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
