The circuit was constructed in 1971 on the outskirts of Nivelles, a city in the Belgian province of Walloon Brabant. Its designers, Roger Caignie and John Hugenholtz, were tasked with producing a venue that could alternate with Spa as the Belgian Grand Prix host in a scheme intended to serve both the Walloon and Flemish regions of the country. The resulting 3.724 km layout prioritised safety through wide run-off areas, gentle gradients, and generous corner radii — qualities that proved to be both its principal virtue and its most-cited failing.
The circuit's Formula One debut came at the 1972 Belgian Grand Prix, which Emerson Fittipaldi won from pole position driving for Lotus. Two years later, in 1974, Fittipaldi won again, this time representing McLaren-Ford. Denny Hulme set the fastest F1 race lap on the circuit during the 1974 event, recording a time of 1:11.31.
Despite producing clean and incident-free racing, Nivelles-Baulers attracted persistent criticism. Drivers widely described it as bland and sterile, lacking the character and challenge that made circuits such as Spa or Monaco enduring fixtures on the Formula One calendar. Spectators were equally dissatisfied, finding the layout kept them too far from the action to feel engaged with the racing. The circuit's single-operator structure left it financially fragile; the organising company went bankrupt in 1974, and it was only through a last-minute sponsorship effort that that year's Grand Prix could be staged at all.
The 1976 Belgian Grand Prix was scheduled to return to Nivelles, but the circuit's tarmac surface had deteriorated to a degree the FIA considered unsafe for Formula One, and the race was relocated. By 1980 the venue was deemed unfit for car racing altogether, though motorcycle events continued until 1981. When the circuit licence expired on 30 June 1981, Nivelles-Baulers closed permanently.
For the remainder of the 1980s and through most of the 1990s, the pit buildings and circuit remained standing and largely intact, unused but accessible to those who found their way onto the site. In the early 2000s the infrastructure was demolished and the land redeveloped as an industrial estate. Traces of the track layout remain faintly visible in the area, preserving a minimal record of a venue that lasted barely a decade as a live racing facility.
Nivelles-Baulers occupies an unusual place in Formula One history as a circuit that fulfilled its primary safety brief while failing almost every other criterion by which a Grand Prix venue is judged. It staged just two championship races across three years of activity, and is remembered mainly as a counterexample in debates about what makes a circuit compelling. The contrast with Spa — dangerous, elemental, beloved — could hardly have been more pointed. Fittipaldi's back-to-back victories there remain the circuit's only memorable statistical footnote.