Nordschleife at night: One lap from the Nürburgring 24-Hour

The Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit can be treacherous enough during the day, but the 20.8km track becomes a different beast when the sun goes down… especially when it’s full of with other cars.

But managing to show us all how it’s done at the recent 24 Hours of Nürburgring was Audi Sport Team Land driver Kelvin van der Linde, pushing his Audi R8 LMS to the limit during this full lap onboard video.

For the first half of the video – which doesn’t actually show the lap beginning from the start line, but rather near ‘Foxhole’ – is a good indicator of just how packed the Nürburgring is during the race, with passing an every-few-seconds occurrence.

Then, in the second half, van der Linde – a member of the winning team in 2017’s race – comes up behind Adam Christodoulou of Team Black Falcon, driving in an AMG GT3.

Given Christodoulou’s eventual place on the podium, it’s no surprise van der Linde finds it such a challenge to pass him.

What’s impressive about the whole thing however is how much more of a challenge passing at night would seem to be. The cars in front would see only headlights behind them (aside from the flashing blue LEDs, but we’ll get to that), which makes it harder to judge when and how to get out of the way of faster cars.

Luckily, those faster cars (in the GT3 class particularly) are equipped with flashing LEDs to alert drivers in front that they’re going to need to get out of the way, or risk holding up a much quicker car.

One casualty of the Green Hell can be seen around four and-a-half minutes into the video, a Porsche 911, that of Romain Dumas, faces the wrong way on the side of the track after a big crash.

Dumas was leading the race before the incident.