Block off the next eight minutes of your day and watch rally legend, Carlos Sainz driving a Red Bull-sponsored Audi R8 LMS around the second oldest racetrack in Europe.
Built in 1922, the Autodromo de Sitges-Terramar, outside Barcelona only ever hosted one international event before being abandoned. The event was a 2-litre GP race held on 28 October 1923, won by Albert Divo in a Sunbeam. After unpaid construction workers seized the gate takings for the race weekend, leaving no money to pay the drivers, the track was forbidden from hosting further international fixtures.
The irony is these construction workers did such a good job on the 2 kilometre-long concrete track (with its 60-degree banking) that, unlike the oldest circuit in Europe, Brooklands in England, Terramar is still driveable 80 years later. In this video rally legend Carlos Sainz and current DTM driver, Miguel Molina, head out onto the banking in a 2012 Audi R8 LMS.
While the video is only in Spanish, it actually adds to the sense of occasion that this must have been for both drivers. While we speculated in the office that El Matador was actually explaining that his lower back was now killing him and he wishes he could have been driving his Dakar Touareg, this is what he actually had to say about the experience:
“I had no idea that this place even existed – and even less that it was the first racetrack ever built in Spain,” says Sainz. “The banking is tremendous, especially when viewed from below. When I first saw it I was surprised and was very curious to know what it was like to drive on it. This is my first ever oval circuit with banking like this. It was very special.”
Source: Japlonik
