The first trip of 2002, and the first trip in the Porsche 968. A memorable trip, mainly but not exclusively for the right reasons ...
Another trip, another set of tyres ... ho hum! The 968 had ContiSport Contacts on when I bought her. Predictably, with a new car to play with, these didn't last long. :-) Although they seemed pretty good, I decided to ask around and check out some tyre reviews. The tyre of choice for performance cars seemed to be Toyo Proxes T1-S, so it was off to my tyre guys to get a set fitted:
Next up was testing the new video switching system for the bulletcams. Unfortunately, one of the cameras seemed to have given up the ghost, so that will have to wait until May. I was, though, keen to see if I could install the VCR somewhere out of the way. A little creativity and a lot of fiddling later, I had this setup in place:
Electrics and frame-grabber in view, video nowhere to be seen
...
Porsche provided a handy vertical cubby-hole in the boot,
big enough for a VHS recorder wrapped in a blanket
The power & video leads feed through the rear seats into the
cabin
Unlike the MX-5, there isn't a conveniently deep spoiler for the camera, so I decided to start with the camera mounted in the car and then look at alternatives another time.
Packing the car was rather easier with so much more boot-space, the contents including my old helmets which Niek was inheriting in return for a few beers, and a spare set of pads after another 968-owning Ringer reported that a set of admittedly soft pads only lasted him 25 laps!
Have spare brake-pads, will travel
The new Sparco helmets, in their pretty box, were just slightly too tall for the spacious but shallow boot, so they had to go in what Porsche laughingly calls the rear seats:
The rear seats do serve some purpose, then
Then a rather slow journey down to Dover thanks to bank holiday traffic and some earlier fog, so I just missed my planned crossing. You'll have to bear with me here while I insert a totally gratuitous pic of my beautiful baby ...
This photo was required to, er, document Dover
I decided to see what route the new GPS would come up with left to its own devices. Although it came up with exactly the same route I take, it did have some peculiar ideas about how to implement it when it came to both Brussels and Liege. It also showed the difference the streetmaps make, as the base-map doesn't show the detail of slip-roads, etc, so can end up giving you misleading instructions: eg. 'Bear left' when you in fact need to exit right in order to take a slip-road which then crosses the motorway to head left.
Euan called when I was 10 minutes away, so I put in an order for a steak. When I arrived, I was astonished to see the Lindenhof almost completely deserted! It seems the messing around over the Easter opening times had kept lots of people away, so this suggested we might have a fairly quiet track.
Euan and Mike O had arrived in time to get three laps in that evening, and reported perfect conditions. After a pleasant meal, few drinks and lots of Ring chat, we headed off to bed shortly after midnight ready for an 8am start. My baby was also tucked up in bed: mindful of all the car thefts that occured last year, I had arranged garaging for her at my B&B:
All tucked up for the night
Friday was the big day: my first laps of the Ring in the 968. I was really, really looking forward to it, but also not a little apprehensive! I had horrible visions of nurfing it into the armco on my first lap. I was determined to take it very easy and allow myself plenty of time to get used to her.
My enthusiasm was evidenced by the fact that I was awake, showered, dressed and in the breakfast room at five past eight. Since anyone who knows my relationship to mornings will find this hard to believe, I felt this needed to be documented:
Yes, that is AM ...
The weather was absolutely perfect: dry, sunny and with stunning blue skies. Which probably explained the fact that the car-park was already crowded by 8.45am, though thankfully the track was still relatively quiet.
My baby at last where she belongs: at the Ring
I actually hated the first few laps. I had no idea where my braking points were, where I could put down the power and - most critically - what speed I could carry through the bends. I realised that my mental model of the Ring was a very simple one: this bend is flat in 4th in the MX-5, that bend is flat in 3rd in the MX-5, this other bend is flat in 5th in the MX-5 ... Braking points were relatively few and far between, and in almost every bend I used to just floor the throttle from the apex. None of this helped in the slightest with the 968: it really was like being a complete beginner at the Ring again.
