A trip with a difference ... driving a MkII Golf GTI!
My 968 was involved in an accident some time before the trip, and although it was fairly low-speed the impact was sufficient to damage the chassis, and that was enough to write it off. As I didn't want to be pressured into rushing out and buying the first 968 I saw, I decided to make alternative arrangements for this trip.
I asked on Ringers whether anyone else was interested in having a backup car available at the Ring as insurance against car problems, and it turned out that eight of us were. So the Ringers C-Car Syndicate was born. The story of the car purchase can be found here, but the short version is that just three days after I first mentioned the car we each were the proud owner of 1/8th of a MkII Golf GTI which lives at Ring Racing, just 2k from the Ring. :-)
The car had already had some Ring mods, but unfortunately one of these was to remove the driver-side seatbelt stalk and to install a harness fitted in a dangerous fashion. The shoulder straps went directly down to the floor behind the driver's seat - this steep downward angle means that forward movement in the harness is translated into downward pressure on your spine.
We'd already arranged for Ring Racing to fit a full cage with shoulder harness bar, but this wasn't going to arrive until after the June trip. The good news was that Joerg managed to source a replacement seatbelt stalk for Ring Racing to fit for us on the Friday, the bad news was that the mounting plate was also missing so they couldn't. Oh well - guess I'd better not crash, then.
While a Golf would be a bit of a step-down from a Porsche, it did offer several advantages. First, and most importantly, I wouldn't have to drive across bloody Belgium! After driving that stretch of the E40 fifty times, and having had to give up the warp-speed approach due to a major speeding blitz by the Belgian police, I am sooooooooo fed up with it. Having a car waiting for me at the Ring meant that I could simply hop on a plane to Köln/Bonn.
Second, a much faster trip meant that I didn't need to take Friday afternoon off work, relieving a bit of the pressure on my annual leave entitlement. Third, I didn't have to drive across Belgium. Fourth, there was no prep to do on my car. Fifth, I didn't have to drive across Belgium. Finally, and crucially, I didn't have to drive across Belgium. So all-in-all, I was pretty happy about the weekend's arrangements.
The one tiny bit of prep I'd had to do took me about five minutes - photo further into the report ...
I'm convinced that the stupidly-cheap fares budget airlines advertise are entirely ficticious, but the plane fare plus cab to and from the airport was roughly the same as the ferry plus petrol, so I couldn't complain about that.
Birgit managed to get away from work early. The plan was for her to get to the Ring early enough to do a few laps in either the C-Car or her Merc, then come to pick me up from Köln/Bonn airport later. The track was, however, closed when she got there: a Ferrari had overturned at Schwedenkreuz and caught fire, and both driver and passenger died. Not the best of starts to a Ring weekend.
Birgit texted to say that she'd met up with Joerg, the C-Car was having a few last-minute mods and would be ready for us to collect from Ring Racing first thing Saturday morning.
Birgit & I pretty much alternate weekends in the UK and Germany, so a Friday evening at Stansted is a very familiar experience. Fortunately we both have lounge memberships that allow us access whichever airline we're flying, so it wasn't long before I was settled into the lounge with a drink in hand:
It's amazing what a difference context makes. In the past, flights on cheap airlines had always felt like something of an ordeal. But on Air Berlin flights between our UK and German homes, we'd got it down to an artform. Leaving sufficient clothes and toiletries at each end enabled us to enjoy the wonders of luggageless travel, and a frequent traveller card gave advance seats allocation and priority check-in. No such niceties on Germanwings, but sitting on a plane still looked so much more appealing than driving acr- Ok, ok, I won't mention it again.
Look, I managed to resist
a caption comparing it to you-know-what!
The Belgian anti-speeding blitz was apparently still in full force on the E40, so this was quite a sweet sight as we passed above Brussels:
No traffic police up
here
The only downside to flying in was a late arrival in Nurburg, but the Pistenklause promised that they would still provide dinner for us, which indeed they did:
They had apparently had the Jaguar F1 team there for a fortnight, testing prior to next weekend's race, which may explain how this got there:
Will someone please tell me what the hell I was thinking when I had the bright idea, at about twenty to one, of us popping up to Fuchsrohre "just to say hello"?
