The slippiest weekend I've ever known! I've done countless laps in the rain at the Ring. I've even done a fair number in the snow. But nothing like this ...
I'd opted to go over on Thursday evening because there was a full afternoon session on the Friday. This meant arriving in the early hours, but with the ability to have a lie-in the following morning.
Not the ideal start, when I come to unpack from a business trip to Amsterdam and realise my camera must have fallen out of my bag in the overhead locker. :-( Left a message with KLM to see if they can find it, but in the meantime Chris Hellegers and Jocke stepped into the breach - thanks for the photos, guys. I did at least have my bulletcam system all set up for video footage.
I also managed to forget to post an important letter - some train tickets for a friend coming down on the Monday. Ferry companies normally let you post letters on board, but because of the high state of security following the New York disaster, they weren't accepting any post. I finally managed to get the purser to agree to do it if I gave him the tickets and the address loose and he personally put them into an envelope. Oh, and I had to buy a stamp from another passenger too. Disorganised or what?!
The drive over was long, dark and wet. We have got to sort out this helicopter transport business.
The overheating problem I'd had last time turned out to be due to a cracked radiator plug. Although it was only leaking at the rate of a few drops an hour (except when actually overheating!), I wasn't keen on risking even a few drops of coolant on the Ring in the wet, so first stop was the handy Mazda dealer in Adenau. They were as efficient as always and had the plug replaced and the coolant topped up within about 20 minutes, and with a bill for the grand total of DM26. :-)
The motoring correspondent for the Boston Globe was in Germany for the Frankfurt Motor Show, and he'd emailed me to ask if he could interview me. I arranged to meet him at the Ring at lunchtime, and we had an enjoyable chat.
I then got my new bulletcam system ready for the off. I'd bought the latest version of Joerund's camera (this one having a pre-wired amplified microphone) and hooked it up to a full-sized VHS video recorder stored behind the passenger seat. Although VHS means sacrificing some quality, it does enable me to use four-hour tapes, so I can get through a whole day with a single tape-change. This enables me to video every lap with minimum hassle. I don't keep all the footage, but it means that if anyone does anything stupid, the evidence is there on tape.
Bulletcam mounted in the spoiler (on a sponge for vibration-damping!)
- note blanked-out number plate above for scale
The video, audio & power wires run up the wing using low-tech
but effective Blu-tac ...
... to a full-sized VHS recorder in the car, with frame-grabber
monitor
Earlier road-testing showed that mounting it inside the front spoiler worked well, but gaffa tape takes forever to clean off afterwards, so I decided to use tape only for the camera itself and try blu-tac for the wires. This sorted, I parked behind a BMW at the barrier, ready for the 2.30pm opening.
Out queue looked rather pointless come opening time as there were all of four of us there! The track was wet and raining in parts, so I set off on a cautious sighting lap. Everything looked fine apart from the wet, so I upped the pace a bit for the second lap.
I have always tip-toed through Hocheichen in the wet, and thought I was doing so this time, but apparently not sufficiently as the back end went as I turned in to the right-hander. I corrected, over-corrected a bit as the back went the other way, so corrected again and that time managed to gather it all back together. I took it as a warning that I was getting over-confident in the wet, so decided to back the pace right off. These frame-grabs are not the best quality as you get rain-drops on the camera in the wet, but it gives an idea at least:
Whoops - facing the armco to the right ...
Erk - facing the armco the to left
Gathering it back together - phew!
Laurens arrived after my second lap, complete with yellow flag as promised. He came out for a lap with me, though it was rather a meek one after my little Hocheichen moment.
More people were arriving as the day went on, and the afternoon became the usual stream of me completely failing to remember the names of all the people who came to say hello. As usual, I had passengers for most laps, and as usual those new to the MX-5 expressed surprise at how well it handles.
