Last week, my wonderful colleague Steve DaSilva asked the Jalopnik audience for its thoughts on the worst race tracks in motorsport history, and one daring human offered a treasonous answer: AVUS. My heart rate immediately spiked upon seeing that response, and I knew I couldn’t help myself. I was going to have to write an impassioned defense of AVUS.

If you were to just look at a track map, which is what this person appeared to do, AVUS does admittedly look quite boring. It looks a lot like what would happen if you flattened out the ridged part of a bobby pin and fused the open end together. What can be so interesting about two long straights connected by two hairpins?

But looks, my friend, can be deceiving.

AVUS stands for Automobil-Verkehrs- und Übungsstraße, which roughly translates to “automobile traffic and training road.” The name refers to the fact that the Kaiserlicher Automobilclub wanted to design a race track that could also double as a test track for the growing automotive industry. Having two long strips of road connected by banked hairpins meant you could host a race, try to set speed records, and reenact standard motorway conditions. The original track, which was started in 1907 and finished 14 years later due to the onset of World War I, was just over 12 miles (19.573 km) long. And in 1926, it hosted the first international German Grand Prix.

As most tracks were at the time, AVUS underwent various forms of reconstruction to really hone its prowess — which is how we ended up with the banking. In 1936, a new, public road next to the track meant AVUS needed to consider a reconfiguration, which came in the form of a banked corner, the Nordkurve, that was paved in bricks. It had a banking angle of 43 degrees. For contrast, the Monza oval boasted a mere 21 degrees of banking, while the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has a 9.2 degree angle.

And what was at the top of that Nordkurve, you ask? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No wall, no retaining barrier — nothing. If you ran too wide or lost control, you would fly off the top of the turn, which earned that corner its nickname: the wall of death.

That turn make the whole track faster, and in 1937, Luigi Fagioli’s Auto Union Type C set world-record breaking average speed of 176.7 mph. It remained the fastest lap ever set in racing history for two decades.

Those speeds made AVUS a dangerous track. Drivers George Christian von Lobkowicz, Otto Merz, Kieth O’dor, and Jean Behra were all killed there, along with mechanics.

But that was AVUS’ final massive race for several years. Late in 1937, Bernd Rosemeyer, one of Germany’s most impressive racing drivers, was killed during a land speed record attempt on the long straight. The rising speed of sports and Grand Prix cars made AVUS inhospitable, and the onset of World War II put a pause to international racing soon after.

The war years saw countless changes to the track. It was pegged to become part of the Nazi regime’s autobahn network, meaning that the original hairpin — though not the Nordkurve — was destroyed. The forest land that had been cleared for a second banked turn turned into a proving ground by American occupation forces. By the time racing kicked off again in 1951, the long straights had been cut down drastically, reducing the length of the track to just over five miles in length. Some people rumored that the Berlin Wall cut AVUS in half, but that wasn’t actually true — though the wall was about a mile away from the track’s location.

AVUS popped back up as part of Grand Prix racing’s Formula One championship in 1954, a race that primarily turned into an exhibition of German automotive prowess, as many drivers and teams still refused to compete in Germany.

The Grand Prix return to AVUS didn’t last long; in 1961, F1 banned banked tracks from its competition, and six years later, AVUS’ banking was demolished to make way for more conventional, public roads. The track continued to be chopped in size, and it soon played host to nothing but national touring car and lower formula series races. By 1996, racing had largely ceased, and the track officially closed in 1998 because the racing was dangerous to drivers and disruptive to everyday traffic.

Because much of the track was public road, you can still drive on it today. The round race control tower at the north end of the track also still exists, and the wooden grandstands are protected as a historic monument.

While footage of the early races at AVUS is difficult to come by, plenty of people on the internet have recreated the track on various simulator platforms to illustrate, at least virtually, what it was like to compete there. One of the best is this near-20 minute video from GPLaps:

There’s also a short clip from the late 1950s that circulates showing Hans Hermann’s huge — but thankfully not fatal — crash during the 1959 German Grand Prix:

And here are some clips from 1937 showing the gorgeous streamliners from Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz:

And here’s some even older footage dating back to what appears to be 1921 (though if I spoke German, I’m sure I’d be able to confirm that). This would be before the large “wall of death” was built:

Listen: AVUS looks boring as hell, but it’s one of those tracks you shouldn’t judge based on nothing but its layout. It put on a fascinating event in its day, and it’s one of my personal bucket-list historical tracks that, if I ever had a time machine, I'd visit to attend a race.