ADAC Fahrsicherheitszentrum Nordbayern: a Mini-Nordschleife by the A3

In December 2009, in the Aischtalhalle in Höchstadt an der Aisch, mayor Gerald Brehm and Jürgen Ranger, spokesman of the citizens' initiative "Wir sagen Stopp", argued before a large audience over a driver-training centre that ADAC Nordbayern wanted to build there. The initiative collected over 2,500 signatures on a petition for a local referendum, and Ranger summed up his position in three words: "When in doubt, never." The vote never took place. In January 2010 the automobile club withdrew from Höchstadt, and in September 2011 it opened the ADAC Fahrsicherheitszentrum Nordbayern on a hill by the A3 motorway in Schlüsselfeld. There is no race track here, but a driver-improvement centre. Yet on its loop with climbs and descents, which, as the event announcer wrote, is also called the "Mini-Nordschleife", the German slalom championship was decided in 2021.

Location	ADAC-Nordbayern-Straße 1, 96132 Schlüsselfeld (Upper Franconia, Bavaria); at the Schlüsselfeld exit of the A3 motorway from Nuremberg to Würzburg
Type	ADAC driver-improvement centre (Fahrsicherheitszentrum)
Opening	15 September 2011
Area	12.5 ha
Construction cost	15 million euros
Longest route	module 5 "Handlingstrecke", a loop 830 m long and 8 m wide, asphalt with kerbs, with descents and climbs
Other modules	two dynamic plates (one with a hydraulic plate that sends the car into a skid), a descent with a gradient of up to 9 per cent, a circle 80 m in diameter, a multi-purpose area of about 6,750 m²
Operator	ADAC Nordbayern e.V., Nuremberg
Sporting events	rounds of the DMSB German slalom championship (finals in 2021), the 1. AC Bamberg club slalom on the 3 October holiday
For amateurs	ADAC Pkw-Perfektions-Training with driving on the "Handling-Parcours", 219 euros (as of 10 October 2026), after a prior Pkw-Intensiv-Training or Pkw-Training Young Drivers only
Status	active

Twelve years of looking for a site

For twelve years ADAC Nordbayern, the regional ADAC club, planned a new driver-training centre, until it finally turned to Höchstadt. There the project split the town. Mayor Brehm assured the Aischtalhalle that the town council had supported it unanimously, that a 50 km/h speed limit would apply on the centre's grounds, and he cited commissioned noise assessments and accounts from the neighbours of the ADAC centre in Augsburg. Ranger replied that nobody knew whether it would stop at ten hectares, given that up to three more were held in reserve, and that the 50 km/h promise could not be kept even at smaller motorsport events. He also claimed that the neighbours of all ADAC centres had protested against noise. On its website the initiative listed "noise and exhaust fumes 365 days a year from 8 to 22" and a fall in the value of homes.

The decision came on 20 January 2010, when ADAC Nordbayern announced that it would not build in Höchstadt. The club did not wait for the result of the announced referendum. The initiative stressed in a statement that the automobile club had cited, besides being unable to meet the key assumptions of the project, the opposition of a large part of the residents; this opposition, it said, was documented by about 3,000 signatures. It also thanked the chairman of ADAC Nordbayern, Herbert Behlert, for the "pleasant and respectful" conversations. On its website it wished the club to find a "truly suitable location".

The municipality that came forward on its own

Schlüsselfeld, a town in the Steigerwald, took the opportunity. Mayor Georg Zipfel, with the consent of the town council, contacted ADAC and showed it the Schlüsselfeld-Ost industrial area, for which an approved development plan had been in force for ten years and most of whose plots belonged to the town. According to Zipfel that settled the matter, although 20 competitors had made offers to the club. At the beginning of April 2010 the access road was already visible on the 30-hectare site, and work on the water supply and sewerage was moving fast. ADAC was occupying 13 hectares of it for now, construction costing 12 million euros was to start at the end of April, and the first training sessions were planned for spring 2011. The mayor did not expect protests, because "for ten years everyone has known that an industrial area is to be built at this spot".

