I've traditionally had an August holiday at the Ring, encompassing two weekends and the evening sessions on the week between the two. This time I would be spending the week at Birgit's place - and with very poor planning on her part, she lives as far from the Ring as Calais, just in the opposite direction! In fact, she is as far as you can get without being a Czech. So this August was two Ring trips rather than one. Trip one ...
Everything everyone tells you about Porsche running costs is absolutely true, and when you're gradually improving it at the same time, be prepared for an expensive first year of ownership! The good news was that she didn't need any new tyres this time - for the first weekend, anyway. But since she would be due a service at some point during the two back-to-back trips, I got that done early. She also needed a new starter-motor, and I made a start on some of the minor cosmetics.
My rollbar also arrived from California. It cost more to ship it here than it did to buy it, but it was still cheaper than buying it in the UK - crazy! I was hatching a mad plan to try to get it over to the Ring so that it could be fitted locally. Mike Frison suggested Achim of Ringmini fame. I called him and he was happy to do it, but that left the problem of how to get it there. While I have carried some crazy things in both the 968 and MX-5 before it, a rollbar might have been pushing things, especially as a 10-day trip means that my car looked like this:
This was already providing something of a challenge since the plan was to leave Birgit's car at the Ring between the two weekends and to drive to and from her place in my car. Hmmm. This is going to require some creativity!
I'd hoped I might be able to find someone with a van who was heading over that weekend with a bit of space, but it wasn't to be, so I decided just to get the thing out of Heathrow (where it was incurring storage charges) and find someone local to look after it until I could make arrangements for another weekend. An Ixi called Shez stepped in to help, so we collected it in his Scoob Estate and he's looking after it until I can get it across there:
My rollbar in the back of Shez's Scoob Estate
The rollbar and shipping was of course another set of bills, and I still need to get my wheels refurbished ... but hey, other people waste money on frivilous things like kids.
I still haven't managed the permanent carcam installation. The basic setup is 100% proven, and I'm completely happy with one small exception: I don't like the fact that you have to angle the rear-view mirror to clear the mounting bracket. While it doesn't affect rear vision, it looks untidy, so I'd been scouring photographic shops for a shorter bracket. I found this one, which I think may do the job with a bit of assistance from a Dremel or similar to give the ball-and-socket joint more vertical mobility:
 |
 |
The potential mount as it is ... |
and showing the modification required |
I'm also awaiting the MkIII switchbox (a neater version of the MkII, with better cable routing and configuration via infra-red link). Once I have both, then it'll be time to hide those messy wires! For now, however ...
The good news is that my Porsche specialist reckons the plastic surround above the windscreen is fairly easy to remove, so installing the wiring may turn out to be a relatively straightforward job, even for someone of my famed mechanical incompetence.
I did at least manage to create my little 'AV trolley'! After getting fed up with having to dig out kit every time I wanted to add some frame-grabs to a trip report, I decided to create a permanent setup. But since I don't like having a TV out in my living-room, I put it all together on a trolley which lives in a cupboard and can be wheeled out as needed! The VHS player has a jog-shuttle dial for capturing the exact frame desired ... the audio lead goes straight into the televideo unit ... the video lead goes into the frame-grabber, and then the video-out from that goes into the televideo unit. The upshot of all this is that it is a doddle to get a frame-grab of any video inserted into the VHS, as well as copying videos (albeit in real-time).
Not exactly pretty, but convenient
For future beer-and-video evenings, I simply substitute a projector for the televideo unit, add a MiniDV camcorder for anyone bringing MiniDV tapes, and we can take any frame-grabs from any video as the mood takes us.
Incidentally, my top tip for cutting the plastic molding from phono leads is to be bloody careful! Rather than just bloody:
Whoops!
Chris Hellegers also set the right tone for the weekend when he sent me a great photo which I immediately made into my desktop pic:
Entering Eiskurve
The combination of collecting the rollbar, not having had a chance to pack earlier and having to drive into London first for a client meeting meant that I got just three hours' sleep on Thursday night, so I was relieved to get away on time and make the 14:30 ferry.