The place was pretty empty:
But Euan, Adrian, Jocke and Caz were in residence:
They had apparently had a drink or two:
We weren't intending to drink anything more after polishing off a bottle of our usual wine at the Pistenklause (we don't even have to ask for it any more, they know!), but Euan had just ordered a round of Aquavite ('water of life'), so it would have been rude to refuse:
Of course, one leads to another, and Sabine was in party mood too:
Jocke is the only man I know who takes even more pics than me:
We were then definitely going to leave, but Euan was on to Bananaweisen by then and this was clearly something that had to be experienced:
Like Colaweisen, it sounds exceedingly unlikely but tastes really good.
Birgit had matching silver shoes and nail-polish. Sabine couldn't match the nail-polish but was also sporting silver shoes:
Sabine produced a vibrating Scooby bean-bag. As you do.
They were a bit worried about people stealing it, so Guido had found a safe place to keep it:
Sabine was making dire threats about what would happen if this pic ever made it onto the web, so it may be disappearing soon ...
Now, I have to explain this last bit. Nothing happens in Nurburg without Sabine knowing about it, but it seems her news sources now reach as far as London. A couple of weeks earlier, a few of us had met up for a few drinks on a pub-boat on the Thames to welcome Christer to London, and things did get rather fuzzy:
For Euan in particular:
This drink contained
about six spirits, red wine, Coke and beer
This resulted in him arriving home minus his laptop case, sunglasses, mobile, season ticket and ... uh ... socks. He doesn't know how he achieved that, but when Sabine presented him with his beer-mat bill, it had a little addition at the bottom:
Which explains why we weren't at the track at 8am.
A quick nip up the road to Ring Racing to collect the C-Car, and there she was. We of course met a couple of Ringers up there. Soren said he didn't recognise us at first as he wasn't expecting to see us turn up in a Merc. Ring Racing had taken care of a few last-minute modifications, such as strutbraces, and there was just one job left for me to do:
Ok, so a more professional version will follow ...
The car still had the original wheels and tyres as we'd decided to use up the tyres before fitting new ones. The tyres were some cheapo economy Michelins, but I have to say that they turned out to cope remarkably well.
A quick brake-test on the way back revealed most impressive stopping power. The gear-change felt a little loose, but the steering was extremely direct and the suspension ensured that you felt the road ...
I set out on a sighting lap of a track I hadn't driven for a couple of months in a car I'd never driven before and my first time in a FWD car in about ten years (if you exclude an Astra hired to pick Birgit up from the airport a few weeks ago). So Christer of course had to do his famous hazard-light stunt. This is to pick some poor schmuck who is picking their way around the track slowly for whatever reason, position himself six inches from their rear bumper, put his hazard lights on and stay there for the entire lap. (I hasten to add that he only does this to his alleged friends.)
So I came out of Fuchsrohre still struggling to understand this FWD business to find that the C-Car had sprouted a tow-hook with a Corvette attached to it. Worse, a friend of a rabbit was in the passenger seat operating a recollection-assistance device. Euan then came along and slotted in behind Christer. They both then had the pleasure of watching my first ever go at Adenauer-Forst in a FWD car. This attempt was the source of considerable amusement.
Euan decided that he had places to go and people to see, so darted out from behind Christer. I ducked over to the right to let him past to find that a certain person who shall remain anonymous had decided to attempt an overtake on the wrong side. My mirrors were suddenly full of an anonymous Swedish-owned black Corvette. The unnamed driver thus nearly used his main car to collect his spare car ...
Such antics aside, I absolutely hated the first couple of laps. I had forgotten how much I detest driving an unfamiliar car when I have no idea what it can do, how it handles, where the limits are, where the headlight switch is, etc. By the third lap, I was starting to get the feel. By the 4th lap, I was enjoying myself. And then it was lap after lap after lap after ...
