What was the Red Bull Ring called before?

The fearsome, original Osterreichring originated in 1969 as a replacement for the Zeltweg airfield circuit. The track known today as the Red Bull Ring was more or less created over the winter of 1995-6, when Hermann Tilke was engaged to turn the Osterreichring into a shorter, more modern race track.

Austria’s first purpose-built racetrack was the Österrichring, built-in 1969 to replace the Zeltweg airbase, which was nowhere near as exciting as other Grand Prix venues. It was flat, basic, and boring. But just across the street, a completely different beast was being unleashed.

The Osterrichring had changes in elevation, wide corners to navigate, and was generally high-speed throughout a lap. It features an obtuse first turn at Hella-Licht that rose through a flat-out kink towards a looping third bend. Power down the Valvoline straight towards another wide turn – Bosch Kurve. From there, drivers descended the hill through a sequence of fiddly high-speed sections which could be taken in 4^th gear.