A rather wet trip, but still a very enjoyable one ...
The preparation for this trip was a little more expensive than usual, as it started with the replacement of the clutch and flywheel which disintegrated on the previous trip. £1,414. You might be able to pick up 968s for bargain prices these days, but even using Porsche-trained specialists rather than main dealers, the running costs are still those of a forty grand car.
So it was just as well that, amazingly, I didn't have to buy a new set of tyres! Four days of Easter fun wore away the outside shoulders on the front of the Toyo Proxes T-1S's, but the rest of the tread was fine:
Just the outer shoulders worn away
I thus dropped into my local tyre place and asked them to swap the fronts around for me on the rims. This they did, and suddenly the tyres looked new again!
Ready to wear away the opposite shoulders :-)
One other modification I'd ordered ages ago arrived shortly before the weekend. Just in case there are lots of red 968 Cabriolets in the Ring car-park, I've made mine easier to find:
Prices are going up, so it's an investment, not an
indulgence, ok?
I'm still having no luck finding an analogue camcorder with a Video In socket. While the full-sized VHS recorder has the definite luxury of taking four-hour tapes, it's a bit of a pain having to go to the boot to start and stop it. I'm thus hoping to find a camcorder I can fit in the glove compartment, still using the bulletcams, so that I've got the choice of recording capacity or compactness.
I also still haven't got the second bulletcam back from RF Concepts - they've had it for a month now, and still no calls being returned. :-( Think I'll need to go elsewhere for any future purchases.
I had a stupidly busy week at work, so packing was a last-minute rush round the house just before I left. On the way down the M20, I was very grateful I was going towards Dover rather than away from it. There was roadworks on the opposite carriageway, and a van had somehow managed to go through the roadworks, up the bank, through the fence and into the field beyond. Traffic was thus backed up for miles:
Traffic the other way up the M20
I'd somehow managed to lose my ferry reference number, and P&O caused a mild panic at the ticket booth when they denied any knowledge of a booking in my name. A call to Jon, who was somewhere near Spa at the time, didn't help as we could hardly hear each other before the signal cut out altogether. Finally, after about ten minutes of waiting, they managed to find the booking and on I went - into the security shed. I hoped this was just getting all the holdups out of the way early ...
The security woman asked me the usual sorts of questions they do while trying to suss out whether you are a dope smuggler or Bin Laden's right-hand man, before sending me on my way.
Once aboard and underway, the bright sun and warm temperature made the miserable weather forecast seem hard to believe:
Rain? What rain?
But a last-minute check via my Treo showed the same forecast: chilly temperatures and cloud with light rain (not that I was looking for any spurious justification to play with my new toy, you understand ...):
The weather-online forecast remains resolutely pessimistic
The journey there was a little slow thanks to a pair of police-escorted security trucks on the approach to Brussels. A police car at the back was weaving backwards and forwards across all three lanes to make it quite clear that everybody was to stay behind the convoy, and the whole thing was progressing at 60mph:
Security truck left front, police around, traffic behind
When the first truck turned off after 15 miles or so, I thought 'thank gawd for that' only to find that the other truck and half the escort stayed on the motorway. It seemed likely that one was real and the other a decoy. The one I followed then remained in front for a futher 5 miles or so before it finally peeled off.
A German woman called Birgit had visited my website and emailed me. As she was making her first trip, and would be on her own, I offered some passenger laps and invited her to join us for the Ringers dinner. This was naturally entirely uninfluenced by the fact that she'd sent a pic of her and her mr2 and she was as cute as the car. So I'd arranged to have dinner with her on Friday evening, and a very pleasant evening ensued.
Saturday was wet. Very wet. Oh, and foggy. Deciding there was no great hurry to get to the track, it was about 10.30am before we wandered down. Well, I'd said I wouldn't mind an opportunity to see what the car and tyres were like in the wet, and here it was:
Rain and fog - lovely
Everyone I spoke to who'd been out said it was horrible. I usually don't mind wet conditions, but with so many people saying it was really very slippery out there, I was determined to take it easy.
