What a great trip! Two 100% dry days, few closures, no serious crashes that I'm aware of. The carcam was playing up again, this time due to the inverter cutting in and out for some as yet unknown reason. Wiring the whole system in and powering everything direct from 12v is definitely my main winter project ...
One of these days, I'll get around to packing in advance. But today wasn't to be the day, so I did my usual last-minute rush around to chuck everything into my bag before dashing out the door. Fortunately, I've got this down to a fine art, with a little help from a checklist:
Electronic memory substituting for biological memory
I also hadn't got around to investigating the carcam problem from last time, but as I have a second system to eventually form a rear-facing cam, I just chucked the complete second system in the car to play around with the three variables (camera, extension lead and power supply) en-route. I also made sure I brought a spare set of car keys with me. Just, um, as a general precaution ...
Driving into Dover, I noticed the temperature gauge climbing. This was a rather unwelcome sense of dea-vu, having had overheating problems on a previous ring-trip in the MX-5. Stopping to investigate at the closed BP startion at the port showed that the fan had apparently stopped working. I put the heating on full whack as a temporary solution and then checked the fuses in the ferry queue. I'd missed the 14:30 anyway so had 15 mins before the 15:15 boarded.
The 968 helpfully has the names of all the fuses in the lid of the fuse case. In German. A quick phone call to Birgit revealed that Lüfen was what I was looking for. There were two of those, but both passed a visual inspection, and also came up fine on the tester that Porsche helpfully installs in the fuse-box. Which was not what I wanted to see, as that was the extent of my own diagnostic and repair capabilities. But it wasn't a problem on the move, so I decided to just keep an eye on the gauge en-route and see if someone at the Ring could take a look at it for me.
The Germanicly efficient 968 fusebox, complete with built-in fuse-tester
The port petrol station being closed that left me with that horrible A16 dilemma ... have you got enough fuel for the loooooong stretch before the first one as you meet up with the E40? Do you feel lucky, punk, well, do you? I decided I didn't, so detoured into Calais to fill up first.
I spotted an irresistable future Ringers photo-opportunity on board the ferry. We just have to get four Ringers sitting in these cars wearing helmets:
The rest of the journey was uneventful. The temperature gauge stayed in the normal range, and the fan decided it would work again when I arrived in Nurburg at 10pm. I dumped my things in my room and headed over to the Fuchsrohre to eat.
Jocke was the only familiar face when I arrived, but a few people introduced themselves, saying they'd visited my site, including a guy called Lee over with his brother Darren and a few pals from Bristol, one of whom had hired a Merc for the weekend after checking out my new car hire page. A four day hire was €100!
The usual drunken conversation ensued, though I made my usual strategic switch to soft drinks after a couple of beers with the optimistic idea of being at the track by 8am. Since I didn't leave Fuchsrohre until 1.30am, this was beginning to look a little unlikely ...
Saturday was sunny. I'm not the kind of man to emphasise this point to those who weren't there this weekend, but the sky was so bright that my Ixus had trouble coping with the light when trying to take the obligatory car-park shot:
Shoot into the sun for effect, me?
The heat wasn't entirely welcome as my fan had stopped working again. A Scoob driver called Mick, who I'd seen at the Ring a few times, turned out to be a mechanic and came to help. Unfortunately Porsche wiring is much too neat and neither he nor several others who looked could find the fan switch to bypass it. But Mick suggested bleeding the cooling system in case there was an air-lock in it preventing water reaching the switch to activate it. Amazingly, with the help of the Driver's Manual and Mick's confirmation that I was undoing the correct bolt, this turned out to be so easy that it was even within my mechanical abilities:
Bleeding the coolant ... so easy, even I can do it
Mick's gorgeous dog, ScoobyDo
I kept a close eye on the temperature gauge while lapping, and kept the heater on high. Exiting Galgenkopf, I then switched both heat and fan to maximum, and also switched on the air-conditioning system which I was told activated another fan, further helping to draw hot air away from the engine. I then kept it running for a few minutes in the car-park until the temperature dropped to a low level.
Successfully keeping the engine temperature down
One yellow GT3 was finding an appropriately civilised way of coping with the heat - a mobile home with an awning to park underneath:
The latest in GT3 accessories
A new sign had appeared at the Ring. My German was sufficient to see that it was apparently banning commercial instruction and unofficial Ring Taxis on public days. I hope the photo is clear enough to enable someone to translate more fully:
There was talk on the 968.net forum of a 968-fest at the Ring this weekend, but I only spotted one from the board, this yellow ClubSport:
The, er, massed gathering from 968.net
Another pic in a vain attempt to make it look like there was more of us
The MR2 contingent was looking equally lonely:
The weekend was supposed to be a busy one, thanks mainly due to a large Ferrari event on the GP track. There were more Ferraris than usual knocking about the car-park and on the track, but we never saw the mass-influx we expected once the GP events finished.