Further proof that sooner or later you'll meet everyone at the Ring came when Jocke, a Danish biker I met via a mutual friend and who joined one of my Essex runs, turned up:
Richard Levine was here with a Carrera 4 courtesy car while his GT3 was being worked on. I must remember to have a word with my dealer about the quality of their courtesy cars ... I went out for a passenger lap in it, Richard warning me that it was all rather too quietly competent, and he was right: the car is way, way too civilised. It takes the Ring in its stride, shrugging off wet bends with barely a raised eyebrow. You could certainly do a very fast lap in it, but it wouldn't set the pulse racing - though I was beginning to envy him all-wheel-drive and traction control by Sunday afternoon!
I also went for a lap with Laurens, and despite him complaining about his brakes, he hustled it round at a sufficient pace to persuade me that it was now officially a dry circuit again. He later told me the brake problem had disappeared altogether; I just told him it was the car's way of saying it likes being at the Ring.
There were a few *:%$ drivers about, including Audis, BMWs and Volvos that were fast on the straights and slow through the bends, and who didn't like being overtaken. Fortunately there were some Brits who were repairing the good name of Audi by hustling them round at a decent pace. One of them followed me for a lap with a camcorder running, and Mike sent me the footage afterwards. He'd asked me to 'excuse the comment on it' and I laughed when I heard it: a friend in the car had said something about me being quick given the power of my car, and Mike had replied 'Yeah, but don't forget he was nearly in the armco earlier' - the second instance I can recall of people forgetting that camcorders mounted inside the car have microphones. :-)
We came into Eschbach on one lap to find mud all over the track and tyre marks on the grass. I was waiting to see where the wreckage was, but no sign of anything. It turned out to have been a 911 which had front-ended the armco hard and yet decided to complete the lap with his front bumper hanging off and at least one hose broken. The track was thus closed while they cleared up behind it. Use the words 'What', 'a' and 'prat' to form a well-known phrase or saying. Not only had he put people at risk by leaving who knows what behind on the track, he had also ruined a wheel by dragging the bumper against it. So he saved £100 recovery fee and cost himself whatever a 911 wheel costs.
An enjoyable meal at the Lindenhof followed by a reasonably early night ready for a prompt 8am(ish) start in the morning.
An early start was rewarded with a dry & empty track. I did the first two laps without seeing a single other vehicle. The track was cold, so not vast amounts of grip, but enjoyable.
Unfortunately the day got wetter as it went on, and for some reason wasn't just normally slippy, it was mega slippery. By the end of the day, it was literally like driving on ice - the car would slide at ridiculously slow speeds, and the same total lack of feedback from the wheels. Everyone else was finding it the same, even Phil Gardner in his Scooby. It was almost like there was a thin film of oil all the way round - weird.
A group of Swedish MX-5s turned up from the Miata Club of Sweden. They do one long trip each year, and this time it was the turn of the Ring. Afew of them came out for passenger laps and others followed me round, but we only managed a couple of dry laps to illustrate what an MX-5 can do there. I was very pleased to see that they pretty much all kept going in the rain, though - many with hood down in the approved fashion. :-)
For those who've never seen an MX-5 with the hood up, see the
one in the background ...
Unfortunately, one of them had a bit of a bad day, losing the back up Ex-Mühle and ending up pointing the wrong way several feet up the banking on the inside of the bend. The good news was that the car was completely undamaged, so the only expense was the recovery bill. One of the club members emailed me afterwards to tell me that the crew of the offending car are now known as 'the plough-boys'. :-)
I later came rather close to emulating him, despite reducing my entry speed from my usual 70mph to a sedate 35-40mph: the back stepped out without warning, and a fair degree of correction was required to save it.
There were a number of incidents, but not as many as I'd expected given the conditions. Mainly, I think, because so few people were going out as conditions worsened. Unfortunately there was one crash early on which sounded bad - a bike at Breidscheid. The doctor set off at speed, and the track was closed for a long time.
One of my favourite moments was tiptoeing round with Laurens as a passenger. As I came into Eschbach, the car was fishtailing slightly. Laurens asked 'Was that for real?' and I replied yes, there's no grip here at all. At that moment, a Saxo overtook us and Laurens said: 'So where's he getting his grip from?'. With absolutely perfect timing, the back end of the Saxo stepped out big time, and it went fish-tailing through Brünnchen with left wheels fully onto the grass at one point! Laurens accepted that as an answer ...