The learning process wasn't helped by the fact that the track grew more and more crowded:
One one lap, I overtook four or five cars at T13 alone!
There were also a lot of slow bikes to be passed ...
... absolutely all over the place!
The carnage also began, though thankfully it mainly seemed to involve only minor injuries. Although I'd managed three back-to-back laps first thing, most of the day was literally single laps with the track closed by the time you completed the lap. There were some laps where it seemed like there was a crashed vehicle every three or four bends ...
I never did work out why so many cars were stopped here
One of the many (eight?) closures during the day
A biker down beween Pflanzgarten I and II, but he looked ok
Another closure
An incident in Kesselchen
Yet another closure, with cars abandoned just anywhere
On one lap, I came across a police car with blue lights on driving round the track. Another car was following it. We sat behind it, feeling it would be a little rude to overtake while he was obviously on his way to an accident, but it felt equally silly following him around at about 60mph. Eventually the car immediately behind him made a move through Eiskurve. I waited to see whether there were any signs of objection from the police. As they didn't appear to mind, I went through on the inside down Pflanzgarten I:
Overtaking blue flashing lights does feel odd!
We did manage to amuse ourselves during the closures ...
Robin trying the 968's 'rear seats' for size
Joerund adjusting his new GSXR
Me admiring the blueness of Robin's new Elise
And, of course, the mandatory 'Before' photo of Niek's 309
Since my posh new camera setup was going to have to wait, and the spoilercam view was very nice but a lot of hassle, I opted to simply mount the camera on the dash for now:
My bulletcam mounted on a sponge on my Geodesy docking bay
Alexander had an even neater bulletcam on his car, mounted on a sun-visor clip between the interior mirror and a second stick-on mirror for the benefit of his passenger. I thought this was an elegant solution, so will see whether I can organise something similar for the next trip:
Spot the camera!
At one point, I almost got into the wrong car when a 944 Cabriolet parked next to mine. Despite the very different looks from the front, they look remarkably similar from the side. It was the same colour and had the same leather seats:
The red, water-cooled Porsche club, Nurburg branch
The many closures meant that my usual pattern was a single lap, much of which was spent dodging crashed vehicles, followed by a closure while they cleared up the mess. All of these laps were solo, as I didn't want to risk anyone else's neck while I got used to having twice as much power. I did finally manage 14 laps in the course of the day, the last three of which were back-to-back. I still have masses to learn about the 968 at the Ring, but by the time I'd completed those three, I was starting to feel like I was getting into the groove. Having decided that my mistakes had now dropped from potentially lethal to merely embarrassing, I decided that I'd start offering passenger laps the following day.
The first pic I have of my baby doing its stuff - thanks,
Mike :-)
As I wanted to make the most of the time for 968 familiarisation, I only took a couple of passenger laps myself. The first was in Richard's GT3 ClubSport. I really need one of those. The second was with Espen. I thought it had to be done once. His outstanding car-control skills are matched only by his craziness. A lap with Espen is something you don't forget!
And so to the Ringers dinner. The system we've used for the dinners for a while is to take bookings via smartgroups, then I book four spare places, about six extra people turn up, we squeeze in the extra couple and all is well. This system failed for the first time on this trip. With 18 places booked, 33 people turned up! Unfortunately this meant that the last group to arrive couldn't be fitted in, so I think I'm going to have to be a lot stricter about the booking system next time so that those who have booked definitely get seats while everyone else has to take pot-luck.
But the usual good time was had, with alcohol-fueled tales of derring-do interspersed with comparisons of different tyres, brake-pads, discs, lines, brake-points, gear-choices, cars, bikes, passengers, meals and beers.
The Ringers dinner at Fuchsrohre
What a difference a day makes! While Saturday was a bit greyer than Friday, it was still bone dry, but this time the car-park was half-empty and the track only got busy for the odd isolated lap. Most of the time it was very quiet, and there was only two closures, neither of which appeared serious. It really was the perfect Ringing day.