Obligatory Ferrari shot
As usual, most of them were being driven very slowly, though there were few exceptions, including a Brit 355 I didn't manage to locate in the car-park after he passed me on the track. The slow ones were serving a useful function as lots of people were able to go home talking about all the Ferraris they overtook.
The problem with owning a Porsche or a Ferrari at the Ring is that it's just another one. Real exclusivity is, however, still possible. I especially liked the number plate. However, while I saw it parked in the car-park for a fair chunk of the day, I never saw it on the track:
A Jaguar XJ220
Christer was also doing pretty well in the exclusivity stakes with his Corvette. I'd been looking for a passenger lap in it for a while, so when he came up to me and asked 'Let me entertain you?', I wasted no time in climbing aboard. He took the roof off in my honour:
Christer with his Corvette
The phenomenal 'kick in the back' acceleration is something you expect from a Corvette. Even so, it is very, very enjoyable. :-) What came as a much greater surprise, despite Christer's on-list assurances, was that it handles. In fact, it handles very, very well. And Christer has the talent to demonstrate that fact. Another name on my 'Recommended passenger laps' list.
Another passenger lap I'd been after for a while was with Rene in his MX-6. I expected a fast smooth lap, and wasn't disappointed. His pace in Wippermann in particular left me wondering where I was going wrong!
Rene's MX-6 - Wippermann lessons by appointment
There was a small Cosworth delegation, though these were more in evidence in the car-park than on the track:
The same was true of the Caterhams dotted about. I guess I can't really be too rude since I was having mechanical problems on my own, but Caterhams do seem to spend a fair amount of time looking like this:
"Anything major?" "The alternator fell off"
Speaking of unreliable things, there were a few more of the RF Concepts bulletcams in evidence. My own record with them is one failed camera and one failed power supply. 'Sparky' aka Andy had also had a failed camera. This rear-facing one was, however, working:
There were a number of incidents, but none of them appeared serious. One of them did give me a real scare at the time, though - a bike lost it at Schwedenkreuz and lowsided as he went onto the grass:
That's a very bad place for a crash, especially a bike one, so I decided that while that's not normally somewhere I would want to stop, there wasn't much choice in this case. The next challenge being how to pull off the track: by the time I'd finished braking, I was alongside the kerbs, and they are very high when you contemplate driving a low-slung car over them! But a careful angle got me onto the grass, and the biker stood up by the time I'd grabbed the first-aid kit and started running back towards him.
Those kerbs are high!
Another biker who gave me a scare was one who went into the Karrussel and almost stood the bike on its nose as he braked hard halfway round. He then popped out about 3/4 of the way round. I was amazed to see in my mirrors that he'd kept it upright:
I don't think you want to do that, mate ...
A yellow GT3 did the traditional Brunnchen II crash, ending up rear-end into the armco on the right-hand side, where the safety car is in the pic below. The damage looked extensive. The carcam wasn't recording that lap, so this grab is after they'd moved it onto the grass on the left to await recovery:
Another car did the same thing a little later in the day. There were several 'Yes' roadsters, some of which were being driven well and some of which, uh, weren't. When I saw this in the gravel and apparently against the armco, I thought the damage was likely to be similar to the GT3. Amazingly, when I saw it a lap or two later on the recovery truck, there was no visible damage at all:
An apparently lucky escape!
One crash missed by the intermittently-working carcam was an amazing BMW crash at Hatzenbach II. Approaching round the gentle left-hand sweeper, I saw a big cloud of dust in the air, followed by two skidmarks leading in an absolutely straight line, followed by a black BMW embedded nose-first in the armco. The driver was actually out of the car before the dust had disappeared. I can only imagine that it was a first-lap panic as he realised how tight the bend was.
In between laps, I had a phone call from Francis. He'd holed one of his tyres exiting the Baby Karrussel and didn't have a spare wheel with him. After a certain alleged incident involving someone having left a spare key at home, I didn't think I could take the piss too much. I said I'd wander round the car-park in search of an E30 BMW to see if we could borrow their spare to get him off the track.
You wouldn't think finding an E30 BMW would be difficult in the Ring car-park. Normally it's about every third car. But a search of both car-parks revealed a complete absence of anything older than an E36, whose wheels were too big.