I took some time out to take a look at some of the video footage. Rain-drops tend to blow off fairly shortly after landing, but spray is a big problem on a wet track: on the approach for an overtake, or while being overtaken, you can hardly see a thing. This was a great shame as the Saxo moment above was just a misty blur. I also found some problems with misting due to the fact that there's a protective glass cover in front of the lens, so you can get condensation forming inside. I think for wet tracks, I'll have to settle for mounting it inside the car.
The frame-grabber also came in handy for pulling off stills of Ringer vehicles spotted on the track.
Finally, it was time to head for Fuchsröhre for food and beer. The usual tales of derring-do were exchanged, with merriment aplenty.
Chris Hellegers in front of the camera lens for a change (with
Cisco)
Sabine pointing out her breasts to Charles
We seemed to end up with quite a few pics of Sabine this time, including one of her out horse-riding on the mountain-bike paths and at the wheel of a GT3:
Plans for another early start were rapidly abandoned when I woke at 6am and found it pouring with rain. I had another half-hearted look out the window at 8am, and promptly went back to sleep for another hour.
Arriving at the track at 10, I met Laurens and Charles. Laurens' first words were 'I wrecked the Kadett'. He reckoned it was a write-off. :-(
Laurens told me that he'd crashed in the first proper right-hander in Hatzenbach. It didn't require psychic powers on my part to guess that the back had gone in the wet, and he confirmed it. He'd managed to avoid spinning, but just ran out of track as first the back and then the front hit the armco on the left. After checking that there were no fluids leaking, he'd driven on as far as Flugplatz and then parked it in an area behind the armco that he and Charles had found during their Easter track-walk.
Charles drove us out there and we took a look. I was expecting it to be a complete mess, but apart from the impressive armco impression all down the left side, the only visible damage was to the wheel-rims, a twisted wing and a broken front-left light-cluster. Laurens also confirmed that it was driving ok, apart from the vibration you'd expect from the wheel damage and tracking being knocked out.
I'm no expert, but it looked to me like it could be made trackworthy again by simply sorting the wheels and lights and ignoring the bodywork: there was nothing sharp, and it is, after all, a track car. Laurens said that leaving the bodywork damage as is was something that hadn't occured to him.
He was giving himself a hard time, and talking about never returning, but I hope that was just the immediate disappointment talking. I'm sure the same thoughts would cross my mind if something like that happened, but I'm equally sure that I'd be back.
Obviously the speed was too fast for the conditions, so yes, driver error, but the conditions were quite extraordinary and very, very hard to judge. There were very few people indeed going out, and a lot of crashes, so I think the percentage of crashes was probably the highest I've ever known it. The good news was that speeds were sufficiently low that none appeared serious. Despite dropping my entry speeds about 20mph below my normal wet speeds, I still ended up fishtailing on several occasions, so I think Laurens crash just has to be chalked up to bad luck.
Laurens joined me in the passenger seat for my first lap of the day, taken at a suitably sedate pace, but I was still getting slides even then. Not the normal kind, where you can feel it go, but the icy kind, where there is no sensation, just the scenery moving sideways.
I then heard that Adam had crashed the previous evening. I heard this because Adam had sent a text message to Martin who sent a text message to another biker there who asked me if it was true ... As Adam was upright on his bike the last time I'd seen him, I went to check with Susan Seabert who confirmed that it was. He wasn't hurt, but the just-repaired bike was now almost exactly unrepaired.
I took quite a few bikers out for passengers laps, mainly just to show that they really, really didn't want to be riding in those conditions. The newly-created River Wippermann was enough to convince pretty much all of them! I was half expecting to find the local kayak club using it to practice riding the rapids. Without wishing to sound arrogant, I think I can reasonably claim to be a pretty smooth driver, and was being even smoother than usual in the running water, but I was still getting slides through there at speeds as low as 30mph!
