The Best Nordschleife Build Ever in Assetto Corsa EVO

The Green Hell is one of the most quintessential racing experiences out there. The world’s fastest toll road invites challenges from gentleman drivers and racing royalty alike, with the cars that make their name around the fearsome Nordschleife almost being as varied and storied as the people that drive them. So, with the recently added Daily Racing series at The Ring making headlines, what better time than the present to get up to speed with this track?

AC Evo’s 0.6 build gave the sim racing world the most up-to-date and accurate scan and layout of the Nordschleife, and it’s the only sim to do so. Every bump, undulation, curb, tarmac change, tree and graffiti mark makes it the most realistic build ever. 

A History Lesson

The legendary Nürburgring circuit was first built in the 1920s, with construction taking place between 1925 and 1927 in the iconic Eifel forest. Designed to showcase the very best of German design and engineering, the original 28.265 km of combined track became a staple of pre-WW2 Grand Prix racing. Icons of this track included the likes of Rudolf Caracciola, in whose honour the first of the two Carousel corners is named.

Whilst the original Südschleife fell out of use in post-War racing, the iconic northern loop remained in regular use until Niki Lauda’s near-fatal accident in 1976. The ghastly accident, which happened where the Lauda Links are today, led to the construction of the new Grand Prix loop in 1984. Whilst Formula One and top-level prototype racing no longer use the Nordschleife, it is still in regular use in motorsport for such events as the Nürburgring 24 Hours and the associated NLS that takes place regularly throughout the year, as well as featuring as the world’s greatest toll road with the Touristenfahren.

The Nordschleife Today

Though Formula One left the Northern Loop back in 1976, and Sportscars left in the heyday of Group C in 1983, racing does still take place on the Nordschleife today. It holds an FIA Grade 3 licence, allowing it to host races for cars whose weight/power ratio is between 2 and 3 kg/hp. Typically, this means cars such as GT3s, which are the top class in the NLS and the Nürburgring 24 Hours.

In recent years, the 24 Hour race has been injected with a new lease of life and cult of celebrity. In the sim racing corner, the likes of Jimmy Broadbent and Steve Brown have made their journey from sim to race seat part of their legend, as they currently compete in the Porsche Cup class, but arguably the greatest headline-stealer is 4-time F1 World Champion Max Verstappen, whose exploits around the Nordschleife started in 2025 and escalated to a popular run in the 2026 Nürburgring 24 Hours. 

Whilst the car was forced to retire from the lead with only a few hours left, it brought new international appeal to a circuit and a race whose cults of personality in recent years were the legendary Dacia Logan and Renault Twingo, which were built specifically to comply with regulations in the most unique ways possible.

Fancy yourself a bit of a Maro Engel, who won this year’s edition for Mercedes alongside Maxime Martin, Fabian Schiller, and Luca Stolz? Or how about last year’s winning BMW, driven by Rowe’s Augusto Farfus, Jesse Krohn, Raffaele Marciello, and Kelvin van der Linde? You can get a taste of their exploits in Assetto Corsa EVO, with their race-winning cars and the iconic track both available in the sim today.

Want to get up to speed even quicker? With our class-leading Delta service, you can get the latest setups every week for the daily racing series and learn how to make the most of it with our AI coach and Video Analysis.

Daily Racing in AC EVO

Powered by SimGrid, Assetto Corsa EVO’s Daily Racing platform, AC Evo.gg takes a tried and tested formula and puts it on one of the up-and-coming sim racing services.

The way it works is simple. You sign in to the website using your Steam account. Then you register for the race that you’re looking to take part in. Once the signup is closed and the server is up, you join using the server name and password provided to you. If you’re familiar with SimGrid’s Daily Racing in other series, such as Assetto Corsa Competizione, then it’s business as usual.

Getting Up To Speed

The combined 25.378km of the Nürburgring’s 24h format is complex, with plenty of challenges over the 170 twists and turns. However, there are a few easy hacks to get you up to speed.

Firstly, the Grand Prix loop could be considered deceptively straightforward. This version of the circuit cuts out the Mercedes-Benz Arena, for example, meaning the first corner quickly feeds into a tight left-hand switchback as the Yokohama S. Likewise, the kerbs can be seen as quite forgiving, but if you take too much kerb in the Schumacher S or the final chicane, you run the risk of unsettling the car and spinning. So make sure you know if your car can handle them before taking it at speed!

The theme of “be careful around the kerbs” is consistent once you hit the Nordschleife. The slower and tighter sections often feature tall apex kerbs, such as the run from the opening Sabine Schmitz Kurve through Hatzenbach to Hocheichen. Road cars and touring cars shouldn’t face too much of an issue, but high-performance and high-downforce machines will probably get unsettled.

The Nordschleife also features many flat-out sections broken up by heavy braking zones. Since the Green Hell doesn’t necessarily have the same marker boards as your conventional race tracks, with boards between 150m and 50m, you will need to find your own braking points that are static, so no shadows that can move with the sun! 

Some good things to bear in mind are changes in surface, such as approaching Aremberg, where the left-hand kerb’s ending signals what used to be a change in tarmac, or stringing sequences of corners together by using one corner to set up the next. One such place is the Caracciola-Karussel, where you can use the apex of the right-hand kink before the first of two carousel corners as the braking point.

A final hint is to remember not to push to 100% all of the time. There’s a reason why your car insurance will explicitly name the Nürburgring as one of the places your insurance doesn’t apply, and you don’t even need to be in Germany to have that clause! Pushing too hard right away will end up with you in a barrier or, if you’re lucky, stuck in a gravel trap. 

So start off by making sure you know the limits of your car, how it feels over the kerbs and where the limits of your grip are. Once you’ve survived one lap, you can push a little bit more on the next one. And the one after that. And the one after that. And before long, you’ll be in love with the Green Hell, joining a million-strong club of sim racing and motorsports fans the world over.

Final Thoughts

If you’re looking to get involved in more action on the Nordschleife, why not check out our Communities over on SimGrid? You can find weekly series featuring a variety of cars and tracks in AC EVO, including the Nordschleife!