 'em steady; the track turned YOU!!
Well done! Very interesting. Peter Stevenson wrote a fine book on this period called "Driving Forces". Worth a read!!
beautiful video i watched all of it beautiful streamline cars
Thanks ! Classic sim content is the best
Ahah, I was just using this combination of cars and track very recently. It's deadly, but more importantly absolutely terrific.
great history lesson! many thanks
Great Video fella I need to try this👍😊
Love this era of racing. Would recommend a book called Faster by Neal Bascombe which chronicles Neubauer and the Silver Arrows at this sort of time. Would love to see a Rene Dreyfus Delahaye 145 video at Pau for the 1938 GP season. And also some Helle Nice Bugatti content from Montlhery. Great stuff.
Do you know more books about pre-war racing? Lately I got interested in this topic and I'd like to learn about its history from more reliable source than Wikipedia.
@@ChrisEggII I'm currently working on a movie script about the lady drivers of the 30s so luckily for you I can recommend some. The Bugatti Queen by Miranda Seymour is excellent. A couple I haven't read yet are Grand Prix Saboteurs by Joe Saward which is bout clandestine operations by drivers during WWII and one which is very hard to come by because it's out of print currently called My Two Lives by Rene Dreyfus, and it's his life story from racing to serving in the army to running a restaurant in New York.
I was playing around with this one last night. I also tried the AVUS Type-C on the Green Hell. It's fun getting that car to drift.
Love how the tac needle bounces when he shifts gears
The AVUS is still largely the same today. ofc the wall of death has been flattened and made into a car park / turning loop. You can still spot the Südschleife down the side of the Autobahn 115. Also the signature AVUS Mercedes hotel is still standing. So are the grandstands and some of the garages. Motorsport history to drive on!
If time travel would ever be possible, I'd love to attend the AVUS-Rennen! Just to experience the atmosphere!
I guess those races would have Millions of attendants!
How we fans are so captivated by vintage is quite impressive!
Watching a 1930s car go faster than any "pocket rocket" of today is simply Awesome!
the Streamliner Auto Union was my favorite car in Gran Turismo 4! So cool that they included it in that game.
The Type-C is such amazing car, it’s crazy that it’s almost 100 years old
This is some amazing commentary.
It's so weird to see this track in Assetto Corsa, because I drive there every day. I always imagine the old school races they did there. Btw, the AVUS is IN Berlin, not near it. In 1920, Berlin was expanded significantly and the circuit was completed in 1921.
I LOVE that rev gauge bounce.
Fantastic,finally a new video with the full AVUS!
Can I ask for the links of the car and the circuit? Thank you!
Watching the car skid in just a straight line is just amazing to think about happening in real life.
I love every video about avus Because I'm living near Berlin and I drive it daily to work. the viewer stands are still next to the highway
2:50 the car looks futuristic but is older days
At least you haven't experienced what some of the drivers experienced during the race.
Mercedes driver Hermann Lang, had the front wheels of his car (a W25K streamliner) lifted off the ground while travelling more than 210mph! Apparently, the covered-up front wheel arches of the car collected so much air, and started pushing it off the ground instead. He managed to slow down and stabilized the situation, but afterwards, he had the wheel covers removed.
And it's not just the fast cars, even the older backmarker cars got some moments as well. In the same race, private driver Laszlo Hartmann had a moment while driving his old Maserati 8CM. He got his right-hand wheels up to the safety lip at the edge of the banking, basically, he very nearly flew off the banking. His car may not be the fastest car in the grid, but a Maserati 8CM could still do more than 160mph. He also managed to get it under control, and steered it down the banking.
Having a liftoff at those speeds will definitely get your attention.
Do we have any real idea of just what spec the Alfa Romeo P3 was in that Renato Balestrero drove?
Thinking about covered front wheels, and I'm reminded of the Maserati 4CL Streamliner that Luigi Villoresi put on Pole for the 1939 Tripoli GP.
@@Villoresi I don't know about the specs of Balestrero's P3 as well, despite the fact that the P3 is my all-time favourite and I'm hunting almost every article related to it that I can find on the internet...
But I would guess that it had to be a 1934-35 series II car, semi-elliptic leaf springs at the front, reversed quarter-elliptics at the rear (the Dubonnet IFS cars were sold in the UK), with a 2.9 litre engine. Scuderia Ferrari or Alfa Romeo seems to replace the 1935-spec 3.2 litre engines with older 2.9 litre units before selling them to private owners, probably keeping the bigger engine for future use, or putting it up for sale as a spare unit.
Yeah, shame that's the only appearance of the 4CL Streamliner.
@@jcgabriel1569 That's interesting. You figure, once they knew about the 3.0-liter formula for 1938, they'd want to reclaim all the 2.9s they could get their hands on to eventually put into Tipo 308s.
Also, didn't they try slotting the 3.8 into the Tipo B/P3 before the 8C-35 proper came out? So the 2.9s were already 2 generations behind.
Indeed, with regards to the Maserati 4CL Streamliner. Also, though not the prettiest thing, the year before, there was a pseudo-streamlined Delahaye 145 V12 at Tripoli, driven by Rene Dreyfus.
@@Villoresi The way I see it, they probably had a good number of old 2.9 units lying around, considering the fact that they made a number of 8C-2900 sportscars, using de-tuned 2.9 litre P3 units. And also, I think the 308C is more of a stop-gap model, with the car reusing old Tipo C (8C-35/12C-36) frames. The team is pinning their hopes on the 312 and 316 models (which reused the improved 12C-37 chassis frames), which, while faster, were more unreliable and still far away from the performance of the German cars, and even that of the Maserati 8CTF.
Apparently they did try using 3.8 litre units into the P3 in 1935. But that needed some big mods to the chassis, since the 3.8 litre unit, while similar-looking, is physically longer than the older units. And the unique final drive arrangement of the P3 prohibited them from just moving the gearbox backwards, so they had to extend the front part of the chassis to accommodate the larger engine.
The cars of Chiron and Nuvolari at the 1935 French GP had the bigger engines. But while it showed a big performance boost, with Nuvolari fighting Caracciola in the fast Montlhery track and even posting the fastest lap of the day, it also showed a big problem. The gearbox and final drive is already at its limit transmitting the power and torque of the 3.2 litre unit, and it is completely unable to withstand the higher power output of the 3.8 (the 3.8 produces 330bhp compared to the 265 of the 3.2), and Chiron, and later Nuvolari, retired with transmission problems.
With that result, they removed the 3.8 litre engines and the accompanying chassis mods from the P3s and reverted the cars to their 3.2 litre guise, the bigger engines had to wait until the 8C-35s are ready. And Scuderia Ferrari proceeded to run the P3s through the rest of the season in 3.2 litre guise, making Nuvolari's victory against *nine* Silver Arrows at the German GP a extremely incredible feat.
@@Villoresi Ah, the Delahaye 145. Even in GP trim, it's not the prettiest one in the grid. Rene Dreyfus is not known for being ouspoken, but he did say that it is the ugliest thing he ever saw...
My mother grew up in Berlin. And yes during the war. My whole family's from there. I was the only one born here. She used to say Hans Stuck auf der Avus. She also named my brother Bernie after Bernd Rosemeyer.
When F1 came here in 1951, it was on a different configuration that shortened the straights and put the new Sudkurve (replacing the Sudschleife) about half the distance away from the Wall.
This exactly the kind of track I'd present to the FIA if I had Herman Tilke's job!
Sega Dreamcast, Spirit of Speed had this track and more. The cars are also there. Great game !!!