Ben Pike and a small group were aiming for the same ferry. He'd told me that one of his gang would be in a red Cerbera, and I spotted one heading down the A2, so slotted in behind it with a view to saying hello at some lights. I was about to pull alongside at the A2/M25 junction when the lights changed and there was an opportunity to blast past about half a mile of traffic, so I decided introductions could wait. :-)
We met up at Dover, where the car caught the eye of the Port police and Greg found himself being asked to prove that the vehicle was his. This took a bit longer than it might have done because the police couldn't find the VIN plate. His passenger, meantime, was checking out the availability of passenger space in other vehicles. :-)
"Is this your car, Sir?"
The crossing was fast, and we docked on time. I met up with the others just passed passport control so that we could convoy there:
We did have a few amusements along the way. First, with true TVR reliability, the Cerbera's windscreen wiper switch failed. The only way you could switch on the wipers was by turning the steering-wheel more than 15-degrees. This made the initial rainy section of the journey quite amusing as the TVR had to jink from lane to lane in order to see out ...
Second, Simon's 911 started running low on petrol. As those who do the journey regularly will know, it's a long run from Calais to the first petrol station, so Miles was on fumes by the time we got there:
Next, the rubber seal across the top of the 911 windscreen came loose so a roadside repair with gaffa-tape was called for:
After that, Pikey got caught out by junction 37.5 on the E40, cunningly inserted between junction 37 and 38, and so made a bit of a detour while the rest of us waited in a McDonalds car-park in Eupen.
Finally, despite me having the car serviced the previous week and specifically asking for the brakes to be checked, and confirming again that they had been checked when I collected her, the pad-wear warning light came on as I drove along the B258. This wasn't a worry for the journey - it comes on with a couple of millimetres of pad left - but clearly the pads would have to be replaced before I went out onto the Ring. Fortunately I keep a spare set in the car, so I called Birgit and asked her to see if Steve Q could be talked into replacing them for me. He said yes, so that was sorted. Or so I thought ... :-)
But eventually we got there, and the convoy did make the journey a little less tedious.
Birgit and I joined Martin's group in the Lindenhof. The plan had been a quick drink or two and then to wander over to the Fuchsrohre, but we got chatting and stayed the evening. Martin, incidentally, had been demonstrating his engineering skills by repairing a watch:
There you are, guv, good as new
Richiemouse was over, in order to have the cast removed from his broken arm so that the hospital could check how it was healing. He was telling the story of how, on Sunday, the hospital gives each patient an orange:
Recreating the moment they placed an orange in his one working hand
We'd arranged for Steve to replace my brake-pads at 9am. Martin informed us that Steve was very firmly still in bed, and kindly volunteered to 'make a start' on them while Steve surfaced. 'Making a start' involved doing the whole job, as Steve didn't surface until sometime around 11am. :-) Cheers, Martin! (And thanks to Steve for the offer, anyway ...)
Martin at work
The calliper design turned out to be very clever: once the callipers are removed from the disk, the pads can be removed without any further work. There were a few challenges: removing the sensor lines is notoriously difficult to do without breaking the sensor, and one of them did indeed break. Since the pad-wear was even and the other one remained intact, Martin wired a loop so that the warning-light wouldn't be left constantly on. Compressing the pistons was also quite tough without a clamp, but the brakes were sorted before the rain stopped!
The 968 has rather diminished my enthusiasm for lapping in the rain because it's already been an expensive year and the costs of an armco incident would be very much higher in the Porsche. I thus decided that some passenger laps were the immediate plan, and Euan offered the first.
