This trip report was written as usual partly while there and mainly on the ferry back to Dover. At that stage it was a fun weekend marred only by a couple of trivial inconveniences and a non-serious crash by a friend, and my report reflected that. Tragically, the weekend's events were not yet over: checking my email briefly on my return home at 2.30am, I learned that Jørund Seim had been killed in a crash which occured shortly after I left the track. I was stunned and appalled to hear the news.
You can read messages about that, and see some photos of Jørund here. But when JW agonised over whether to publish his trip report so soon, and decided to go ahead, I knew reading it that it was the right decision. The true story of the Ring is a mix of joy and tragedy. Jørund loved the joy, and we should not deny it following his death any more than he would have wished us too whilst alive. So here is the rest of the story of the weekend, as written before his death.
I thought my preparation was going quite well as I replaced both front tyres a full week in advance. The rears were down to about 2.5mm, but the plan was to replace those after the weekend. This theory was, uh, blown when I had a blow-out in the left rear on the same day I replaced the fronts! I was, though, quite impressed that a blow-out at <cough>mph on an empty M62 was relatively lacking in drama.
After buying a secondhand Conti to get me home from Yorkshire (nobody had any T1-S's in stock, and I didn't fancy 250 miles at 50mph on the emergency tyre!), I ordered a pair of T1-S rears from my local place - only to be told that Toyo had none available. There was a 50/50 chance they'd be in by Friday morning. That was a little nerve-wracking, but fortunately I had a call on Thursday to say that they'd arrived - phew!
The gods were still amusing themselves on Friday when the car declined to start! This was not an encouraging start. A call to get Green Flag out was followed by a call to Patrick at Porschembri for a quick attempt at remote diagnosis and to see if he would be able to work on the car that afternoon if required. He suspected the starter-motor and confirmed that he would work on it if required.
Meantime, determined that I would get there one way or another, I made contingency plans by calling Euan and letting him know I might need a lift over. He was happy to do this, but broke the bad news that he was setting off at 2am Saturday for a 5am ferry. <Shudder> The man is certifiable even by Ringer standards.
The remote diagnosis was correct, but fortunately it turned out to be nothing worse than a loose connection. Next stop tyres.
As pretty as they are effective: Toyo Proxes T1-S
I also had them check the pads while the wheels were off, but there was plenty of wear left. A visual check is a bit belt-and-braces as Porsche has a clever warning system for pad-wear. A pair of sensor wires are embedded into the wear indicator slot on the pads; when the pads reach the limit, the wires come into contact with the discs which completes a circuit and lights a warning lamp in the dashboard.
The wiring for the Porsche brake-pad wear alert system
I abandoned plans to visit a car-wash, despite the fact that the car could barely be seen through the grime from last weekend's blast through Yorkshire, and set off for Dover.
Running straight into a massive tailback on the M25. <Sigh> It was obviously going to be one of those days. It was also pissing with rain. When I tell you that it was raining hard enough to put the hood up, Ringers will know how heavily it must have been raining!
The view through the windscreen at Dover
The drive across was fast and uneventful. I heard an SMS arrive when I was about 10 mins away and waited until I arrived to check it. It was from Martin, here with his new Blackbird-engined Caterham:
My Friday tribulations didn't seem quite so bad ...
It turned out that Caterham Fever was rife in the area, so when Martin bought the new one he sold the old one to Rich. I sent Rich a text to ask if he would be up to piss-tak- er, I mean, visitors over the weekend. The track had apparently been dry, but the car was on H-rated tyres, so a bit of over-enthusiastic application of throttle out of Wehrseifen meant he lost the back, hit the outside armco and bounced across the track to hit the opposite armco. At one impact or other, the front wheels hit, spinning the steering-wheel violently and breaking his arm.
Joined Martin, Karen, Steve Q and others in the Lindenhof for some food and a few drinks. Martin had been getting an oil pressure warning on the new Caterham so hadn't really enjoyed the evening session. But the previous owner was planning to meet up with the guy who rebuilt the engine, so Martin was expecting some advice the following day.
Karen had arrived in style, driving a GT3 over from England. Richard Levitt had long planned this trip, but being frantically busy at work he decided the sensible approach was to fly. Which left the problem of how to get his GT3 to the Ring. Karen provided the answer to that one. :-)
Richard Levitt's GT3, driven over by Karen Plant
Since it was wet and the weather forecast was dodgy, I decided the plan of action was to peer out of the window at 7.30am and see whether it was a get up early or stay in bed kind of morning.
