The August trip was one which showed both sides of the Ring. What would have been an excellent trip was overshadowed by the death of two women pillion riders in a two-bike accident in Wippermann. I didn't feel like writing a trip report for a while, hence the delay in this one appearing.
10-12th August was the Oldtimers GP, so finding somewhere to stay turned out to be something of a challenge. My usual B&B was fully-booked, they couldn't find anywhere else, all the places on my Where to Stay page were full and even a place I'd stayed at before some 8 miles away had no room.
Euan was again cadging a lift over, so we both started working our way further afield. We actually both found somewhere at the same time, but Euan's find was nearer so we kept that one. It turned out to be about six miles from Nürburg, along a road which is worth a drive next time there's a closure or you're otherwise stuck for something to do. Drive through Adenau then, at the end of the town, take the left fork. After a brow, take the right turn signposted for Shun(?). It's a semi-singletrack road with lots of delicious bends.
Booking in was a complex business. As no single rooms were available, Euan had booked two doubles, agreeing that we would each pay the two-person rate. On arrival, however, the landlady couldn't seem to cope with the fact that there were only two of us. Much confusing conversation was had in pidgin English with the occasional German word thrown in just to further confuse matters. Eventually Euan told her that two more people were arriving tomorrow and this seemed to satisfy her sufficiently. We then followed a car to a separate apartment where we were actually staying. For £44 a night between us, we had the top floor of the building: two double-bedrooms, a bathroom, a living-room, a kitchen and a balcony overlooking the surrounding countryside:
Once finally able to dump our bags, we drove back to Nürburg to Sabine's new bar, the Fuchsröhre, to join Anders, some friends of his, and Niek. I'd expected to find Sabine holding court at the bar while flunkies did the actual waitressing, but no, Sabine herself was our waitress. The woman is drop-dead gorgeous, a phenomenal driver and now she owns a bar in Nürburg ... is that perfection or what?
Sabine, as another admirer looks on
The other waitress was also cute. For entirely unrelated reasons, I think Fuchsröhre could be getting our business for future Ringers dinners ...
The other waitress at Fuchsröhre
Surprisingly, for Sabine's place, there wasn't a huge motorsport theme, but some of her race trophies do sit on a shelf along the top of one wall:
The weather the next morning looked superb. Some low cloud in the valleys, just to provide atmosphere, but an otherwise clear and sunny day:
Arriving in the car-park, we spotted Olivier and his 340R:
Sadly I didn't manage to get my planned passenger lap in it, but next time. A friend of Olivier's was also there in his Elise.
The Ring was pretty much deserted first thing, so managed to get some beautifully clear laps. After an hour or so, things started getting busier, and it soon became clear that our expectations of a very crowded track due to the Oldtimer crowds were going to be met.
Being the Oldtimers weekend, it wasn't long before the car-park started filling up with tasty elderly machines. Sadly, rather a lot of them were being driven by people who had little idea what they were doing but who didn't think that their 911, Ferrari or whatever should be overtaken by an MX-5, so they were haring off down the straights and weaving around in the corners, making it next to impossible to overtake because you couldn't tell what they might do next.
A notable example was a 348 who clearly didn't know the track at all but who didn't want me to overtake. When he was approaching Schwedenkreuz totally off-line, you could tell that he was going to crash a good 20 seconds before he did. He went into the bend right round the outside and, when it tightened up, lost the rear and put it on the dirt on the right. He threw loads of dust into the air, careered diagonally across the track, hit the left kerb with an expensive-sounding bang and then threw up even more dust on that side.
I had slowed right down, having seen this coming, but didn't fancy coming to a halt at that point on the circuit, so hoped he was staying put for a moment and drove blind through the dust. I heard later that he'd tried to drive off but had given up halfway down Fuchsröhre, so had managed to move himself from a relatively safe place on the grass to one of the most dodgy parts of the track.