Euan was very sensibly taking it easy, and we were joking about the need to avoid 'Doing a Reeves', a Lovejoy or a Johnson as we went through Schwedenkreuz, Aremburg and Fuchsrohre respectively. We didn't have too long to wait before we could add another Ringer's name to a bend, as we found Simon Bradley's Scooby sitting rather sadly against the armco in Miss-Hit-Miss. He'd lost the back and spun into the armco on the outside, then sensibly dived across the track to get onto the grass. The damage was fairly major:
Simon was taking it in good spirit, and posed for a couple of photos while we figured out how to pull the bodywork off the right rear tyre:
A few minutes work with some makeshift bodywork repair tools and the car was driveable to the Breidscheid exit. Which seemed like a good idea at the time - if he could lose it there, so could others, and the car-park has to be a safer place than the trackside, even with only a handful of cars out there.
Unfortunately the police didn't see it that way when they stopped him at Breidscheid and announced that they planned to charge him with leaving the scene of an accident! They remained adamant about this, even after we established that I'd visited the office to let them know that he had crashed there and would be returning to the car-park via the back road to complete the paperwork. The main person I'd spoken to wasn't in the office, and the other guy there didn't speak any English and hadn't taken any notice of what I was saying. Eventually, with Birgit's help translating, we managed to convince them that he hadn't been about to do a runner back to England, but since this had taken quite a lot of police time, they felt that they had to charge him with something so they charged him with driving too fast for safety. This was rather hard to deny, so Simon paid the €65 fine and that was, thankfully, that.
Well, that was that as far as the law was concerned, anyway. But when you're a Ringer and you manage to crash, there are a few other formalities to complete. There's the car-park paperwork, for example:
We gave Simon a few copies of the safety leaflet
Jeppe had made several thousand copies of the safety leaflet, and brought them in his van. Laurens went to fetch them, and we went to the restaurant to put them on display there as arranged by Christer. Having Birgit there to explain in German that this had been agreed with the owners was a big help!
Since most people there tend to speak either German or English, we stuck to those two languages in the restaurant, leaving the others for car-park distribution.
The safety leaflets in the restaurant
The value of car-park distribution was confirmed when Birgit & I did the rounds, her giving them to Germans and me to Brits. A group of bikers I gave them to said how much they appreciated it as they had no idea of either the risks or the rules - they'd just read about it in a bike mag and decided to come. They said they felt much better equipped to go out now.
We were also spotting people taking copies from Simon's car, so perhaps any Ringer who crashes has to become a leaflet stand for a few hours. :-)
I was trying to find other people to grab passenger laps with while the track was still very wet, but few people were going out, and Mike Oliver didn't seem motivated by my saying that I was seeking 'another sacrificial Scoob to see what conditions are like'. So I waited a while until it seemed to be drying out and then set off on a cautious sighting lap.
I was glad I'd had a passenger lap first, otherwise T13 could have come as a bit of a shock: there was no warning sign to tell you that it was closed off (for the DTM racing on the GP circuit):
All looks normal on approach ...
But there's a tyre-wall waiting around the corner!
Someone once asked me exactly where you go when T13 is closed, so here's what it looks like. After the first right-hander at Schikane, you pass to the right of the armco, a service-road normally protected by a barrier (see above). Once inside that, the first bit looks like this:
And the second part (running in front of one of the stadiums) looks like this:
Simon wasn't the only one having trouble with Miss-Hit-Miss (or Miss-Spin-Hit as it is now known). First, some Brits had been following a Swiss Swift when they saw it spin into the armco. They caught it on video and went to show the driver, who had already been busy with the gaffa-tape:
The Swift gets off more lightly than Simon's Scoob
Then later on I spotted another crash at the same spot:
The latest Miss-Hit-Miss incident
I also spotted the marshalls out pricing-up the armco there - not sure if that was Simon's incident or one of the others (maybe they could club together and get a special deal?):
A marshall protecting a safety car out inspecting armco
Francis must have been grateful to Simon for distracting attention from his own little escapade, when he performed the classic Brunnchen II spin. Having only recently repaired the rear wing of his BMW after a friend modified it at Brands Hatch, Francis had more or less exactly recreated the damage:
Francis's BMW, courtesy of the armco at Brunnchen II
I interrupted my laps for a passenger lap in Martin's new Caterham. This was the Blackbird-engined one that was suffering oil-pressure problems last trip but which was in fine fettle this time. It was a superb lap - it has Formula Ford tyres, and the level of grip was simply unbelieveable. That thing just did not slide. The sequential gearbox was also fun, though the windblast was rather less so in an open-face lid! But if you wanted a dedicated Ring-toy, you would have to spend a great deal of money to get something better than this:
Martin seemed to be getting the hang of his new toy nicely :-)
I spotted Achim and went to talk about the rollbar. I also asked him for a passenger lap, and he explained with an embarrassed grin that he wasn't going out any more that day as he'd had a bit of an expensive morning. 'Oh?' I asked. '20 metres of armco at Kallenhard,' he replied! True to form, he had the crashed mini repaired the same day, and was back in the other one the next day:
One of the Ringminis
I think it was Niek who pointed out this sticker on a certain Ringer's car:
I now a declare a competition open to see who can guess which Ringer. Those who have already noticed it on the car concerned are not eligible.