The view from my window on Saturday morning at 7.30 showed that things were dry:
A very rare thing indeed: a photo taken by me at 7.30am
I thus managed to drag myself out of bed and was at the track ready for action by 7.45am. This appeared to be a very good move indeed as the car-park looked like this:
Total car-park contents: two cars, one bike, one
moped
Things were no different by 7:58 when I was lined up at the barrier ready for it to open. The marshalls told me the track was pretty dry, and I was first out when the track opened. This was going to be fun! A quick scan of the dashboard instruments at the cones and- Oh! I usually fill up on my way to the B&B at the BP station a few miles short of Nurburg. But as I was later than usual, it was shut. A fact forgotten in my enthusiasm to get out on the track. The gauge was showing empty and the warning light came on before T13.
Oh well, I thought, I'll bimble round to Breidscheid, pull off there and fill up. Except they were most un-German-like and were late opening the gates, so I couldn't pull off there. I slowed down even more and hoped it would make it all the way round. It did, but I think the biker who had obviously decided to follow me round must have been very puzzled at me doing 45mph up Kesselchen.
At the petrol station, there was an Audi A4 behind me. Last time I saw the driver, she was in her own MR2, but this time she was in her (temporary) company car: Birgit had arrived with perfect timing. She'd had to go to Italy for a few days on business and didn't get home until late Friday night, so was setting off from home at 4.30am on Saturday!!!
Now fuelled-up, I did an enjoyable few laps with Birgit on board before heading back to the B&B for breakfast.
I hadn't had time to do anything more permanent with the carcam system, so there were still leads dangling around. In particular, the cigarette-lighter plug kept working loose, but fortunately I am fully qualified as an Electrical Engineer Field Technician and was able to effect a solution:
Blu-tac to the rescue
Martin was having less success at sorting his oil-pressure problem, so after a few more laps decided that it was too risky to continue:
A somewhat sick Blackbird-engined Caterham
Ian Archibold had also fallen prey to Caterham Fever. It felt very odd seeing him in a car instead of on a bike!
Ian's Caterham
Meantime, the car troubles were continuing elsewhere in the car-park in the shape of Francis's BMW. First, a friend crashed it at a trackday at Brands Hatch shortly before the weekend, leaving an anxious few days wondering whether it could be fixed in time for the Ring trip. Fortunately, £200's worth of parts and judicious use of a hammer fixed the worst of the damage:
"You should have seen it before ..."
Then one of the fan-blades caught on something and he was left with no cooling. Every time I returned from a lap, he was under the car! He did eventually sort it with the help of a claimed ex-BMW mechanic who said the problem was that it was catching on the cowling. Francis said he knew that, but there was no way to remove it. 'Yes there is,' said the mechanic, and broke it off. :-)
Francis in the position in which he spent half the
weekend
Euan arrived sometime around lunchtime and did his usual thing of heading straight out without so much as a glance into the car-park. He said that his tyres were a little worn, and the usual number of laps wasn't improving things:
"Really, officer? I could have sworn there was
some tread there earlier"
There were a few stoppages, mostly bikes, but most weren't serious:
An R1 that went down at Schwedenkreuz - only minor
injuries
There were a few interesting bits of machinery in the car-park to pass the time:
Alpines are mean-looking beasts!
With a pretty poor weather forecast and dark clouds hovering above the Ring, I wanted to make the most of the dry laps, so I was on an accelerated version of my usual routine of two back-to-back laps followed by a break then another two laps. I usually take 20-minute breaks but was reducing them to 10 minutes and finding this worked well.
The dark clouds that sat almost permanently above the Ring on
Saturday
I think I only took one passenger lap all day, in JW's 964:
JW had opted for the same video solution as me: a bulletcam hooked up to a full-size VHS recorder. The tinted strip across the windscreen ruled out mounting it next to the interior mirror, so JW settled for taping it to the side of the passenger seat. Also, finding an engine in his boot, he was forced to put the VHS unit on one of the rear seats:
Have technology and string, will travel
Niek had supplemented his stripped-out 405 with a full race-seat and harness. The poor passenger has to make do with the original seat and seat-belt, though!