I set out on a sighting lap. It didn't feel like there was any grip at all - there was a horribly disconnected feeling, with little or no feedback from the tyres. This was odd, since Toyos are supposed to be good in the wet - more on this a little further on. I know some sighting laps can have a tendency to get faster the further round you get, but with all the warnings, the lack of feel, plus Birgit in the passenger seat for her first ever lap of the Ring, I honestly was behaving myself.
Entering Breidscheid at what I estimate to be no more than 40mph, the back let go, stepping out about 30°. All-too-conscious of the concrete bridge and the cost of Porsche bodywork repairs, I concentrated very hard on keeping the throttle neutral and the correction gentle. The sequence of events can be seen below:
Everything is ok as I apex ...
Then the back end lets go, and the rear is heading for the
concrete ...
I over-correct, and now the front is heading for the concrete ...
I suppose armco is a slight improvement over concrete
...
Phew! Gathered it all back together again
If I hadn't been almost past the Breidscheid exit, I'd have pulled off for a coffee, but it was not the conditions for any sudden braking so on we went.
There was almost no traffic out there, and even at my post-scare tiptoe speed, we were only overtaken by two things - Roofing Tony's Scoob, and the Ring Taxi. As I let Sabine past, she waved her thanks while in a tail-slide. I can go off people sometimes ...
I decided to ask Sabine if there'd been any Ring Taxi cancellations, just on the off-chance. Partly just for the fun of it, and partly because I wanted to get Sabine to show me the wet line. We were in luck: there was one right now! Birgit was coming with me, so there was one spare seat. I nipped out of the office to find the first Ringers I could spot, and Chris Rae and Paul were the winners. A brief discussion and Paul took the spare seat. Three minutes later, having signed a piece of paper I didn't understand but doubtless said my estate was not to sue BMW, we were in the M5 ready to roll.
Sabine had said in the bar that some people get quite scared, and I'm sure she adapts the pace to suit, so I reassured her that this was us, and she could really go for it. :-) That was a fun lap. Tail out on pretty much every bend, including some bends where that is quite impossible ... like inside the Karrussel.
It was also very educational. I'll get Sabine to check this next time, but from memory the places where the wet line differs from the dry are:
Hocheichen: Go all the way around the outside of the bend
Aremburg: All the way around the outside
Adenaur-Forst: After the left-hand exit from Fuchsrohre, stay to the left as usual for the first right-hander, but instead of taking the normal turn-in, continue in a straight line until you are on the new tarmac and then turn-in hard. Despite the much tighter turn-in, the grip on the new tarmac is so much better, it's a safer line.
Bergwerk: All the way around the outside
Angstkurve: Later and slower turn-in to give more margin for error in case of a slide
Brunnchen 1: Towards the outside to avoid the bump and for better grip
Brunnchen 2: Towards the outside to give a gentler angle onto the slippy tarmac on the outside
Pflanzgarten 1: All the way around the outside
Pflantzgarten 2: Stay to the right just before the jump to avoid the usual struggle to get back to the left, then work your way back to the left on the way down the hill
You'll notice that going round the outside of a bend is a recurring theme. In several places, the difference in tarmac quality between the inside and outside of the bend is noticeable. Hocheichen was especially interesting, as many of us have taken on board the received wisdom that the outside is the slippery bit, and this seemed backed up by people sliding onto it and then reversing into the armco.
What Sabine pointed out is that the outside is actually grippier, and crashes there start by losing traction on the inside. Then either the better tarmac isn't sufficient to recover or - in the more typical Hocheichen crash - the back does indeed grip at the outside and spins the car around the other way.
The great irony of this is that the different tarmac on the inside and outside has always been obvious, but the received wisdom has it the wrong way round! When you go around the outside in the wet, the grip is indeed significantly better.
Adenaur-Forst was also a revelation. In this case, the better tarmac was obvious, but it had never occured to me that it was possible to leave the turn-in until you're onto it. Bergwerk too made a great deal of sense once demonstrated, reducing the angle on exit, as the typical wet crash there is to lose the back on the exit and hit the armco on the inside.
Sabine also took the Fuchsrohre line that Anders had explained on the Ringers list. Instead of clipping the apex, just come in to approximately halfway across the track.