Much more lapping followed, and before we knew it, it was time for the Ringers dinner. A small group of us were there from shortly before 8pm. As we planned to visit Pflanzgarten III after dinner to say goodbye to Jørund, and Niek was the nominated driver to ferry people up, I offer for historical interest this unique photograph of Niek drinking Coke:
Historians may use this photograph on request
The dinner was the usual enoyable Ringers affair, and as is now the norm, we were standing-room only:
As Jørund would very much be present in spirit, I thought it fitting to book a place for him:
Jørund's place at the dinner
It felt appropriate that with a Ringer lost the dinner had the youngest-ever Ringer in attendance:
The delightfully-named Ayrton :-)
A few Ringers decided to walk to Pflanzgarten III. While I thought this was a lovely idea, I thought their estimated time might be a bit optimistic, so decided to go for the Niek taxi option instead. Birgit & I were the first to go there, and en-route we saw a fantastic sunset:
En-route to Pflanzgarten III
Arriving there, I was glad we were the first as I wanted some quiet time there before the atmosphere changed. I felt a number of different emotions being there. For the first time, walking along the marks left by his bike to the spot where he died, I felt anger. There are many, many bends on the Ring where if you crash on a bike there is a significant chance you will be killed, but Pflanzgarten III isn't one of them. The run-off on the bend where Jørund hit was as good as that at a short-circuit. Even with the very high speeds involved, 99 times out of 100 you could crash there, slide a long way and walk away from it. It felt horribly and stupidly unfair that on this one occasion that wasn't to be.
But the anger passed, and I felt that being there, in darkness and silence, was a good time to say goodbye. There was a peacefulness to it. It also felt good to see that this was not one of those Ring crashes where you can pass the spot an hour later and see no clue of the tragedy that occured there. Someone had printed out a few photos of him:
There are also print-outs of a few pages from his guestbook. It was odd seeing my own entry there, written a day or two afterwards. His death wasn't real then, and now it is.
Bren had also visited within a day or two to mark the track. None of us wanted to risk anyone being distracted, so Bren kept the lettering small and off the line:
The first of the others arrived about 20 minutes later, and then gradually more and more people arrived. The atmosphere kind of ebbed and flowed, sometimes quiet, with individual people walking around to have some reflective time to themselves, and other times the place echoing to laughter as we recalled some of the fun times we'd shared with him. As I say, I was glad to have had the quiet time, all alone there but for Birgit, but was also glad of this. Had it been anyone else, Jørund would have been there, joining in the stories, and the image of his grinning face was very strong. It definitely felt like he was there with us.
Both Euan and I had brought bottles of single-malt and some plastic cups, so we drank whisky. I called for a toast to him. I didn't think anything flowery would be to Jørund's taste, and there was nothing that needed to be said by then, so I kept it to a simple 'To Jørund'.
Niek had earlier bought some flowers which we left at the hut. I'd organised a quick whip-round earlier to pay for the recovery charges, completed at the track, and there was a bit left over which I offered to Niek for the flowers. He told me Laurens had already paid for them. I had so many people emailing me offering to contribute to the recovery costs that we could probably have covered them a dozen times over.