The world's sportiest 405
At some point in the afternoon, some kind of bike club turned up. They proceeded to set off on a parade lap at a very sedate pace indeed, and still a few of them managed to crash!
"427 single-lap tickets, please"
Rich Seabert had asked for a German-speaker to come to the hospital as he was having a few problems understanding forms, etc. Since I happened to have a German-speaker about my person, Birgit & I went to visit him at Adenau hospital. This was Rich's second visit to the hospital, the previous time as an out-patient when he crashed his bike at Breidscheid.
Rich S liked it so much the first time he came back
to stay
Richard had agreed with his girlfriend that he would switch from bikes to cars as they were obviously much safer. In a 70mph-ish bike crash into a concrete wall he got away with bad bruising. In a relatively minor car spin at the slowest bend on the Ring, he managed a badly-fractured arm. He was not sure whether he would be getting permission for future Ring visits, car or bike ...
Joerund turned up in the afternoon, grinning as always. I asked him if he'd be joining us for dinner, and he wasn't sure as he was staying at Bren's place which is a fair distance from Nurburg.
The threatened rain barely arrived. There were a few times when it rained for part of the lap, but it was only fully wet for brief periods, each time drying out again afterwards. However, it did cause one interesting moment ...
Euan and I went out to do a video lap together, something we planned after finding we were lapping at almost identical speeds last month. JW was ahead of us, and since his pace was only about 10% slower, I thought it would be fun to keep him in picture too.
Reaching Flugplatz, JW indicated for us to overtake since he thought we'd probably want to be significantly faster into Schwedenkreuz. Which was when the fun began:
JW indicates, and both myself and Euan pass him at full tilt
...
The track was totally dry as I turned into Schwedenkreuz ...
Mid-corner, it started raining, and settling instantly
...
Before I've completed the bend, the track is wet,
and I have an interesting time controlling a fishtail ...
Entering Fuchsrohre, we already have a fully wet track!
Given the forecasts, though, we were all extremely happy to have had such a great day's Ringing - and were in good cheer for the Ringers dinner. 36 people had booked, so with the usual handful of additional seats for latecomers we needed to accommodate 40 people. This was too many for Fuchsrohre, so I booked the upstairs of the Pistenklause. They'd called back to say they could fit us in downstairs, but this was as optimistic as I'd expected, so we had our private dining room:
L-R: Karen, John(?), Francis, Birgit, JW, Niek, me,
Euan
A group of Norwegians had joined us. I asked if they knew Espen. 'Only by reputation,' said one. 'Brake Late,' said another, referring to a famous incident immortalised on video on Joerund's website:
The Norwegian contingent
The third table was finally occupied by a group who had been busy fixing a car:
Kev and gang, just arrived and still beerless
The Ring was opening at 10am as the first couple of hours were devoted to a classic car session. The extra time in bed was appreciated.
Some of the classic cars were still in the car-park when we arrived, including one of my all-time favourites, the TR6:
These Spitfires also looked rather splendid:
The morning weather was much the same as Saturday, dark clouds hanging around in an ominous fashion, but again the track was mainly dry. However, the Sunday crowds were out in force, so the track was extremely busy for much of the day, and some of the slower traffic just wasn't looking in the mirrors at all.
Cars and bikes everywhere ...
And just as many spectators at the barriers
With lots of traffic on the track
The crowds did of course mean the inevitable crashes with some pretty long closures. Most didn't appear to be serious, just a lot of wreckage to sort out.
A car which span off at T13
A marshall remaining cheerful despite lugging
barriers back and forth
A bike being recovered from a smash at Brunnchen
A car crash which closed the track for a fair time
after police were called
I stopped at a couple of bike crashes, one where the rider was on the ground in the middle of the track at Brunnchen. He'd been knocked out briefly but seemed ok apart from a suspected broken collar-bone. We already knew there was an incident out there because we'd past the ambulance up Kesselchen. This enabled us to reassure the rider that he wouldn't have too long to wait:
Passing the ambulance up Kesselchen
'Poofie' (don't ask me!), a friend of Sabine's, giving the
first warning
Don't know if the car was involved or span avoiding the bike
A driver had sensibly protected the scene of the crash
It looked bad at first, but the rider was coherent
and had full movement in all his limbs
The second was where a biker was trapped under his bike at Wehrseifen. He'd managed to extricate himself by the time I'd parked and run back to him, and was completely unhurt, but was in a vulnerable position with his bike. The yellow flag that Laurens gave me ages ago and which has lived in my boot ever since came into its own, slowing traffic on the approach while a couple of spectators helped the rider get his bike back up so that he could limp it down to Breidscheid. The track was closed when we got back from that one:
A familiar site: one lap then the barriers out
One thing we were seeing repeatedly was people crashed on the outside of bends and them standing there examining their cars or bikes. This really is incredibly dangerous. First, if you have crashed in that spot, there may be a reason for it - a slippery patch, or whatever - and someone else could crash at exactly the same place. Second, there is the danger of target fixation well known to bikers: when your attention is drawn to something you want to avoid and you end up going in the direction you are looking.