All of this instruction was extremely welcome but not quite sufficient to inspire me to risk my baby again just yet. I was puzzled by the lack of feedback and grip from the tyres as the reviews rated them in the wet, but a conversation with Charles the following day made sense. He said the consensus view of track instructors in the States was that the T1-S was good in the wet but very poor indeed in cold temperatures. Since the air temperature was only around 7ºC, and the track temperature doubtless significantly colder than that, this made sense. Charles said the tyres were like plastic on cold track.
Most of the rest of the morning was mainly spent drinking coffee and chatting in the car-park, followed by lunch at the Castle:
With no sign that the weather was likely to improve that day, I found other ways to pass the time in the afternoon.
There seems to be no way to win with Ringers dinner reservations this year! At Easter we had 18 booked places and 33 people turn up, this time we had 26 booked places and about 13 turned up. I guess quite a few people made last-minute decisions not to come across after seeing the weather forecast:
Rather fewer faces this time
Euan spotted a familiar figure at the bar and decided to make his move:
Walter at the bar
Euan's bar pickup technique in action
But he has some competition - we think that's
Sabine's hand ...
I decided that Walter wasn't my type:
More to my taste
Chris's pickup line isn't impressing Paul, though
Niek had originally planned to go home straight after the dinner to keep his mum happy (only one day at risk instead of two), but Euan persuaded him to call his mum for an overnight pass. For some reason, his mum seems to think I'm a responsible adult, so Niek's line was that I said he was being sensible. He certainly wasn't getting into trouble at the dinner:
Niek taking a brief rest
The view from the bedroom window on Sunday morning looked like this:
And we thought yesterday's weather was bad ...
Birgit's mr2 in the car-park
My baby was staying tucked up in the warm!
A late breakfast was in order, and then we wandered over to attend to Niek's car. Niek had already stripped-out the car, and Euan thought some sponsorship stickers would help complete the race look:
Wandering back from this exercise, we saw this race 968:
The snow gradually melted but things were still very wet, hence a full car-park and empty track:
Although a few brave souls were out on bikes, most were either sat in the car-park or packed up ready to go home:
Birgit decided that she had to at least do one lap, whatever the conditions, so we went out for a cautious run. Conditions were a little better than yesterday, but still pretty slippy, so you always felt glad to have made it round in one piece.
Birgit's mr2, safe and sound after its first Ring
lap
I did venture out for a few laps, but wasn't really enjoying it. With no feedback from the tyres, it was just a question of being ultra-cautious and being pleased to arrive back at the car-park without incident. I thus opted mainly for passenger laps, getting good ones with Martin, Soren, Charles and others.
Martin demonstrated the wet handling of the Goodyear F1s,
but said they gave less feedback in the dry - ho hum
Soren had rented a 911 - I'm normally rude about electronic aids,
but in these conditions the Porsche stability system was
fantastic
The decision to play safe was reinforced by the rising attrition rate as the day went on. There was a remarkably high number of bent vehicles given how few people were venturing out. Euan was behind this MGF when it had a very slow spin into the armco at Brunnchen 2:
Looks expensive
There was also a very secondhand car in Wippermann. I've removed the pics at the request of a friend of the driver.
Jon Reeves managed a spin in his rented TT. Schwedenkreuz would not be my preferred location for a spin, but he got off very lightly, losing the back on entry, ending up sideways on the grass, doing a 180, just grazing the RHS of the car, continuing to rotate, just grazing the rear and then ending up pointing the right way rather deep in the gravel:
Jon wonders how to explain this to the rental company
(Many thanks to Ben
Pike, passenger in the TT, for
the pic)
My top tip for Ringers crashes is to avoid doing it when most people are moping round the car-park with nothing better to do than take lots of photos ...
Jon returning to the car-park
Even managing to get mud on the driver seat
The damage was a bit of a scrape to the side ...
... and something similar to the rear
Since there was a €1200/£800 excess on the insurance, discussions were held on the feasibility of washing it, spending a few hours with some T-Cut and then taking it back in the dark. Sadly this was not to be.