Having had a day to get the feel of the 968, I decided that what was needed now was a bit of consolidation - not pushing for more progress, but just repeating laps at the speeds I'd already established. I thus declared myself open for passenger laps. I mainly gave laps to the usual suspects, but also to a few new faces. I think I only had one solo lap all day.
I was really, really enjoying the 968 and pretty much spent the whole day doing two or three laps back-to-back (stopping long enough only to swap passengers), then a 20-minute break then back out for another two or three laps. I'd notched up 25 laps by the end of the day. I was still making mistakes, mainly through not yet being able to consistently judge where the car would slide to, but none that felt too worrying.
I was also able to form an impression of the Toyo Proxes. While I think describing the tyre as 'ultra high performance' is pushing it somewhat - the ultimate grip could be better - I ended up impressed. They give a lot of feedback, and slide progressively. I'm fairly sure that once I have more experience of the 968 round the Ring, I'll be able to predict the degree of slide as accurately as I could with SO2s. The wear rate on the 968 was good - after four days at the Ring, only the outer shoulder and about 20% of the outer tread of the front tyres was gone. The rears were in good shape, and I was able to swap the front tyres in order to keep them for the May trip also. That makes them significantly cheaper than SO-2s for identical characteristics and just slightly less ultimate grip. I think I'll fit them again next time.
One of my passengers commented that the 968 was pretty exclusive in these surroundings, and I had to agree: I only spotted two others, while you could barely move in the car-park for 911s ...
I swapped passenger laps with Tony, owner of the above 911 Turbo. 400bhp was rather nice, and it had brakes to match. Tony reckoned the 968 handled better, but I wouldn't mind putting this theory to the test. :-)
968s weren't the most exclusive car in the car-park, though:
After failing to keep up with M3 John, I took him out for a passenger lap so he could give me some tips. :-)
M3 John
For some reason, noise-testing was being done in a very big way on both Friday and Saturday. Marshalls with noise-meters were positioned just past the barriers all day long. At least three Ringers were turned away, and we saw many others suffering the same fate. Rob went off to a local plumbing supplies shop to get the necessary components to construct a DIYR7 silencing kit. Amazingly, what is shown below was enough to pass the test!
The silencing work in progress
The finished result - could almost have been factory-fitted ...
Towards the end of the day, a Ringer called Soren introduced himself as the guy who had hired an SL500 for the weekend. I gave him a lap in the 968, and then he took me out in the Merc. It was a somewhat surreal experience. Despite having the performance and grip of a very capable sportscar, the cabin was so well sound-proofed and the ride so soft that you felt quite detached from what the car was doing. Also, as a rental car, it was an automatic.
A weekend hire, including insurance and 1500km, was just €300
/ £200!
Unfortunately the softness of the suspension was a bit of a liability. It bottomed-out on bumps, and there was a loud bang in Fuchsrohre, followed by the sound of the tyre rubbing on something. This sounded a bit ominous, but Fuchsrohre is no place to stop for a look, and as it was getting dark Soren drove very slowly and carefully on.
Between Adenaur-Forst and Metzgesfled, there was another bang and the rubbing noise ceased. We both thought that whatever was rubbing had burst the tyre. Since changing a tyre at the side of the track is definitely not recommended (despite the guy who did this earlier on the inside of Brunnchen!), we continued very slowly on to Breidscheid. There we discovered that the tyre was fine, and the bang had been the wheel-arch trim falling off!
There used to be a plastic trim inside this arch ...
Now that we knew the car was ok, we drove back to the office and asked if we could go in the safety car to retrieve the missing plastic. They said that the track was closed and this wouldn't be possible, but if Soren came back shortly before 8am he could go round with the safety car then. I hope he managed this - I wasn't there early enough to find out.
We headed to Pistenklause for dinner. The previous night, 18 people booked and 33 turned up. This evening, 4 people booked and about 18 turned up, but there was more room so we managed fine.
