Bigpower

Just a few notes to diarise my feelings at this point;

I'm all ready to rock and roll. The car is topped up with fuel, the coolant levels are fine, tyres checked and a multitude of CD's are in place to try and convince Tanya the car isn't that loud on our 180 mile leg tonight. I reckon I'll get to Thetford before she starts to comment. Oops.
It dawned on me yesterday that my ADAC cover hadn't come through. These guys are the equivalent of our AA but they are far cheaper and are the only company happy and allowed to collect/retrieve cars if you have an incident on the 'Ring itself. I struggled to find the number and eventually, in my very broken German, tried to establish whether they had received my papers (Jawohl Herr Staples) I got confirmation of my membership number from Matthias and that was another little thing crossed off the list.
So with the peripheral details taken care of I can finally focus on the task ahead. 18 mates making a 960 mile or thereabouts round trip will be epic. Even excluding the Nordschleife itself, the run through Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Essex and Kent will be a grin. Once we cross the channel things will take a much more serious stance. I understand that we are meeting up with Zak from Mocom and his mates at the Eurotunnel itself. Also Gary from Northloop site will be acting as chief navigator once on the other side. As a 'Ring veteran, Gary's experience should prove invaluable in the next few days. That and the fact that he thinks he can get us into the Pistenklause!!

I have just seen Dave and Matt Woods off and they'll meet Dunk, George, Chris and Ken who are already there. Eight of us will be leaving here at 8pm sharp as try and get there before the others empty the bar :lol:
More to follow.

Update
I have to be honest, I've read the reports from the other protagonists and decided to severely edit my report, simply due to my appreciation for the quality of your write ups :thumb: Well done guys.

Edited highlights

1) Night out in Folkestone- Dean and Nigel started as they meant to go on. After hearing all about their TV show (http://www.deanandnigel.co.uk for more details) this was the first I saw of the double act. Never before have I seen a 36 year old man impersonate a persian cat whilst lying down on a bar in the pub! (please, someone tell me we have a photo of that)
2) Hotel in Folkestone- Rooms stunk of parafin, were tiny and had paper mache walls. Great breakfast though and close to the Eurotunnel. Having Nigel and Dean in the room next door, I feel I have to comment on Nigels laughter. Piercing and shrill like a harpees song. Bastard.
3) Eurotunnel there. Quick and efficient. Great bogs too :thumb:
4) France- nice roads, terrible pikey Shell stations. Great porn! They serve Kronenbourg with Big Macs, they can't be all bad.


5) Belgium- what a shit hole. Sorry if anyone takes offence but they obviously don't want people to use the roads with autoroutes like that. Crap food and anti-terrorist style serving hatches at the petrol stations. Glad to leave.




6) Proper stuff- Our arrival at Nurburg was pre-empted by a glorious winding 20 mile country road which lead us through the hills of Kelberg and the surrounding villages. A fine chance to play chicken with mental German yokels. Groovy. The Dunkinator lead our convoy (to certain doom on occasions) and we made great progress across these last few miles. We filled up with fuel again and I took this point to add some methanol to the fuel to protect against det. Nice tip from Zak and that reminds me, I still owe you some dollars for the meths We arrived after five and a half hours of mixed driving to a rather surreal place. A very quiet village in the Eiffel mountains and yet most of the drives we passed had a Porsche, tuned BM or even a Ring taxi style car out front. It was clear where the priorities were from the moment we turned up.



Our motley group of cars grouped by the village centre as the sat-navs gave up. Well to be honest, one in particular didn't give up, but when you have 4 different ones, which one do you believe? Information was gleaned from the Hills have Eyes style local and we made a very gentle 400 yard cruise to the Ringhaus, home of Mungo Racing and Frank Hiersekorn and his wonderful staff. The weather had been fair until our arrival but now the sun shone, the clouds cleared and we were all faced with a short respite before the Nordschelife pulled us on like an old welly. This respite gave Frank, a seasoned racer, the chance to scare the living shit out of Tanya and I. He recounted the three deaths of Touristfahren day attendees this year and the one fatality by a pro-racer. Four people dead on a piece of road where everyone drives in the same direction and no junctions!? All of a sudden, Corum at 100+ didn't seem like a big deal. I should have braced myself for it, but the shock of my first lap left me stunned like an overhand right from Lennox Lewis when he could fight a bit. To add a frission of excitement, we had been told about the Scuderia bringing many arrive and drive 360's, 430's and the odd 612 as well as rapid GT3's. All with people hiring the cars and driving the nuts off of them, like a 200mph rentacar on the most dangerous 13 mile strip of tarmac anywhere outside of Afghanistan.
7) We arrived at around 3.30pm and at 5pm we, mostly, were in the car park fighting for position with the other bikes, cars and supercars all jostling for position to get out onto the 12.9 mile ribbon of car killing tarmac. 16 euros for a lap is simply a bargain and I'm sure the GMBH owned Ring do very well indeed out of public donations. Time for the bollocks to stop and time for peeps to walk the walk. It was at this point that I wanted to walk the walk back to the hotel. My confidence had diminished and my first two laps didn't help.