The flowers we left, together with a packet of Jørund's favourite
Lucky Strikes
That last goodbye complete, we made our way back to the cars and a group of us headed to Fuchsrohre for some nightcaps. Someone at Brunchenn had caught Niek's flip on camera, just as he was landing. It was a stunning photo, so Sabine asked Niek to get a large copy of it to put on the wall. It was also a telling reminder of the relative risks of cars and bikes there.
Nobody knows why Euan was seen entering the Fuchsrohre like this:
Few of us made it up very early on Sunday, but it appeared that we hadn't missed much as an moronic biker had had his engine blow-up at Schwedenkreuz and had then proceeded to ride it all the way from there to the Breidscheid exit, dropping oil along the entire route! This had understandably taken a long time to clear up. By the time the track did re-open, the office announced that the first 10 minutes would be for cars only, so that the worst of the oil would be worn away by the time the bikes went out:
The oil-warning sign on the approach to Schwedenkreuz ...
A huge oil-slick running down Schwedenkreuz into Aremburg ...
Down Fuchsrohre, up the other side, round Adenauer-Forst ...
Round Metzgesfeld, Kallenhard, Miss-Hit-Miss, Wehrseifen
and all the way to the exit at Breidscheid - unbelievable
Having previously declared myself unconvinced by separate sessions for cars and bikes, I have to admit that the car-only lap was rather pleasant. With only one vehicle type to contend with, there was a lot more predictability and a lot less feeling of chaos. I'd now describe myself as open to this idea.
The early morning had apparently seen another spinning Ringer, this time at Wehrseifen, and prior to the oil-spill. Fortunately, Simon kept his 3-day-old car on the black stuff and away from the corregated metal stuff:
A very relieved owner of a three-day-old 996!
My own car troubles were initially limited to another brake warning light, this time indicating an ABS failure:
The actual failure didn't especially concern me, but the 968 has an aircraft-style Master Caution light. Any time any of the warning lights illuminate, it switches on an extremely bright hazard light to draw your attention to the instruments. This is an excellent idea, except that there appears to be no way of cancelling it, and it's a distraction when you're driving. Removing the ABS fuses had no effect on the warning light, but oddly enough replacing them did! As the ABS sensor is in the same wiring harness as the brake-pad sensor, it seemed likely that we had created a loose-connection while replacing the pads, but as the problem was solved for the moment that could wait until after the weekend.
The day got pretty busy, both in the car-park and on the track:
Overtaking on the inside of Mutkurve ('Angstkurve') is always interesting
With the inevitable result, so much of the day was back to last trips 'two laps and a closure' pattern:
Another two laps, another closure
Fortunately not many of them appeared to be serious, so the paramedics weren't too stretched:
There were a couple of other 968s there, including this matching red one, but it appeared to have some kind of fault in the area behind the windscreen:
What's the metal bit behind the windscreen all about?
It was parked next to Birgit's MR2, which was doing its best to set the proper example:
Birgit commented that there were loads of cars here which would turn heads on the street but which barely got a second glance here. There were one or two exceptions, but even those failed to impress the marshalls. First this GT2 was told not to park in front of the closure barrier:
"Move that piece of junk out of the way"
And then this race GT40 was sent away for having no number-plates and being fitted with slicks:
When the driver returned with plates and road-legal tyres, he was promptly noise-tested and sent away again! They could at least have let him do one lap.
Now, you may hear some rumours about the following incident, but you know what Ring Rumours are like, so I'm confident that the phrase 'You utter prat' will not be featuring on any mailing lists ...
The truth is that I thought it would help to pass the time during a closure if we carried out a little contingency exercise. I hypothesised a scenario where someone owned a car with an electric boot release, and where mechanical opening of the boot required the key. 'Let us imagine,' I said, 'that the driver of such a vehicle had dropped his keys in the boot and then closed it.' I then further supposed that the spare keys were around 500 miles away. Would we be able, in such a hypothetical situation, to recover the keys from the boot?