This F50 was also being driven ridiculously badly, doing about 10mph into the bends and braking every 10 feet. He was blocking everything, and was nearly rear-ended more times than I could count. Given his total unpredictably, I wasn't willing to risk overtaking him without him letting me, so after following him all the way from Hohe Acht to Metzgesfeld, indicating and flashing to no avail, I finally stood on the horn and persuaded him to move over:
Nice car, but ...
I later found out why it was being driven so tentatively: apparently it was a French youth who had taken his dad's car without his knowledge! Let's hope his father doesn't visit my website, eh?
We ran into Niek very early on Saturday, there with his latest disposable Ring toy: a Sierra. There was already a dent in the driver's door, which Niek claimed was there when he got it. I said we needed to get a 'before' photo with some urgency:
Before ...
Niek's protestation that this was a slur on his character was somewhat blunted by his t-shirt:
Euan had cooked up a plan to rival Stef's video: our version was going to be '309 at the Ring'. The original plan had been to start by filming Niek in full race overalls, with pre-lap interview and then show the awesome power and handling of an elderly Peugeot 309 round the Ring. The plan was modified somewhat when Niek replaced the 309 with a Sierra and his mate needed the overalls, but we fitted my camcorder in Mike's windscreen mount and set off in Mike's Scooby.
Euan had recorded a superb mix of tracks, and the soundtrack was added by the simple approach of playing the tape in the Scoob stereo so that it was picked up by the camcorder mikes. This worked amazingly well! His choice of music did, though, make it very hard not to spoil the soundtrack by laughing out loud.
The diversion at T13 sadly messed up the timing of the tracks, but it was still working very well. That Niek was trying a bit too hard was demonstrated when he put half the car on the grass approaching Schwedenkreuz and then fish-tailed down it. Niek's a good driver, but that's not a place to be pushing the limits of the car, so a little more in reserve next time, methinks.
A somewhat safer place to have a sideways moment is at Eiskurve. So he did. Very sideways. He lost the back, corrected, lost the back the other way and off it went onto the grass. Being uphill and in a Sierra, the speed wasn't high, and he scrubbed off a lot of speed in the skidding, so he went sliding gently towards the armco. It was clear that he was either going to get away with it totally or just kiss the armco, and he did in fact slide into it at just a few mph.
After
This incident was only captured in the form of a sideways-moving red blob as the camcorder focus-lock didn't, and at some point in the lap the auto-focus took a keen interest in a reflection on the inside of the windscreen and wouldn't let go. So the Sierra at the Ring official video will have to wait for another trip.
It was about lunchtime that the double-fatal accident happened. I came into Wippermann to be flagged down, and saw four bikes down. It later turned out that only two were involved in the crash - the other two must have been either dropped or not properly put on their sidestands in the panic.
Two riders were motionless, and someone was giving chest compressions to one. I parked to shield the scene as best I could, grabbed my first-aid kit and ran over.
Although chest compressions were being done, nobody was doing artificial respiration. Someone had already removed her helmet, so I started mouth-to-mouth before remembering that I had a Laerdal face-mask in my first-aid kit. This made life a lot easier (as the air can go down the nose as well as the mouth).
It didn't look hopeful, but all you can do as a first-aider is assume that it's surviveable and keep them going until more qualified help arrives. From one of her companions willing her to make it, I learned that her name was Elsie.
It's always hard to judge time in those situations, but piecing it together afterwards, I think it must have been about 10 minutes before the paramedics arrived. They had us continue the CPR while they got their equipment ready. They really gave it their all, with repeated attempts with adrenaline, another drug and a shock machine, but no response.
The hopelessness of the situation was sadly confirmed when I asked one of the paramedics if a helicopter was on the way. She replied: 'Yes, it is coming ...' and frowned, looking at the casualty, as she continued: '... but I don't think so.'
It was probably another five minutes or so before the air ambulance landed. I wouldn't have imagined there was room for a helicopter to land in Wippermann, with the overhanging tree-tops, but they obviously get plenty of practice at it. :-(
The doctor from the air ambulance examined the casualty while the paramedics continued their efforts, but he fairly quickly declared her dead.