The schedule proved too optimistic. According to Behlert, work stood still for three months because of the harsh winter, and the whole construction took just over a year, which he himself called a "sporty" pace. 200,000 m³ of earth was moved, and the machines were steered by GPS, which told the operators how much soil to remove at a given spot. In June 2011 the centre's website announced the opening for "late summer" and reported that the first autumn training dates were already sold out. In the end the centre cost 15 million euros, against the 12 million announced in spring 2010, and the project was prepared by the Wagner architecture office from Karlstadt.

The hill you can see from the motorway

The centre opened on 15 September 2011. The nordbayern.de portal described it that day as a site that could fit 18 football pitches, located on a hill and visible from the motorway. Manager Jörg Macharski had six permanent employees under him, about 30 trainers worked on commission, and head trainer Roland Rauchbach assured readers that the first courses had already taken place. According to ADAC the official opening took place in September in the presence of the Bavarian minister Joachim Herrmann. "Here in Schlüsselfeld we are opening the first training facility for Northern Bavaria and the most modern in Europe," said Behlert; the second of those descriptions is the club's own assessment.

The centre makes use of the terrain. The descent is built into the natural slope, and the water used to sprinkle the surfaces and to spurt from the fountains imitating sudden obstacles circulates in a closed loop: rainwater goes into tanks, then onto the roadways and back through gutters. The training building houses a hall for 500 people and eight seminar rooms. At the opening the restaurant was called "S-Kurve", and today it operates as "Drivers Lounge". Among other ADAC centres the newspaper named only Kempten and Augsburg alongside Schlüsselfeld, and across Germany the club then had 14 of them.

For a driver with sporting ambitions the most important is module 5. The operator describes it as a "Handlingstrecke" with demanding corners, descents and climbs, 830 m long and 8 m wide, with clean asphalt and kerbs. A brochure from September 2011 listed 11 corners and differences in height on it. The other modules serve mainly for safety exercises: a large dynamic plate with a 115-metre slippery surface and rows of water obstacles, a smaller one with a hydraulic plate that sends the car into a skid, a descent with a gradient of up to 9 per cent with a slippery bend, a circle 80 m in diameter and a multi-purpose area. Since 2021 a photovoltaic installation with 218 modules has operated on the roof of the building.

Mini-Nordschleife between the cones

The loop has a second life too. The clubs AC Ebern and 1. MSC Scheßlitz organise rounds of the German slalom championship here, that is, timed driving on a course marked out with cones. The format was described in his reports by the event announcer Wilfried Ruoff: a practice run and three race runs of 1,600 m each on an "excellently asphalted course with climbs and descents" which "because of the topography is also called the Mini-Nordschleife". In spring 2020 the events were banned after Bavaria declared a state of disaster. They took place on 12 and 13 September, without spectators, and there were more applicants than places on the start list.

In October 2021 the finals of the DMSB championship, the German motorsport federation's series, were scheduled in Schlüsselfeld. Saturday began with dense fog and a slippery surface, and an oil leak from the damaged gearbox of a Citroën C2 stopped the event for 45 minutes and cut the programme to two runs in some classes. Sunday brought a dry, cooler asphalt and a decision in the last starting group. Reinhard Nuber from Allgäu would have needed only a class win for the title, which according to Ruoff was within reach. In the third run the BMW 320 WTCC, which Nuber shared with Hans Peter Eller, hit the barrier with its right side with Eller at the wheel and ended up with a bent rear axle. For Nuber that was the end of the fight. Felix Budzisch drove the fastest time of the whole weekend, 1:13.69, but in the deciding run he knocked down two cones and dropped to fifth place. The class was won by Martin Skrzipietz of MSC Groß Dölln in a BMW 330is from the E30 series, and with it the DMSB slalom champion's title.

It was exciting, dramatic and turbulent in Schlüsselfeld.

In spring 2022 the season-opening round in the South region was greeted by snow. The organisers had over a hundred entries for each day, but in the morning the course was buried, the start was postponed by half an hour at a time, and 22 drivers withdrew. The federation entered two slaloms at "FSZ Schlüsselfeld" in the calendar for 12 and 13 April 2025, including a round of the German championship in the South region. The second tradition is the club slalom of 1. AC Bamberg on German Unity Day. In 2021 its 61st edition was held on an 800-metre round laid out on the loop, and in 2025 almost a third of the field were drivers of historic cars in the regularity cup.