A number of people joined in this little puzzle, with the main plan of attack focusing on accessing the boot via the fold-down rear-seats. The release for the seats is, of course, inside the locked boot:
"So if we could open the boot we could fold down the seats
in order to retrieve the keys to open the boot"
A hypothetical car owner watches as Martin tackles the challenge
I'm pleased to report that the exercise was successful, so should any imaginary Ringer find themselves in such a situation, we now know how to solve it. I'm sure that any such driver would pass on their grateful thanks to Martin.
Despite the busy-ness of the track, and the mainly minor incidents, I'm pleased to say that track etiquette was generally extremely good. Most people would move over when you indicated left behind them, and the practice of bikers pointing to the side they wish you to pass now seems to be firmly established:
A biker indicating right and pointing left as confirmation
An almost suicidally-polite biker going around the outside
of Schwedenkreuz to let me pass on the left
Unfortunately, not everyone was so cooperative:
This guy blocked me for ages ...
This Ferrari 348 blocked four cars for six bends
This French Merc 280 not only blocked overtakes ...
But was also laying down oil
(Birgit reported him to the marshalls)
After my scare at Breidscheid on an earlier trip, where a bike indicated right then cut across to the left, I was trying to be ultra-cautious. I waited until bikes gave a definite signal for me to overtake, or until they were heading away from my side of the track:
Passing quickly on the left as he headed right
I was as usual giving lots of passenger laps, and finding it impossible to keep up with requests, so apologies to those I didn't get around to.
Dropping off Birgit and collecting Morten
I was too busy driving to take passenger-laps myself, but one couldn't be refused: Adrian driving his friend Ray's brand new M3:
Despite only being available in Tiptronic form, it's a real hoot round the Ring, all the more so because it feels like the first-class cabin of an airliner inside - all calfskin leather and quiet refinement. On the outside was a car going round the Ring at a decent pace; on the inside, you kept expecting a stewardess to serve champagne.
Adrian had come over with Simon, as had Clare. This was Clare's third trip to the Ring. On trip one, she was in a car that crashed. On trip three, she was going home in a car that had crashed.
Clare, about to set off home in the remains of Simon's Scoob
Birgit & I had originally planned to leave at 5pm, as the drive to her place takes about four hours along unlit roads so is best done in daylight. But at 5pm, the DTM race had just ended and there was nose-to-tail traffic everywhere. Joining it just seemed pointless, so we decided to wait until it had cleared. As an entirely fortuitous side-benefit, this gave time for more laps.
Which was fortunate as we got to see a delightful piece of entertainment from a Peugeot 205. I think there must be something about Pug drivers. Actually, I think the truth about this one was that he spotted a Porsche in his mirrors and was bragging to his mate about how he would keep us there.
He started by going onto the grass on the approach to Hatzenbach II:
On the grass and braking!
Then braking halfway though a right-hander ...
... resulting in a sideways slide onto the Espen Line
Both myself and my passenger were convinced he was going to crash, but he made it round Hocheichen before I decided that I'd rather have him behind me.
At the other extreme, there were some bikers taking lines so perfect it brought Jørund to mind:
Sheer perfection
For some odd reason, this van also brought Jørund to mind ...
A van using the kerbs entering Flugplatz!
I also did a video-lap following Francis who had Birgit on-board while I took Trish's son for a lap. It was a really enoyable exercise as you have to think carefully about how to position the car to keep the lead car in frame. This can mean taking some unorthodox lines through bends, and of course in the Karussell you have to be pretty much nose to tail to keep the car in view:
Following Francis to give him a video
However, fun as it was, my suspicion is that being videoed can encourage people to try a little too hard, so I won't be making a habit of it.
We finally set off at 7pm. By leaving all unnecessary luggage at the B&B, we succeeded in getting Birgit, myself and our joint luggage into the 968 for the drive back to her home. The drive was notable for roadworks and darkness, so I was glad to get there. And just a few more days before trip 22. :-)
Copyright © Ben Lovejoy 2002 | Email me | Visit my homepages