Wachauring Ost/Schikane CW

Overview

The Wachauring is a motorsport venue and driving safety centre a few kilometres outside Melk in western Lower Austria, between Amstetten and St. Pölten. It lies on the Stiftswiesn in the cadastral municipality of Pöverding, just above the A1 West motorway, on land leased from the Benedictine abbey of Melk, which can be seen from the race control room. Since 2003 its full name has been Fahrsicherheitszentrum und Motorsportanlage am Wachauring/Melk, and it is run by the Austrian motoring club ÖAMTC through its subsidiary Test und Training GmbH. The site covers about 12.5 hectares and combines a short race circuit with training areas, a kart track and an off-road park. It is used for driver training, free driving days for cars, karts and motorcycles, testing and club motorsport, as well as rallycross, the discipline it was built for.

Technical Specifications and Track Features

Its chicanes can be moved, giving six possible routes, and the longest version, which includes gravel passages, measures 1,266 m. The rest of the course is asphalt, and an irrigation system can wet the whole track or parts of it quickly, which makes it useful for tyre and vehicle tests on a wet surface. Car makers, suppliers and research groups such as KTM, Magna Steyr, TU Graz, Toyo Tires, Hankook and Continental have tested here. The redesign that followed the ÖAMTC takeover was drawn by the architect Hermann Tilke. The venue holds up to 10,000 spectators. Noise is a central limit: on normal days vehicles must stay under an 83 dB pass-by limit, and the state of Lower Austria allows four race weekends a year on which louder machines may run.

Facilities and Specialized Areas

Beside the race circuit, the training areas include a circular track, two simulation straights, a special course for motorcycle handling and a skid plate. A separate kart track with gradients and a fast straight is used with 270 cc karts. The office building has four seminar rooms for groups of 20 to 130 people, which can be joined into one event space of about 250 square metres, together with a restaurant. Race control has room for 15 people. Regular events include the Formula Student competition, the Histo-Cup Austria, the Drift Challenge Austria, three-hour cup races, supermoto and rallycross.

History

The track opened on 22 April 1973 as the rallycross circuit Leruring, planned and built in five weeks by Herbert Herr; the original course was 1,050 m long. On 13 May 1973 it held the first round of a European Rallycross Championship ever run, won by John Taylor of Scotland, and Franz Wurz had won the first international test race on 1 May. Between 1973 and 2009 the site staged 19 European Rallycross Championship rounds. Its name changed several times: Leruring until 1983, Thermoton-Ring from 1984 to 1986, Nordmende-Ring in 1987 and 1988 and Rallycross-Ring from 1989 to 1996, before it became the Wachauring in 1997. At the end of 2002 the ÖAMTC took over the site from Falko Jansen, and the driving safety centre opened on 29 September 2003. The 2004 European Rallycross round and a 2005 Supermoto World Championship round were among the largest events since then. Rallycross meetings are organised by the Leru Team 2 club together with ÖAMTC Motorsport.