People gradually drifted off until there were about six or seven of us left at 1am. Euan nipped back to fetch Mike's camcorder as they had been filming at Adenaur-Forst and Fuchsrohre, and had got footage of quite a few of us. We watched this, and then most of us headed to bed while Euan wandered over to Fuchsrohre.
I'd decided that after a brilliant day, and rain forecast on Sunday, I was going to enjoy the evening and then not be in a hurry to wake in the morning - especially as the clocks went forward and we lost an hour's sleep.
Given how early Easter was this year, I would have been more than happy with the two days of perfect weather we'd had, but Sunday was yet another dry and sunny day:
Rather different to a year ago!
I was again doing plenty of laps, and really enjoying myself.
The 968 was as happy as the MX-5 over the flat-topped kerbs
Though the wheel arches were grinding-out in a few places
I did, of course, find time to spot a 355. A group of Brits who had been booked on the WheelTorque event had decided to come anyway when it was cancelled, and I was not slow in asking for a passenger lap in this. Unfortunately he was having problems with the oil pressure, so only did a few laps, so I didn't get the chance until the following day.
If anyone was wondering what to buy me for xmas ...
Another Brit who wasn't having much luck with his car was John, in his Caterham 7. I saw it parked up at the side of the track on several laps, the most alarming of which was when two wheel bolts snapped in Fuchsrohre! Fortunately the wheel stayed on and he made it up to Adenaur Forst. He was then able to get replacement bolts at the tyre shop in Adenau:
Snapped wheel bolts in Fuchsrohre, and still in one piece!
Have new wheel bolts, will travel the Ring
Rob of R7 fame was having further silencing troubles as yesterday's creative solution failed to last. The MkII silencing device was the bottom of a Red Bull can with holes poked in it and jammed into the end of the straight-through can. This worked fine until the pressure of the exhaust gases caused it to fold up on itself and rob the bike of almost all its power. In his own words: "45mph up Kesselchen - not bad for a World Superbike, eh?".
Euan was having troubles of a different kind in Pflanzgarten II. He lost the back coming over the crest, over-corrected and put the front wheels on the grass on the other side. The car then did a 180 so that it was sliding backwards down the grass. It then continued spinning, completing a 360 with the car back on the track facing in the correct direction. And all without touching the armco! How lucky was that?!
Euan's BMW, completely unmarked after his adventure
The real luck of the weekend, amazingly, happened on the very same lap. Niek came into Brunnchen 1 sideways, as he does, when the car caught and rolled. It rolled all the way over and back onto its wheels, and neither Niek nor his passenger were hurt. I saw the car parked up on the inside, but by the time I realised it was Niek, I was too far past to safely stop. I had, though, seen that Niek was standing by the car and didn't appear to be hurt. I went back round to check that he was ok, and the safety car was on-scene and the track closed just after I set off.
Before ...
... After
If you're wondering how I manage to get a 'before' pic from exactly the same angle as the 'after' pic, it's because I'd earlier taken the precaution of photographing Niek's car from every angle. :-) Admittedly I had expected a bit of armco grazing rather than the actual result.
His passenger, Clare, was there at the Ring for the first time. She was planning a bike trip in May, and Adrian invited her along to get an, er, gentle introduction to the Ring via some car passenger laps. She wasn't hurt either, aside from some bruising, but was glad of a ride back to the car-park to save waiting around for the recovery truck.
Still smiling!
Niek did of course have to endure the attentions of the car-park as he arrived back in the recovery truck:
Fortunately for him, the Ringers dinner was a much smaller affair, most people having already made their plans to depart on Sunday before the revised calendar was announced. There were thus only seven of us to ... discuss ... his incident:
The Ringers dinner on Sunday night at Fuchsrohre
They say that confession is good the the soul, so I brought my palmtop and IR mobile along so that Niek could email the list without delay:
Niek composing his confession
And the confession itself
Sabine told me that one of her friends had been spectating at Brunnchen and witnessed the incident. He had also seen me pick up Clare, and had recounted it to Sabine as a Dutch guy rolling a car with his girlfriend on board and the girlfriend then dumping him for a Brit in a Porsche. :-)
Sabine had said at the end of last year that she would thank me for bringing her so many customers in the form of Ringers dinners by driving my car for a lap to show me what it could do. True to her word, she said she'd do this the following day at 1pm, so that gave me the a strong motivation to ensure my carcam was working properly - I'd earlier found that the power lead was working its way out of the socket during a lap.