Kiwi Chris took Euan's BMW out for a lap, and managed an impressive score of one lap, one crash! He popped out of the Karrussel and just touched the armco with the rear of the car, smashing a tail-light and putting a slight scratch on the back:
The only other Ringer incident was a broken-down car. Since the car in question will be for sale soon, the car in question shall remain anonymous (just ask some questions if you buy a car from a Ringer :-)).
Some other Ringers also managed to get Ring Taxi rides, though not everyone managed to get Sabine as the driver:
Monday was of course a normal working day in Germany, so with a five-hour journey home, Birgit had to leave at tea-time. Not before putting a Ring sticker on her car, of course!
Sunday dinner was a quieter affair at the Pistenklause, though Euan did liven things up with his tales of the Cherie Bar:
As the track was closed in the morning, Euan had arranged to go across to Spa, where Tony Pashley was taking part in a trackday. The idea was to do some spectating, and hopefully get some passenger laps. A couple of others went with him, but I decided catching up on some sleep was a higher priority given that there seemed a reasonable chance of dry laps in the afternoon.
Still overcast, but no sign of rain
The anonymous Ringer with the broken-down car was having a bit of a battle with the RAC. First a recovery truck turned up, merely confirmed what had already been tested and then promptly went away again! Then various options were offered, and the owner decided to get the car taken to a local BMW dealer while he got a lift home with one of us. Then confusion ensued with the RAC saying they were waiting for the recovery company to get back to them and the recovery company saying they were waiting for authorisation from the RAC. However, after a long wait, the same recovery truck returned ready to take the car away:
I was occupying myself writing-up the trip report to date, and nipping next door for some important shopping:
A beer warehouse next door to the guest-house - how civilised
is that?
Have weissbier, will travel
Martin had brought back a crate of bottles as we gathered there was a deposit on them. This turned out to be the grand sum of €3.20/£2 - so that was worth dragging the crate across Europe, then ...
By noon, I was impatiently awaiting the 14:15 opening, so decided to wander up to the track to see what was happening before the public session. This turned out to be a practice session for the 24-Hour race. The cars varied from the sublime to the, er, well:
This Opel makes Niek's car look tasteful
A Cleo driver was having a bit of trying day, rolling at Pflanzgarten 1. The car looked like even race mechanics would be hard-pressed to get it back into action:
His team did at least come fully-equipped:
Sabine had been out for a test-lap in the Ring Taxi prior to the public opening, so I asked her what conditions were like. She reported that it was dry all round and the grip was good, so now it was just a question of waiting impatiently for the marshalls to clear up a few incidents and get the armco trucks in place before they opened the public session. My patience wasn't improved by the grey skies which could clearly start raining any minute.
Finally it was time. Mindful of the armco trucks I'd seen go out, and still a bit nervous of the Toyos in the cold, I set off on a gentle sighting lap, but the familiar feedback from the tyres was back and the grip felt normal. I went straight out for two more laps on the trot, wanting to make the most of whatever dry time was available. I then came in to let the car rest for 10 minutes.
Euan was taking American Robert out so I jumped in the back. You really feel the car moving about from the back seat! Euan had clearly had no trouble switching back into dry-lap mode. :-)
I then took Robert out for a lap, and he enjoyed both. The Other Mick Doohan told me that one of the bikers in his group was after a lap in a Porsche, so I took him next. It started raining a little bit as we set off, and the further round we got the wetter it was. By the time we'd completed the lap, it was almost completely wet, and by the next lap it was back to the weekend conditions. I did one last goodbye lap, and decided to call it a day.
I stopped off at the B&B to pay the bill, pick up my bag and, of course, my beer! Jon Reeves was taking home a crashed bike and asked me if I'd take the rider, so went in search of him at the Lindenhof. After seeing no sign, I called Jon who said he'd now got a bike to ride, so waved goodbye to the place and had a smooth trip back. Allegedly at 120-130mph all the way.
Caught a 9pm ferry. I usually make myself a bed in the club lounge, but with only 7 laps under my belt that day I wasn't that tired so just completed the trip report and relaxed.
My little home-from-home on the ferry
The journey home from Dover was uneventful, and among the 286 emails waiting for me was one with the pic of Jon's little escapade, just in time to add it to the trip report. :-)
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