That'll be a hole, then
Francis disposes of the rubbish neatly
Having overtaken on the approach to Schwedenkreuz a few times, and knowing how tight that makes the bend, I was interested to see how Sabine would tackle the off-line entry as she passed me just beyond the brow, especially since neither of us were exactly hanging about:
Sabine on the off-line approach to Schwedenkreuz ...
I should have known better than to expect any drama - the M5 went neatly around the inside of the bend with barely a slide, ending up only slightly wider than the normal line:
They do say you can bring any vehicle to the Ring, but this was perhaps pushing it a little. Still, they seemed to be having fun in the car-park:
There are always a fair number of private plates in evidence at the Ring. I thought nobody could beat Anders' GT3, but I have to say that I think this one gives him a run for his money:
An Australian PC games-developer had emailed me shortly before I left to say that they were working on a new race sim for the Nordschleife. They had lots of detail for the track, but didn't know anything about the layout of the car-park at the public entrance. I said I'd see what I could do. The best I could manage was this rather blurry shot of a photo on the Grüne Hölle drinks mat!
Various branches of Ringers International Freight Couriers were active this weekend. Felix texted me to let me know that my rollbar had made it as far as Spa, and would be in Nurburg on Thursday night. Stephan met me in the car-park and told me he had the router than he'd kindly bought for me while he was in the States (as US prices are about half UK ones):
Amazing what you can buy in the Ring car-park
I don't know how many laps I'd done by the end of the day - I normally rely on reviewing the carcam footage afterwards - but it was A Lot. :-) With showers forecast for Sunday, I'd wanted to make the most of the day, so I'd been doing my usual back-to-back two laps followed by a brief rest and then back out for more fun, but with shorter gaps than usual.
At just after 7pm, JW asked me if I fancied a lap in his SquealMachine, aka the chronically under-steering Alfa 156. I thought that sounded like fun, but remembered as I climbed in that the last entry was 19:20 and I wanted to do a last lap of the day. I looked at my watch and it was 19:08. I told JW I didn't care what the BTG time was, but the car-park to car-park time had to be less than 12 minutes. :-) JW duly obliged, and once my ears had recovered we made a mad dash from his car to mine and were the last car allowed entry.
And so to the dinner. We must be the only bunch of Ring addicts in the world with a fully computerised reservation system for our dinners, but still the numbers are always a lottery. In this case we had a few cancellations but a lot more turning up on spec, so we had about an extra table-full of hungry Ringers. Attempts to steal another reserved table were foiled, so we waited until some others left their table and hastily dragged it over to ours.
The Fuchsrohre was busy:
Amazingly, the food came pretty quickly, but this time it was our thirst going unquenched as there were long delays between refills:
The forlorn sight of empty beer glasses
Francis decided to take precautions against beerlessness by ordering two at a time:
Someone suggested that Francis call the AA and see if they could produce a tyre. I suggested that being stranded in some small German village on his way home to the UK might produce a more sympathetic hearing than wanting them to scour Germany for a tyre so he could destroy it on the Ring. Sadly, they couldn't help.
Just obeying the instructions on the card
We of course had to have a mini gadget festival:
My Treo and Jocke's Communicator
Jocke trumped me by having downloaded one of Jørund's videos onto his device:
This was watched with enjoyment by a couple of new Ringers:
Seeing me take a photo of the video on the Communicator, Jocke took a photo of my LCD viewfinder showing the pic of the video on his communicator. I took a pic of the pic of the video, but we stopped there before the entire region of Germany folded in on itself:
The things gadget freaks do while waiting for more beer ...
There had been a camera crew at the track all day, and they were also in the Fuchsrohre in the evening. They filmed us eating dinner, so I took pics of them filming everything in sight, including the pics on the walls:
After so many laps, I was falling asleep by 11pm, so with great determination to be at the track by 8am, made my way across the road to bed.
Birgit woke me up with a phone call at 8.30am to ask whether I was at the track already. Apparently my 'vroom-vroom, neeeEEEEEEoooooowwwww' noises weren't sufficiently convincing, so she took great pleasure in telling me that she was not only out of bed but setting off on the company hike that had stopped her making it to the Ring. I thought 'Bleargh' was a sufficiently eloquent reply.
I was still trying to work up the energy to crawl out of bed when Jocke texted me to say the Ring was closed until 10am. Bliss. I went to sleep for another half an hour.
It would hardly be fair to those who weren't there to point out how hot it was, so I won't. Not a word about either the blazing sun or baking heat. And not a mention of the track so dry you could have used it as an ingredient in a dry Martini.
Apologies for the dazzling sun reflecting into the lens in this shot
The track was marginally busier today than yesterday, but still astonishingly quiet given how packed the car-park was.