8) Green Hell- I was fortunate enough to get a two lap ticket from Simon Cross which gave me a headstart in the queues. The circuit was packed. The bike trackday boys had obviously decided that they would hang on and show the cars that two wheels are better than four.












The GT3's, Ferraris and collective CSL's were more than happy to prove their argument. And 9 little hobbits from the shire were caught right in the crossfire. Arse! I've done a few trackdays, around 40 from a recent count up. I've done Cadwell in light showers, Snetterton in snow and ice, Donington in an Integra ( ) and felt that I was pretty well organised for this trip. Oh dear. How foolish. I knew nothing. The biggest surprise was how quickly my confidence disappeared out of the window. Little fish and very large pond. With sharks. And Piranhas. Truth be told I very nearly didn't go out at all on the second day, such was my concern for my wife, health and safety of the car. Not very 'walk the walk'. Quite humbling to have to face your own demons and having no options but to get in your car, fasten your harness and get out there and do it. One thing when you're confident in your ability. Quite another when you're obviously rattled by your situation, pressurised by your fellow track users. Testing.
Others have covered the severity of the gradients, the sheer length of the track which causes loss of concentration, the pressure caused by bikes, regulars, exotica. I won't repeat their already well chosen words. I would merely offer these words of information;
- If you love driving and cars, please visit the Nurburgring.
- If you are concerned about your car or your wallet, think carefully. If you hit the armco, prepare for 1000 euros per metre. If you drop oil on the track prepare for track closure. Prepare to be bent over and raped (financially) Stoppages are not tolerated. If you stop others enjoying the track your going to make up for it. I know of one individual that had had a

What an excellent write up stu, it shows youve taken the time and effort in it.

Would love to go to the ring but there is only 2 things stopping me;

1. Dont trust the car enough for there and back.
2. If you were uneasy driving round there at first i deffo wouldnt be up to scratch.

But maybe once ive got a bit more experience and tracks under my belt ill join you guys(and gals) because it looked like an all round superb trip.

Glad to hear everyone made it back ok without any problems.

So when are the vids coming??

superb stu

glad you enjoyed it afterall - the laps on the wednesday were just what the doctor ordered.....

Another great write-up Stu. I'd love to do it some time and I'm positive I'll be crapping myself when the time comes!

Cheers,
Alex

Stu you never fail to give the reader a birds eye view - You have now scared me totally .... ... so I think when we plan 2007 - we need to work out the most unpopular weekend and then go !!.

Excellent write up

Also Stuart - you haven't passed judgement on how the Skyline dealt with the Nurburgring?

You seem to capture the essence so well on your write ups........exellent stuff Stu 8)

So gutted I could not go

Awesome write up as always Stu, looks like some mental machines there.

I agree with Robin, I dont have the faith in my car to get there and back and Ben told me about the expenses involved when you hit the armco.

Would love to go though, can you hire cars at the track ?

Also in your opinion whats the best car to have to take on the Nurburgring ? I reckon you could have just as much pleasure in an old Fiesta XR2i (the turbo one), a Golf etc as you could in your full blown Skyline or the other mental machines.

Look forward to the vids

I do have a full lap video'd by Dean and Nigel following in the silver wagon. It's quite a large file (around 2 gig) and I have no idea how to upload it. I will have a play later on.
The biggest compliment I can pay to the Skyline is how much faster she could have coped with the track. I was the problem, the car was fine! My paddle clutch is a pig and I'll be changing that when I can. It doesn't slip at all but I have always found it unhelpful when moving at low speeds. The brakes were good, tyres, excellent and the handling was truly superb. The top end grunt was a bit worrying if anything, because full bore in fourth at high revs means quite a high speed. A bit dangerous when you as the driver have lower than normal bottle and your knowledge of the circuit is gleened from a video game.
I will be going back to the Ring as soon as I can, but probably driving the Sierra or a purpose built Ring car. The freedom to really push a car has been great on UK tracks in the past and over there it would be truly liberating. Its one thing worrying at replacing Armco at a thousand euros a metre but quite another fixing a blown gearbox/clutch/engine through sustained abuse. At 12.9 miles a lap, under hard use most cars will 'wilt' slightly. Carrying speed through the bends seems to be the key to good lap times. Our host at the hotel, Frank, races a diesel Golf with around 150bhp. He can lap in around 8,20 so he is one example of BHP not being the the ultimate requirement. Practice and commitment are the only things that will guarantee quick times. But that's based on my very limited knowledge and my clinging to the hope that the Sierra will be kinder to my ego :lol: