Like the Spice Girls, Wispa Mints or Gordon Brown's credibility, the A-1 Ring was only around for seven short years. And yet in that time, there was rarely a dull moment to be had at the Austrian Grand Prix. Well, ok, there were plenty of dull moments to be had, it is a grand prix track, after all. But in those seven years we had (in roughly chronological order) a heartbreaking nearlyman story, one of the most underrated comeback drives of all time, a pair of laughable intra-team collisions, a shocking moment of team orders in action, another shocking moment of team orders in action, and a dramatic pit lane fire.
But for some reason, despite these oft-talked about incidents, it never quite gelled with the F1 fraternity. The crowds weren't particularly huge, praise for the track was thinner on the ground than trees in the Amazon during Big Mac season, and generally the Austrian event always seemed to be set to the tune of someone going "meh" repeatedly in vague disinterest, with everyone treating it as a bit of an exercise in killing time before we went somewhere else. And while that all might well have been rather unfair, it isn't difficult to see why that became the case.
The track didn't lend itself easily to praise from the off. For a start, the whole thing was a dubious rehash of the old, tinted-in-shades-of-sepia Österreichring, which was renowned for being one of the quickest, challenging and most dangerous track on the calendar during the 1970s and 80s, as well as being the track that gave us this finish. In comparison, the A1-Ring was a horribly stunted and deformed re-imagining of the original layout by oft-slandered circuit fiddler Hermann Tilke. The result was a strange mishmash of short straights and tight turns, and a lap that was almost comically short by F1 standards. By the time the racing was over at the end of the 2003 Austrian Grand Prix, Michael Schumacher had lowered the lap time to a mere 67 seconds (thanks to this incredible lap). The new Nordschleife it palpably was not.
But while the layout might not have been much to look at on paper, the actual look of the track still offered the Österreichring's old elevation changes, and despite it's small size, the track was a beautiful, undulating (if brief) romp in the forests and mountains of Austria. So while it may have been small, it was another feather in the cap for those unfortunates who still abide by the maxim that 'it's what you do with it that counts'.
As for the racing, the Austrian race always managed to provide a talking point or two, which is more than can normally be said for the likes of Barcelona, Magny-Cours or the Hungaroring. In 1997, the first race at the new track saw Jarno Trulli's Prost perform supernatural tricks of light to lead the early stages and eventually suffer a heart-breaking retirement when still running strongly in second place. The year after, there was the chaotic sort of race that only comes along once a season, with a topsy-turvy, wet qualifying-inspired grid leading to crashes galore, and David Coulthard, often maligned for his uselessness on this site and others, secured a comeback drive all the way to second place despite having dropped to the back early on when a pair of scrapping Arrows cars had combined to remove his front wing.
If DC had one of his greatest days in 1998, he had one of his worst the year after, when he conspired to firstly crash into his team mate on the opening lap, knocking Mika Hakkinen right to the back of the field, but then conspired to lose the race itself to Eddie Irvine's Ferrari following a botched single pit stop period in the middle of the race. 2001 saw the latest in the all-too-brief story of Montoya vs Schumacher, with the Colombian showing the first signs of his growing monomaniacal obsession with getting one over the alpha male of the F1 pack by risking everything on some, frankly, knackered Michelin tyres, and ending up sending both himself and Schumacher skittering across the gravel. The JPM/Schumie debates that had been ignited after the thrills of Brazil were further fanned into apoplexy.
In the end, Schumacher grabbed second that year, behind Coulthard's race-winning McLaren, largely thanks to Rubens Barrichello abiding by team orders and letting him past. In what looked like it might be a tight championship battle, people were miffed, but not too concerned with this overt team shuffling. Perhaps that was a mistake in hindsight, because the year after, Ferrari were confident enough to attempt the ultimate team order, telling Barrichello to cede the race win to Schumacher, and pulling the trick within sight of the line to boot.
The ins-and-outs of that could, have and will be debated with endless levels of dreary self-righteous seething elsewhere, so we won't dwell too much on the whys, the wherefores and the F1DIEDTODAYF&*KYOUFERRARIs of it all, but needless to say, the incident rather tainted the race and the track, and the simmering anger of grandstands full of spectators directed squarely at Michael Schumacher a year later may possibly have caused this to happen. Or maybe it was some spilt fuel. Nevertheless, it wasn't enough to prevent the German taking the chequered flag in what was to become the final race at the A1-Ring, and the final Austrian Grand Prix, for the foreseeable future.
So, sadly, it all came to an end, as F1 roared out of town. In reality, the event had never really been much of a cash cow. The building of the new track was funded by the Austrian telephone company that the track is named after, but the running of the race itself slipped into government hands after losing money. Finally, with the Austrian government backing the EU ban on tobacco sponsorship, Bernie Ecclestone pulled the plug in favour of chasing the cancer stick dollar in the Middle East for an extra few years.
To see the track now is a lesson in the bizarre. Photos of old, crumbling tracks from days somewhere near yore are a sad sight, but to see the derelict state of a circuit that was still hosting races earlier this decade is almost perverse, as if the wrecking balls were moving in even as the teams were packing up after the 2003 race.
In actual fact, it wasn't quite as immediate as that. The pit lane buildings and spectator grandstands were pulled down in 2004, effectively ending any hope of any form of motorsport returning to Spielberg. Since then, the track, which is now owned by Red Bull, who continue their efforts to buy up aspects of the sport that nobody can be arsed with anymore (c.f. Minardi, Jaguar, the Skoda World Rally Team), but despite talk of a full renovation and a return to racing there (perhaps not F1, but the DTM, A1GP and Superleague Formula have all been mooted as potential visitors), nothing seems to be happening. Certainly the current financial climate is not one to be ploughing cash into a rebuilding project that proved to be a lossmaker last time it was attempted.
And so, the A1 Ring's tale has a sad ending. It gave us some good times, but now it barely exists, in a dreadfully sudden state of neglect. Sort of like a tragic forgotten puppy bought as a Christmas present for a demanding but easily-bored child. And if that analogy doesn't make you a bit sorry that it's gone, then nothing will.
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