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Our September trip to the Nurburgring started at 5.45 am on saturday morning with the alarm clock going off (not that I could sleep anyway) and getting ready to roll down the road to meet Chris at Birchanger services on the M11 at 6.30 and head to folkestone for the normal eurotunnel over to calais.
The Eurotunnel terminal was heaving and saw several cars in the queues obviously going over to the mecca of cars. 2 Forresters, 1 CRX, an Alfa 75 and a couple of others (all co-incidentally staying at the ringhaus). This built the anticipation of the days to come. Hoping that it would be mostly dry but quietly wanting it to rain so that I could have a go in the wet and see how different it was.
We arrived at the Ringhaus in Nurburg (200metres from the nordschleife entrance) and set to book into the room and unload the car of all the spares, tyres and bags ready for the circuit to open. The roads on the way there had been damp but it was clear (ish) and set for a dry evening (we thought). Ready to go at 5pm we headed down to the circuit to have a coffee before the first lap of the evening. This was going to have to be an easy lap with Chris following us round on a damp track. We did make reasonable progress around the track after the initial rush was through the barriers and were suprised to see cars off already.... this was to truly be the tone of the weekend. The car park was busy with very little space in either of the main car parks at this point.
We went out another 2 times on sat evening before it was eventually shut early because of a rather large accident too close to the official closure time.
I apologise for the lack of pictures of cars but I guess you have all seen cars before and not having the camera handy at appropriate times I decided that it would be easier to leave it in the room and make excuses
Our experiences on track were spoilt somewhat by the car overheating on the way back into the paddock each time and losing lots of water out the top of the expansion tank. I kept filling it up, bleeding the air out but still it did it. Thinking the worst, I changed the map to reduce the boost down to 1.3 bar first of all to see if it helped and would try this out tomorrow on the hopefully dry track.
Dinner at Pinnochios was as usual fantastic value for a wheel sized pizza and beers (cheers for the lift Chris :thumb:) with Vamos, Joel to name a few of the many guys were chatting to. Sadly, old age is getting the better of my memory so I am crap with names.
Woken in the middle of the night with rain outside the window. hmmm
day 2
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8am track opening for the brave or foolish in the wet of the morning.
It had stopped briefly i think but was still sodden so I decided it was good to go hoping that the wet and reduced boost now would solve my overheating problem so I could at least get some laps in and experience it
I was wrong - thankfully as it turned out later - the overheating still continued. More bleeding of air from my 99% water based coolant system now and more fannying around with the bonnet up at the ringhaus (cant do it in the main carpark
) This time we took more time to bleed it thinking that it would be better.The car parks and overflow car parks, roads around the area were jammed to the rafters at this point with hugge numbers of cars and people there all anxious to get laps in but worried about the weather or in some cases not worried enough about the weather judging by the amount of new armco the Nurburging Gmbh had received money for by the end of the day.
Another lap - another very hot engine when we came back ... grrr
The day continued along this way until I got fed up and with some detective work we deduced that the thermostat must be stuck closed. I then drained the coolant out of the system and dropped the thermostat out to see it had indeed jammed shut. This was to be solved with the courtesy of a 4mm drill to drill 6 holes in it to make it permanently flow
The car was reassembled at 8.15pm in time for us to run down the the PK for a meal with the rest of the gang and spent most of the evening chatting with Juanjo and Rachel - really great to meet you both :thumb: After all the work on the car and the relief of knowing that my headgasket hadnt gone I was ready for a session and the beers were going down very well indeed
Thank god we were'nt on track in the morning.day 3
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So far I had managed 3 laps on saturday and only 5 during sunday's full day - today must be better.
George and I headed up to the Bergstube to help Juanjo fit the fuel surge kit that he had bought from Zen and got delivered to me to bring over with me. This was fitted in no time at all whilst we chatted and drank coffee to try and get rid of the hangovers from the PK beerathon. Thanks to Martin's hospitality up there :thumb:
As usual we all amassed in the paddock pre-opening. Simon was there too and wanting to get many laps in having changed discs on his Subaru after cracking one of the new AP discs the day before (whilst taking it easy on the new 6 pots)
The track was pretty dry as it wasnt actually raining but a sighting lap was a definite after the myriad of accident that had occurred the day before.
This revealed two sets of roadworks - one on the straight between flugplatz and SX and the other around the inside and exit off the karussel where 1 of the three smashed Civic Type - R's had been written off.
Another lap and the track was almost dry now so I decided to follow Juanjo out in his bug-eye impreza for a fast lap after filling up with petrol. This was great having someone in the same car to chase - pushing myself to take speed through corners and the resulting exit speed giving us a superb lap with the two sets of roadworks and a lot of traffic of 9.02. I was very pleased about this and was about to go to hotel to change to the Yoko A048's and go out again when the heavens opened - which is how they stayed for the rest of the day
Still, I managed a total of 9 laps on Monday afternoon with 6 in the total wet trying to find the wet lines.
For the evening we decided to head up the the Bergstube (sister hotel of the ringhaus) for a BBQ with Simon, Weeman, Jon_r & co and what a great evening it was. I am glad we went back to a hotel room rather than camping like you lot. I hope it <s>was</s> wasnt very cold.
day 4
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Great trip back along a different route as we decided to miss the roadworks in Gerolstein - ended up near Malmedy before hitting the E42 and cruising up through Belgian. Not the quickest route though I dont think.
All in all a trip of firsts...
- first wet lap (actually did 14 wet laps)
- first partially damp track
- first time not braking down the Fuchsr
.that's why when we went out in the wet we stayed off the normal racing lines, in an attempt to dtay on the tarmac :-D 
but never mind i'll be there next year i've got some plans comeing over the winter time 