One of the rare traffic-jams on the track
When someone doesn't want to be overtaken and is deliberately blocking, a tactic I've successfully used on several occasions is to sit patiently behind them (cough) until someone else approaches from behind me, then let them past in the hope that they'll barge past the offending vehicle and open up a gap for me to slipstream through behind them.
I had to wait a little while when this Golf wouldn't let me past as we approached Hohe-Acht:
He blocked me through here and Wipperman ...
... but eventually a bike approached which I slowed to let through ...
... the Golf is now braking on the kerbs in an attempt to stay ahead ...
... but frightens himself sufficiently to move over and let us both past
I employed the same tactic with a red 911 who blocked me from Schwedenkreuz. Entering Adenauer-Forst, I spotted Sabine in my mirror, so slightly naughtily indicated left for her to pass on the inside and then slipstreamed through behind her - with the added benefit of getting to watch her slide through AF:
Room for one, room for two ...
At the other extreme were those trying a bit too hard to be courteous. This white Brit BMW literally dived over to the right at Pflanzgarten III as he saw me approaching, and ended up climbing the kerb on the inside!
There were again a number of incidents, but again nothing that appeared serious.
Not sure if this was a breakdown or a coming-together
At Hohe-Acht, there was what initially looked like a massive crash, with bikes and cars all over the place. I slowed to a crawl to see if help was needed, but all the bikers were standing up and everyone was out of the cars, so I carried on. I heard later that it was either just one bike down or a car and a bike coming together, and everyone else had just stopped to help. An ambulance did attend and the track was closed for a while, but it didn't seem major:
A track full of vehicles, with even more round the corner
Another lap, there was a marshall at the entrance to the Karrussel, indicating for us to go around the outside. I did so, slowly, to see that someone had done the 'staying in a bit too long' crash:
I didn't spot too much exotica on the track apart from the Ferraris which are far too numerous to qualify, but there was one of the new Morgans cruising round:
I was again doing almost non-stop lapping, mostly with passengers, many of them bikers. In particular, a group from Byrne-up Tours took advantage of a casual 'come and grab a passenger lap if you want one sometime' the previous day to virtually organise themselves into a rota. :-)
Picking up the latest passenger in the 968Taxi
The number of laps I was doing was putting a smile on someone else's face too:
"You are visiting us a lot!"
One of the roadsters had crashed at Eschbach, leaving a little oil on the track but well off the line. The safety car arrived, and a flag marshall was out. Astonishingly, a bike then crashed into the back of the car which was well onto the grass while the safety car and marshalls were on scene! The biker and driver were last scene having a heated discussion, followed by the police interviewing witnesses in the car-park. The biker only suffered minor injuries, but JW who was there spectating said the bike was pretty trashed:
The crashed roadster before the bike hit it
One car that was spraying oil more thoroughly was a French Merc SL280S. There were huge clouds of white smoke every time he changed gear, and after following him for a while because he didn't want to be overtaken there were lots of oil-specks on the nose of my car - fortunately on the ArmourFend coating, which is pretty easy to clean.
I reported him to the marshalls, who asked me to watch for him at the gate so I could point him out. I did this, also taking a photo of his registration number in case he drove straight out. There was a cop on duty at the barriers, something that came out of the safety meetings which have been taking place recently, and he followed the marshall over to speak to the car driver.
Watch out for this car
I don't know whether it was coincidence or not, but there was a closure about two minutes after the Merc came in and I heard that several bikes were down.
Francis had earlier bemoaned the fact that you can't buy a tyre anywhere on Sunday. This turned up later, but sadly appeared to be out of stock:
Stop me and buy one
I continue to be impressed by Toyo Proxes T1-S tyres. The wear below is after two days of hard lapping in high temperatures. Granted that the outside tread is now more visual than tactile, there is no sign of damage, and I think my various passengers will confirm that I was not exactly showing them much mercy:
But all good things must come to an end, and finally it was 5pm and time to head back to the B&B, pay the bill and pack the car. I took things a little easy on the way back, again keeping an eye on the temperature and stopping a couple of times to check the coolant level, so the drive back to Calais took four hours. Then back to even lower speeds in the UK, including painful adherence to the 50mph limit through the SPEC'd-up roadworks.
Putting the car to bed in the garage, and switching off the ignition ... the fan switched on. All bloody weekend I'd been sweltering in the car-park with the heater on full-blast, and now at 1am in Essex, it decides to work again. So together with the ABS sensor, I now have two of those things mechanics hate to tackle and owners hate to pick up the tab for: intermittent faults.
Oh well, only four days until my next trip ... :-)
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