Ten thousand trainees a year

Day to day the centre does something else. After five years ADAC counted over 70,000 participants, including over 50,000 car drivers, and after ten over 180,000 guests, of whom over 90,000 completed car training. Lena Stich, a reporter for inFranken.de, who in 2015 did the Pkw-Intensiv-Training here in her 1997 Polo, noted that 10,000 people train annually, half of them private customers and the rest companies. Her one capitulation of the day came on the plate that sends the car into a skid: cars with ESP stabilised quickly, while her Polo spun every time. Today the operator speaks of about 12,000 participants a year.

The pandemic closed the centre on 16 March 2020 under a ban issued by the Bavarian government. Almost 2,000 participants had to be rebooked to other dates, and the centre reopened on 18 May. Despite the breaks, over 7,200 people used the offer in 2020; the next closure ended on 1 March 2021. The grounds also host competitions in which speed alone does not count. In 2017 and 2018 ADAC with partners held qualifiers of the "Fahrsicherheits-Profi" contest here, each time for 40 drivers. In 2018 one of the tasks was to drive through the course in a car with completely blacked-out windows, relying solely on the camera image.

From the amateur driver's perspective

An individual driver drives the loop as part of a training course. Closest to sporty driving is the ADAC Pkw-Perfektions-Training: about 8.25 hours in a group of up to 12, with a programme including a refresher of skills on the "Handling-Parcours", lane changes, partly at country-road speeds, cornering techniques and a repeat drive on the course with the new skills, with the trainer commenting over the radio. A condition is the ADAC Pkw-Intensiv-Training or the Pkw-Training Young Drivers only, completed no more than three years earlier, with the certificate to be shown. The price list gives 219 euros. In the online shop the nearest dates are 23 October 2026 (209 euros), 23 April and 1 May 2027 (219 euros each). The operator does not explicitly link the name "Handling-Parcours" with module 5; it is the only module of the centre that is described as serving precisely to practise handling the car.

A driver from Poland must read the terms and conditions before booking a date. Participants drive, as a rule, their own cars, which must be roadworthy, insured and fully compliant with the German StVZO regulations, and foreign registrations the centre "does not in principle recognise". ADAC Nordbayern does not insure participants' cars; one can buy daily casco (own-damage) insurance with a 500-euro excess for passenger cars, and a passenger who does not drive pays 30 euros.

Faster driving on the loop is offered by outside organisers and clubs. The school besser-sportlich-fahren.de runs a Sportfahrertraining with a search for the ideal line "on the small circuit of the ADAC training ground in Schlüsselfeld" or at the Neuhausen ob Eck airfield. The youngest are introduced to it by the ADAC Nordbayern Slalom Youngster Cup for drivers from 14, in two sport-prepared Opel Corsas; the basic sessions of the 2026 season are planned for 29 March in Schlüsselfeld. Clubs rent modules for their own test days. MC Lauf took the loop and the multi-purpose area on 23 March 2024 for its members: on the area stood a short slalom for warming up the tyres, and on the loop the climbs and descents alternated with corners of various radii. At around 17:00 on MC Lauf's test day the tidying began: the cones were packed away and the loop was swept with brooms of the pebbles from small excursions into the gravel, so that just before 18:00 the centre's custodian could take it over.

Timeline

• 2009: dispute over the planned ADAC centre in Höchstadt an der Aisch, over 2,500 signatures on a petition for a referendum.
• 20 January 2010: ADAC Nordbayern gives up on Höchstadt.
• March–April 2010: the Schlüsselfeld-Ost site is chosen, and at the beginning of April preparatory work is under way.
• 15 September 2011: opening of the centre.
• 2016: over 70,000 participants since the opening.
• 2017–2018: qualifiers of the "Fahrsicherheits-Profi" contest.
• from 16 March to 18 May 2020: closure because of the pandemic.
• 12–13 September 2020: rounds of the German slalom championship moved from spring.
• May 2021: the photovoltaic installation starts operating.
• October 2021: DMSB slalom championship finals, title for Martin Skrzipietz.
• 12–13 April 2025: two DMSB slaloms, including a round of the German championship (South region).