There was a new crash on most laps, including a BMW at Wehrseifen. I was giving a Brit biker, Helen, a passenger lap when I heard a screech of tyres as I entered the right-hander. I braked as much as possible in the torrent, then turned in gingerly to find a green BMW sideways across the track. There was just about a car-width behind him, so I went through that gap. I waved to thank him for staying put, and he grinned at me. Fortunately all the crashes I saw appeared injury-free, including a Brit biker who I'd been told always crashes and was living up to his reputation at Bergwerk.
Another Brit, Steve, was also having an interesting time, with an incredible saved slide at Bergwerk. The video footage will be available shortly - this frame-grab gives a taste:
I had always wondered what it was like to do the Ring by coach, and kept promising myself I'd talk my way onto one. When a double-length articulated coach arrived, it was too much to resist! The driver told me to ask the tour organiser, and the organiser said 'Sure'. They turned out to be an orchestra on a tour to the Mosel. They knew nothing about the Ring except it was where Niki Lauda crashed, and the coach driver had never been there before either. The organiser handed me the microphone and asked me to introduce myself, which I did, and I ended up doing the tour guide bit. :-)
I had to get a lap in this :-)
It was a really interesting lap. The very low speed (about 30mph maximum, down to, well, zero mph at Ex-Mühle) coupled with the very high position was excellent for seeing the Ring in a new way. I spotted loads of things I'd never noticed before, including a huge number of little parking spaces behind the armco, obviously intended for storing wrecks during races. A naughty Ringer could easily be first out in the morning and park up in one of them to get a protected private viewing area ...
Ex-Mühle was hilarious. The coach had about eight or nine gears, with a neat LED gear-indicator, and he first tried Ex-Mühle in 5th. It came to a halt. I guess he didn't want to try a low gear in the running water, so he tried 4th. Nothing. Then third. We crawled up it at about 1mph! It would have been really dangerous except for the fact that the rear half of the coach must have been visible on entering Breidscheid ...
Wippermann was also most entertaining. The driver looked suitably horrified and then set off down it in 2nd gear at about walking-pace. We went under the bridge on 16th September 2001, but I forgot to stop my calendar when we went under the gantry, so I'm not sure what the laptime was. We were lapped by a Brit Westfield twice. :-)
After a few more laps in the MX-5, with fresh rain about every other lap, I had to admit that my oft-repeated mantra that 'it could clear up later' had gone from the merely implausible to the utterly impossible. I had just about decided to call it a day when two people asked for passenger laps, so I took them each out in turn. Laptimes must have been in the order of 13 or 14 minutes, but one of them was worth it for the sight of Sabine taking the Ring Taxi totally sideways through Angstkurve. :-)
A Brit biker who I'd overtaken at Breidscheid while he was understandably doing about 20mph decided to do a lap in his van. I invited myself along for the lap, sitting in the back, hanging on to webbing straps. Despite going as slowly as only a diesel Transit in a flood driven by a careful driver can go, he still lost the back end in Hocheichen. I was trying to work out which end was going to hit first, so that I could brace myself appropriately, when he neatly caught it and on we went. Most entertaining.
Some quick goodbyes, some of them only for a fortnight, and I set off to do battle with Belgian motorways. In the pissing rain, of course.
Which was when I realised that the Ring can do strange things to a man. I had got so entirely used to sliding around the Ring in the wet that I was accepting some minor slides as part of the deal. It was when I found myself still taking the same attitude on sliproads on the first part of the journey home that I realised I needed to switch out of Ring mode and into proper public road mode, where any kind of slide means you're going much too fast! So I flicked the appropriate switch in my head. Consequently the journey took rather a long time, but I made the ferry with 10 mins to spare.
The Club Lounge on the ferry was as welcome as ever, settling down with the laptop to finish writing up the trip report.
So now it's a two-day bike trackday at Cadwell Park next Mon/Tue and then back to the Ring the weekend after that. Well, somebody has to do it, right?
Copyright © Ben Lovejoy 2001
Photos © Chris Hellegers & Jocke 2001