Please don't do this
I also saw an incredibly close call at Breidscheid, where two bikes actually touched. One of them was obviously very new to the Ring and off the line, and a faster bike went to go through on the inside. As he did so, the slower bike cut across the track (not on the line, but from well after the apex). The two bikes touched, the slower one ran wide and wobbled but kept it upright:
Planning my escape-route ...
There were also some stupid riders and drivers out there. The most dangerous one I saw was a Swiss BMW driver. Since he was so unpredictable and completely oblivious to anyone wanting to pass, I sat behind him all the way from Hohe Acht to Galgenkopf and thus witnessed his numerous dangerous acts. Just two examples are shown here:
Cutting up a biker and then slamming on the brakes in
Wipperman ...
And a biker trying to fend him off with his foot at Brünnchen
II
I was looking for him afterwards to make my feelings known and to give his registration number to the marshalls, but I didn't manage to spot him. The only good news was that one of the bikers he cut across was the one I saw last year hitting a car driver who forced him onto the grass, so I guess that Swiss driver is a marked man.
Other dangerous idiots might like to note that I video every single lap, as do an increasing number of other people, so the chances are high that there will be proof of their idiocy to give to either the marshalls or police as appropriate.
The various closures allowed plenty of time for chatting. A 964RS driver called Hugh introduced himself, and I promptly introduced him to Euan so that he could blag a passenger lap. He did rather better than that and blagged a lap behind the wheel. :-)
Hugh, Niek and JW
Laurens has proven a rare site at the Ring since falling in love with an American woman and spending all his time there, but made an appearance this weekend. It was Laurens who had first suggested that I buy a 968 to replace the MX-5. Well, actually, he didn't suggest it, he simply told me to buy one. He was of course absolutely right, and this was the first chance I'd had to take him out for a lap in it. He asked afterwards if I felt comfortable in it yet. I said yes. 'It looked like it,' he said.
Laurens sighted at the Ring!
I also bumped into Jon Taylor, who has a rather nice slogan on the bottom of his number-plate:
Jon Taylor's number-plate
Helmet ears have been proving a popular bike accessory, as modelled here by a rider who I made put his helmet back on as I hadn't been fast enough with the camera:
When a couple of stoppages turned into extremely lengthy waits, I decided to follow Euan's example and try to be first out. Euan spent an entire lunchbreak sat in his car to achieve this, but I settled for parking my car strategically and remaining within running distance of it so that I could be at least among the first half-dozen out:
Ready for an instant getaway
I'd previously avoided the first 10 minutes after a closure, as loads of testosterone-fueled drivers and riders tend to go bananas on the first lap, but two things changed my mind on recent trips. First, it was growing increasingly common for someone to crash on the first lap following a long closure, immediately closing the track again. Second, as I've got faster, I've found that if I can be one of the first out, very little will overtake me, so the carnage stays behind me.
There were the usual funny sights. Buses were all over the place, but overtaking one round the outside of Klostertal was fun:
One of many coaches out there that weekend
Prize for the funniest sight out there, though, went to a minibus towing a caravan:
Now that I haven't seen before!
With what turned out to be horrible irony, I was thinking that the marshalls were dealing very well with oil-spills. Each one was quickly dusted down and warning signs put out:
An oil spill on the exit of the Karussell
A safety car, flag and sign signalling a major spill ...
... seen here on the right at Schwedenkreuz
With the track closed from about 4.15pm, and still not open at my usual departure time of 5pm, I decided to prolong my stay by an hour or two. I managed a couple of laps before it really was time to go.
