The 2022 MotoGP world championship will host its 13th round this weekend on the Red Bull Ring circuit, located near Spielberg in Austria. A region with an already rich past for motor sports, even if the current Styrian route will inaugurate yet another version this year.
Red Bull Ring, A1 Ring, Österreichring, Spielberg or Zeltweg, let’s put some order into that…
A map of the region already allows us to understand some of these numerous appellations, with the villages of Zeltweg and Spielberg in the immediate vicinity of an aerodrome and a circuit...
Planning for the Zeltweg air base in the middle of Styria dates back to 1935. A year later construction work began and on March 13, 1938 the airfield was handed over to the German Luftwaffe, then to the Royal British Air Force once the war ended. In 1955, the RAF station Zeltweg was closed and the airfield was handed over to Austria.
In 1957, it was still functional but Martin Pfundner, co-founder in 1956 of the sports section of the Austrian Automobile Club, took up the idea put in place at Silverstone and traced a sort of basic circuit of 3 meters using the track of landing and two runways.
However, the local organizers take into account neither the abrasive and bumpy nature of the Zeltweg track surface, nor the difficulty of organizing a world event on an airfield closed for only two days, and only one World Championship Grand Prix Formula 1 will take place there in 1964.
However, the world sports car championship took place there from 1966 with the Zeltweg 500 km, until the track was abandoned in 1969 in favor of the Österreichring built right next door.
Built in the middle of the hills (65 meters of altitude difference) without large clearances, the Austrian track immediately proves to be fast and dangerous. Many accidents take place there but there is the fatal one of Mark Donohue in 1975, an American legend having driven in Nascar, Endurance, Can-Am and F1, so that the Vost-Hugel curve was redeveloped into a Hella-Licht chicane.
In 1995, Hermann Tilke was finally responsible for redesigning the Spielberg circuit on the same location. He keeps only a few pieces of it and shortens it from 5,942 km to 4,326 km. This version is then called A1-Ring and already exactly foreshadows the current route.
It hosted the Austrian MotoGP Grands Prix from 1996 to 1997, as well as those of F1 between 1997 and 2003.
Valentino Rossi obtained his first podium there in 1997.
After long discussions and procrastination between 2004, the year when the grandstands and stands were destroyed, and 2008, Dietrich Mateschitz, owner of Red Bull, finally decided to rehabilitate the circuit which would open again in 2011, before welcoming the return of F1 in 2014 and that of MotoGP in 2016 under the name Red Bull Ring.
Since that date, the Austrian track has been the most used, hosting two Grands Prix in 2020 and 2021 due to the health crisis.
In 2020, it was the scene of a spectacular and miraculous accident involving Johann zarco et Franco Morbidelli, and causing a huge controversy following the very understandable fears of Valentino Rossi et Maverick Vinales.
This year, this results in the creation of a new chicane which breaks the finishing speed in the old turn #3 (all the details here).
Let us nevertheless remember what was happening in Styria in the 60s, thanks to the fabulous collections of Arthur Fenzlau and Vienna Technical Museum...
The first gallery immortalizes the first race on the Zeltweg airfield track.
The second gallery illustrates the first race on the Österreichring, in 1969. For the anecdote, we find there a certain Dr Helmut Marco registered on a Sebring MK 1 Formula V from the American team McNamara, today an intractable judge of the F1 drivers at Red Bull Racing. On motorbikes, only Austrians appear whose names mean nothing to us.
The third gallery corresponds to 1997, one of the two years when the Grands Prix were contested on the A1-Ring. Valentino Rossi is the only driver to have driven there and still be active. We can therefore say that the Italian champion rode on the Red Bull Ring, the A1-Ring and at Spielberg, but not on the Österreichring or at Zeltweg
Finally, the fourth series of photos marks the return of the motorcycle Grands Prix to the redeveloped Austrian track, in 2016, with the victory of Andrea Iannone.
© Artur Fenzlau / Vienna Technical Museum