The police asked me to give one of the others in the group a lift back to the office. They were about to remove the body and didn't want her to see that: in Germany it is illegal to carry dead bodies in ambulances, so they actually remove victims from the roadside in a hearse. Logical, of course, but a very harsh thing to see. I've rarely felt so helpless as driving back a woman who is crying and crying and crying and you know there's not a damn thing you can do or say that will make the slightest bit of difference.
From a newspaper report, it seems that the first bike low-sided and the second bike struck the pillion rider. The pillion from the second bike died in the helicopter. Both riders escaped unhurt.
We had some subdued conversations in the car-park and restaurant balcony before the others were ready to go back out. I didn't think I would go back out at all that day, so went for a walk to think things through. When I got back, I decided to do a touring lap, just to try to lay the demons to rest. Passing the scene of the crash was hard, but I was surprised that I was started to get back into it by the end of the lap, and in fact carried on lapping until the next closure. A rider had gone over the armco at Galgenkopf: he was alive when helicoptered out, but died later in hospital.
More thoughts on the accident at the end of the report.
We didn't know many details at the time, but the PA system had announced that the closure would be a long one, so I decided to go off and check out some of the Oldtimer machinery. I was earlier speculating on the total value of all the cars in the Nürburg area for this weekend, and it was simply beyond comprehension. I added up about £1.6 million quid's worth in one gaggle of Ferraris alone.
We had the Ringers dinner scheduled for that evening, and I decided that getting drunk was in order following the day's events. The Pistenklause had initially said they were fully-booked when I'd rung about 10 days earlier, but I pointed out that (a) we're regular customers and (b) we drink a lot of beer. This did the trick, and they agreed to find room for us.
As always, extra people joined the group on the day, but we always manage:
A time to focus on the fun side
After a very enjoyable meal, and not too much talking about the accident, we decided that the plan was a quick nightcap at Sabine's place and then back to the spacious apartment to watch some camcorder footage. Brian and his son very kindly volunteered to act as taxi-drivers so I could drink, and both were good drivers so I enjoyed the lovely roads there and back from a passenger seat too. They'd been in the Ring Taxi that morning and both filmed it, so that was good fun to watch on the video. We also watched Niek's lap, and a few other bits and pieces before hitting the hay.
I know putting flowers at the scene of a fatal crash is a cliché, but one of the things I don't like about the Ring is that you get a fatal accident one moment and then an hour or so later it's all business as usual, with no acknowledgement of what has happened. So I decided to drive to Brünnchen before the circuit opened, walk back to the scene and put some flowers there.
I had just put the flowers by the armco and climbed back up the bank when a hire-car with hazards on came round and stopped at the scene. I think it was one of the riders, and it felt good that there was at least some acknowledgement there of what had happened.
That seemed to help put the matter behind me for the time being at least, and the rest of the day was a blur of lap after lap, meeting new people, chatting, drinking coffee and more laps. I usually write up the trip report at the end of each day, so I know what happened when - but I wasn't in the mood for doing it on Saturday for obvious reasons. I think it was Sunday morning that Niek's parents arrived, and Niek took his dad out while his mum came out for a lap with me.
Now, you have to appreciate that Niek's mum doesn't understand petrol-headedness at all. It's a complete mystery to her why anyone would go round and round in circles in a car. And yet she was game for a lap of the Ring to see what it was all about. I set off on a very gentle lap. I noticed in Flugplatz that she appeared to be holding on to the door rather tightly, so I asked her if she was ok. She managed a smile and said yes. I eased off a bit further and on we went. When we got back, I asked her if she had enjoyed it. "Thank you, but I think I won't do it again."