On a previous trip, I'd given a lift back to a biker who crashed (and who turned out to have the unlikely name of Mick Doohan). I did the same again this trip, to a Blade rider called Al. He'd been minding his own business going down Fuchsrohre when an Astra lost control behind him, span and clipped the back of his bike. He'd got away with a broken collar-bone, which didn't seem too bad for a crash in what is one of the faster parts of the track. His bike also didn't appear to be too badly damaged.
Al surveys his Blade after a lucky escape
Stopping for petrol and to re-inflate the tyres to their normal pressure at the BP garage a few kilometres up the road, I found both Ring Taxis going through the car-wash. Sabine tried to persuade me that I'd rather spend the evening drinking beer in her bar than driving across Belgium. Accurate as this is, I regretfully have to continue the journey.
The adventure is not quite over, however. The gods like nothing better than making a smug bastard eat his words. After having recently commented on the Ringers list about how the 968 will 'comfortably' make it between Calais and the Ring on one tank, I find the petrol gauge dropping rapidly as we near the Ostend/Calais split. This may not be entirely unrelated to the fact that the later departure has meant pretty clear roads and thus a near-constant 140mph cruising speed.
'No problem,' I think, 'there's a petrol station just before the split.' I've never stopped there before but I've seen the sign as I pass it. I pull in to find that the petrol station is actually a construction site. It is partly open, and selling diesel, but I have the feeling that Ferdinand would advise against it. So on we go, and I drop down to a fuel-conserving 100mph.
A little further on, the petrol warning light comes on. I reduce speed to 70mph and ask Al to look in the Driver's Handbook to see how much fuel is left when the light comes on. The answer is 8 litres. Some quick mental arithmetic suggests that we are unlikely to make it as far as the next petrol station some 45 miles away (I generally get 19.5mpg), especially after crawling past some burned-out wrecks at the scene of an earlier motorway pile-up, so I decide to detour into Dunkerque.
Now, everyone knows that getting petrol in France on Sunday night is a quest worthy of a great explorer. But Dunkerque is a pretty big town, and a port to boot, so it has to have somewhere open, right? Wrong. I ask for directions and remarkably we spotted the Shell station they pointed to pretty quickly. And reached it only five minutes of one-way system later. To find it entirely closed and no card-operated pumps.
Accosting various strangers in cars and asking them 'Avez-vous un jerry-can pour le gasoline?' provides an entertaining diversion but no fuel. Asking for directions to an open petrol station provides us with many different sets of directions to Calais. Eventually, though, we're in luck. Al asked someone who tells us there is another petrol station not two minutes drive away. I don't quite follow his directions so I ask him would he be kind enough to jump in the car and show us where it is? He agrees, Al draws the short-straw and climbs in the back and off we go.
The new petrol station is also closed, of course, but it does have card-operated pumps. Could we possibly trouble him for another moment and use his card, paying him in cash? He has no card on him, he explains. He then approaches some youths on our behalf but they have no card either. So I start knocking on doors. No luck there either.
So I return to the youths. Do they, perhaps, have a local friend who could nip over? I will, of course, make it worth their while. I profer a €50 note and say we'd like €40 worth of fuel in return. Suddenly one of the girls does indeed have a card! Three minutes later, we have 41 litres of fuel. Isn't free enterprise a wonderful thing?
One card-operated pump, and one card owner (on
right, with her friend)
She is bemused by me asking to take her photo, and I decide that explanations about wanting to feature her on my website while she's holding a pump may give entirely the wrong idea, so I just say I want a photo of my saviour.
The rest of the journey is uneventful and we catch the 23:45 ferry, which is probably the same one we would have caught anyway as I reckon we would have just missed the boarding time for the 10pm. I call Birgit and tell her the story, and say that the next challenge is how to get Al to Swindon. Al says there's a 24-hour airport link bus from Gatwick via Heathrow. I don't really want to prolong the journey as I'm already very tired by the time I get home from these trips, and being on the road any longer is really not a good idea, but we realise he can probably hitch to Gatwick easily enough if I drop him at a service station on the M25.
The trip report was completed on the ferry as usual, Al was duly dropped at Thurrock Services and I made it home by 2.30pm. Which was when I downloaded my mail to receive the terrible news.
Copyright © Ben Lovejoy 2002 | Email me | Visit my homepages