Hürtgen began racing in karting before progressing to German Formula Three. Her single-seater ambitions were cut short in 1993 during the Formula Three invitational race on the Monaco Grand Prix support programme, when a roll-over crash left her with serious hand injuries that ended her open-wheel career.
Rather than retiring from motorsport, she regrouped and returned to racing in 1995 through touring cars, winning the Austrian championship in her comeback season.
Hürtgen developed into a specialist in prototype and GT racing through the late 1990s and early 2000s. She competed in the American Le Mans Series in the LMP675 class, and accumulated class victories at prestigious events including the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Her ability to perform consistently in endurance racing over long stints made her a valued co-driver for top teams.
Between 2003 and 2004, she claimed back-to-back German championships in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Challenge (DTC), a series later renamed the DMSB-Produktionswagen-Meisterschaft (DPM).
In 2005, Hürtgen joined forces with Team Schubert in the VLN endurance racing championship on the Nürburgring Nordschleife and won the overall series title that year. The achievement made her the first female VLN champion since Sabine Schmitz had taken the title in 1998, a milestone that underlined her endurance racing credentials.
At the 2006 24 Hours Nürburgring, she drove two different cars across the event for a combined total of eleven hours, finishing fifth overall from a field of 220 entries while campaigning a 245 bhp BMW 120d — a performance that demonstrated her ability to manage machinery and pace judgment over marathon distances.
Hürtgen's partnership with Team Schubert reached a high point in 2011, when the squad competed as Team Need for Speed in the FIA GT3 European Championship and a selection of major endurance events. That season produced two landmark results: victory at the Dubai 24 Hour, which was the first major win for the BMW Z4 GT3, and a second-place finish overall at the Spa 24 Hours — a result made more remarkable by the fact that the car had started the race from 49th position on the grid. She also collected three podium finishes during the FIA GT3 season itself.
Her ADAC GT Masters record added further to her tally, with five race victories across the 2012–2014 period.
One of the more symbolic moments of Hürtgen's career came in 2000, when she returned to Monaco — the circuit where her crash had ended her single-seater aspirations seven years earlier — and won the Monaco Historic Grand Prix driving a Maserati, a personal statement of resilience and skill.
She revisited historic competition in 2022, winning the Série A2 race at the Historic Grand Prix of Monaco aboard a Ferrari 246, which is open to pre-1961 front-engined Grand Prix cars.
In 2021, Hürtgen extended her career into electric off-road racing, announced as co-driver alongside Mattias Ekström for ABT CUPRA XE in the inaugural Extreme E season. She competed in the opening round, the Desert X-Prix, before stepping back from the programme.
Claudia Hürtgen's career is defined by tenacity and versatility. Having rebuilt from a career-threatening crash that ended her path in single-seaters, she went on to win across GT3, touring cars, the Nürburgring endurance series, and historic racing over more than three decades of competition. Her 2011 Spa 24 Hours result — second overall from 49th on the grid — remains one of the most striking individual performances in recent German endurance racing history.