And so to bed, ready for the final day of the Easter RingFest.
Monday might best be described as a mixed day ...
The weather was again perfect! This is four whole days, at the Ring, during an unusually early Easter, and we didn't have a single drop of rain while the track was open, nor a single patch of damp tarmac! Astonishing. Ring weather defines the word 'unpredictable'.
Another Easter Ring day, more blazing sun
The irony was that I wouldn't have minded a wet day - having had three dry days in the 968, I was interested to see what the wet handling would be like. Though given the absence of tread on my tyres by this time, perhaps that wouldn't have been a recommended experiment by this time.
Who stole my tyre tread and painted my rims black?
Niek had been unable to secure a lift home, so his parents were collecting him. I'm not saying that he's in trouble with his mum, but I took a couple of photos to save time processing the paperwork later:
(Number plates shown with Niek's permission - no
insurance claim involved.)
It's the law that no 355 is allowed to escape my attentions, so I bagged a lap in the British one I'd spotted the previous day. Unlike many Ferraris at the Ring, this one was being driven properly, so it was a most enjoyable lap.
And then it was time for Sabine to take the wheel of my 968 and show me how it should be driven. :-) As she didn't bring her own helmet, it's a good job I changed my scrappy ones for some Sparcos:
Sabine about to take the wheel of my 968
And setting off for the lap (Photo: Stephane Veraart of www.8200rpm.com)
The lap was as enjoyable as you'd imagine. Sabine made it all look very easy. While I doubt she'd appreciate billions of Ringers asking her to do the same with them, I would thoroughly recommend a ride in the Ring Taxi with Sabine driving.
We then swapped seats and I took the wheel for a lap so that Sabine could give me some tips. I knew when I was getting it right because Sabine gave a big thumbs up and a 'Good, good!'. Suffice it to say I only got that on a few bends! She pointed out where I could use more of the track, but the biggest piece of advice she gave was to use a fixed grip on the wheel rather than feeding it through my hands. While BSM may not approve of crossed arms, Sabine pointed out that this made it much easier when a correction was required: both because it was faster, and because you would know when the wheels were straight without looking.
Sabine certainly knows how to treat her bulk-booking customers well! No prizes for guessing where the Ringers dinner will be in May.
I had a slight problem getting a gear on the lap with Sabine, and this then happened again on a subsequent lap. Although it wasn't a problem at speed, it got massively worse when I selected first on arrival back at the car-park: lots of noise from the clutch, vibration through the clutch pedal and great difficulty pulling away. The clutch was definitely on its last legs.
This was particularly annoying as I'd had work done on it a few weeks earlier. This was initially diagnosed as clutch failure and then rediagnosed as a hydraulic pipe failure. Now either the same component had failed again or, as seems more likely, the clutch itself was the true culprit. But thankfully it had waited until mid-afternoon on the final day of the trip!
I said my goodbyes and set off for Calais, hoping to nurse the car home by minimising the number of gear-changes and doing clutchless changes wherever possible. This was working fine until I spotted some brakelights in the distance on the E40 about 20 miles past Eupen. As I tried to go from 6th to 5th, the clutch pedal went to the floor and didn't come back up again. The transmission was disengaged, and I had to coast over from lane 3 to the hard shoulder.
Then the fun began. After a previous appalling experience with Green Flag, I hadn't actually had time to investigate alternatives, so was still stuck with them. True to form, the emergency number went onto hold and stayed there for 45 minutes. I had walked to an emergency phone also but that was out of order!