By 4.30pm, the day was blazing and the engine was melting so it was time to think about heading home. There were only a few Ringers left by then; we said goodbye to the ones we could find and set off down the A258. Of course, being the Oldtimers weekend, it was very busy and traffic was moving quite slowly, but we gradually hopped our way down it. The rest of the journey back was uneventful apart from Euan's snoring as we went up the M20. :-)
When I first started going to the Ring, a local told me that there was one death a week there. When a Ringer emailed Nürburgring GmbH to ask for the official figure, he was told that there were three deaths in the whole of 1999. We accepted this for a long time, dismissing the original story as a 'Ring Rumour', but then got a different version when Adam had his accident. An ITU nurse in Koblenz said that they got 2-3 ITU admissions a week from the Ring, about half of whom didn't make it - taking us back to the one a week figure. A theory was developed that perhaps deaths aren't officially counted unless death is declared at the scene, but we were still puzzled that the local papers didn't seem to report more deaths.
Following this weekend, the position seems clear: unless someone is declared dead at the scene, it is neither counted by Nürburgring GmbH nor makes the papers. Three riders died: one at the scene, one in the air ambulance and one in hospital. The papers reported only one death; the other two were reported as airlifted injuries. Exactly the same was true of the rider killed at Breidscheid last trip: he died in hospital afterwards, but Laurens' carefully scanning of the local papers unearthed only the report of an injured rider.
So the first thought is that the Ring is more dangerous than many of us thought. Especially for bikers. If I needed any confirmation that my own decision to stick to four wheels at the Ring was the right one for me, this was it.
My second thought concerns taking passengers out. In the Wippermann crash, both riders were uninjured while both pillions died. Whether that's coincidence or whether pillions are more vulnerable is a matter for debate, but the fact is that the person at the controls walked away and the person entrusting their life to them didn't. My heart goes out to the riders. What they must be feeling now is beyond comprehension.
I've made mistakes at the Ring, spinning on two occasions. Fortunately without any consequences, but that must be attributed to luck: if it were skill, I wouldn't have spun in the first place. What happened to those riders could have happened to me.
Yet almost every lap I do, I have a passenger on board. Should I take passengers out? If I do, should it be somehow less casual? I know that there are risks, and I assume that everyone does; just as I'm very selective in who I will go for passenger laps with, but still accept that there are risks. Is it reasonable to assume that others make the same considered assessment, or should I check this when someone asks for a lap? I'd welcome input on this.
Third thought. Well, I already said it above, really:
I know putting flowers at the scene of a fatal crash is a cliché, but one of the things I don't like about the Ring is that you get a fatal accident one moment and then an hour or so later it's all business as usual, with no acknowledgement of what has happened.
Shouldn't there be some kind of acknowledgement when someone dies? Should the Ring re-open an hour or two later, as if it was nothing more than a breakdown or a damaged vehicle which had to be removed? Or should the track close for the day? I know we'd find that frustrating, but it seems so callous that everything just carries on. But then, that's exactly what I did, later that same day. I don't know.
On the occasions when someone is declared dead at the scene, shouldn't there at least be an announcement and a minute's silence?
After I took one of the other women from the group to the office, so that she could grieve in private, there were some bikers stood just outside the office laughing loudly at something. I let them know what had happened, explained that one of the group was just inside the office and asked them if they could move away a bit so that the laughter didn't carry. They weren't doing anything wrong: they simply had no idea of the situation. I think people should know.
Which leads on to something I discussed on the Ringers list a while back. Too many people seem to think the Ring is a video game. They arrive there for the first time, talking about wanting to get their knee down or get the car sideways. Sure, once you know the place, there are plenty of bends where you can do either safely, but the Ring needs to be approached with a great deal of caution. So perhaps people need to see the reality of the place.
Perhaps we need large colour photographs of some of the accidents on display in the car-park. Even deaths, where the family or partner gives permission. Just so that people can appreciate that the Ring is not a short circuit. It is a very, very unforgiving place. Thoughts?
Final thought: although it didn't do any good this time, I believe everyone who rides and drives the Ring should be trained in first-aid. At the very least, get trained in CPR. A full first-aid course lasts about four days, and will equip you with the skills needed to keep someone alive and provide immediate care for most injuries. A CPR course takes only about two hours.
Well, a somewhat longer report than usual, and with something of a different tone. But that was the weekend.
Copyright © Ben Lovejoy 2001