I was close to a junction, so walked back to that and found a Pizza Hut restaurant and asked to use their payphone so that I could call a Belgian recovery company and ask them to sort it out with Green Flag. The payphone turned out to only accept smartcards, so that was out, but I'd got a number from the telephone directory and called that on my mobile, leaving the restaurant while I was on the phone.
That would have been an ideal time to pick up my wallet from where I had put it next to the payphone. In fact, that would have been the only time to pick it up, because when I realised that I'd left it there not more than a minute later, I returned to find no sign of it. The staff checked and nobody had handed it in, so it seems that a thief had stolen it in the space of about two minutes.
A brief phone call to the police for form's sake, and I made my way back to my car. To find an unmarked police car behind it (a silver Audi A4, as a matter of passing interest). As I hadn't got through to the local breakdown company, the police called them for me. Ah well, there could have been worse circumstances under which to have a discussion with the occupants of an unmarked car, and at least I kept him occupied for about half an hour as he stayed to protect the scene for the breakdown truck pickup. So any Ringers who were passing the Eupen area at around 3.30-4pm owe me a beer. :-)
The police called a local company who recovered me off the motorway and to a local depot. I finally succeeded in reaching Green Flag who proposed to pay this guy to recover me to Calais. As the truck was about 100 years old and the driver about the same, I didn't much fancy this and asked them to arrange a proper distance carrier. Green Flag were remarkably efficient once I'd spent 75 minutes getting through to them. They faxed the local recovery guy to confirm his bill would be paid by them, and 45 minutes later the proper truck arrived. This was modern, had all the proper gear and a driver who spoke good English.
Somewhere in Belgium
While this wasn't quite what I had in mind for the trip home, I guess if you're going to end a Ring trip on a recovery truck, a breakdown in Belgium is not the worst way to do it! The journey itself was fine, and P&O are obviously highly experienced at these situations as they handled it very smoothly, meeting the recovery truck with a tow-truck who pulled me on board.
Green Flag had arranged for a British breakdown truck to meet me at Dover, collect the car and drop me off a car-hire company where a car would be waiting for me. The breakdown company would store the car securely overnight, then drop it to a specialist the next day. Meantime, I'd drive home in the hire-car which was mine for 24 hours. They didn't tell me what the car would be, but I guessed I'd probably be arriving home a little less stylishly than I left it ...
American Express were, however, not doing so well. I have both a chargecard and a travel insurance policy with Amex. Each offers an emergency cash advance of £200 to cover this sort of eventuality, so I had up to £400 available for the asking. In bank hours. Outside of bank hours, you would think it would be an extremely simple matter to arrange to either get me some cash via the ferry bureaux de change or to simply authorise payment for lounge access and some food.
At first it seemed it would indeed be that simple. Within 20 minutes, they were able to give me the number of my new card, and to put a note on the computer system that the authorisation centre was to authorise any charges I made to the card that night without actually having the card in my possession. They told me that if I quoted the new number on board the ferry, and asked them to call for authorisation, all would be well.
The purser on board the P&O ferry, one Dave Barrow, was very happy to do this. Except he couldn't get through to Amex card services. And nor could I when I tried while on board. I tried Amex insurance again, but they said all they could do was put me through to card services, which was still playing Greensleeves at me. Eventually, the purser took pity on me and agreed to authorise whatever I wanted on board and trust me to pay it back afterwards. So Amex, who I pay £185 a year to look after me in these situations, did nothing, while P&O, who I pay to take me across the channel, did their job for them. I think I feel a letter to the Chief Exec coming on. (As well as a complimentary letter to Mr Barrow's boss.)
When I got to Dover, and was dropped off at the car-hire company, I discovered what my vehicle was going to be for the next 24 hours. After taking the piss out of Niek with Before and After pics, I guess it's only fair that I do the same with myself, so below are my vehicles in Dover before and after the Easter Ring trip ...
Before ...
After ...
A close-up of that badge!
I finally arrived at home at 03:15, profoundly grateful that I had booked Tuesday off work.
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