Joerg checking out how
many kilometres I was putting on the car ...
The large new safety sign in the car-park got a lot of attention:
But didn't seem to do a lot to reduce the number of closures. One of them was a biker who went head-first into the Breidscheid bridge. :-( I couldn't see any medics there, so pulled over, but then saw that there were medics attending to him and that he was breathing, so I left them to it. I didn't see any other nasty ones.
A rather
familiar sight
The long closures meant a crowded car-park:
The closures at least left plenty of time for car-park chatting:
And someone was kind enough to provide some entertainment - they did about a 75-point turn to get out of their parking-spot, despite having taken up two places to start with:
I also spotted a rather unusual BMW - an M4! As this was sporting one of Mike Frison's stickers, I asked him about it at the dinner and he said it's an M3 with an M1 engine, hence M4. :-)
After years of seeing loads of German-registered Golfs set up as dedicated Ring toys, it was strange to now (partly) own one. I'd intended to debadge ours, but Job advised that the current one had pins and the new ones were stick-on, so we'd be leaving a couple of holes in the bodywork that might let water in, so I abandoned this idea. Not that other local Golfs seemed concerned about holes in the bodywork:
Joerg had also intended to do a few C-Car laps over the weekend, but in the end decided he was having too much fun in his Elise:
Rene was also out doing lots of laps in his modified MX-6:
Most Ringers will have seen a very rapid white Suzuki Swift circulating, and some of the gang had got chatting to the driver. He was a Swiss racing driver called Klaus, and I got back from one lap to be told that a treat had been arranged for me - a passenger lap in it:
This doesn't look much,
but ...
This was a treat indeed! It was a fantastic ride. Combine the, ah, committed approach of Espen and mix it with the smoothness of Ulf and you have a lap with Klause. Schwedenkreuz was ... fast. The Karussell was hilarious: he turned in very late and hard, and with so much sideways G-force that all the weight was on the outside wheels. The left-hand wheels did the cartoon thing of hanging in the air for a moment before they realised what was going on and then thumped onto the ground. :-)
I was laughing aloud for much of the lap, and Klaus was obviously enjoying himself just as much:
The car was so fast I thought that the 1.3 badge must be fake, and he had to show me the engine before I fully believed he wasn't pulling my leg:
But all things must come to an end, and eventually it was 7.30pm and the red light was on the for the last time that day. A quick wash and brush-up, and over to the Fuchsrohre for the Ringers dinner. As usual, more people arrived than had booked, but I think we pretty much managed ok:
Klause was originally intending to drive straight home, but we persuaded him to join us for dinner first. As he had to drive home afterwards, he asked Sabine for a very small beer and was duly given one:
For those unfamiliar with Ringers dinners, I would offer the following advice: never leave your mobile phone unattended on the table. The standard joke is to switch people's mobile to another language and then see if they can figure out how to restore it. We did that with Euan's just because it was traditional, but we decided that a new game was called for. Karl sent Euan a German-language SMS:
Euan managed a few words but couldn't get the rest:
We suggested he ask Sabine for a translation. Sadly I was laughing so hard at the expression on her face as she read this that I forgot to photograph it (translation courtesy of JW):
Determined to really make it to the track by 8am tomorrow, Birgit & I headed home early. I'll leave Euan or Espen to tell the story of their 4.30am last drink in the Lindenhof ...
The plan was to be up and dressed by 7.45am, at the Ring by 8am and back at the B&B by 9am eating Spiegelei mit Speck having done a couple of laps each. Amazingly, that's exactly what happened.
If you can drag yourself out of bed early, it definitely pays dividends because the car-park looks like this:
and the track is just as empty.
This virtuous behaviour gave Birgit a chance to try her own hand at the C-Car without having to worry too much about other traffic. She did a good first lap, then went straight out for another. Given that she was equally unfamiliar with the car, and had driven very few Ring laps herself, I was most impressed. :-)
Birgit ready to rock
and/or roll
The rest of the day was pretty much a blur of laps, with me feeling ever more in love with our little C-Car all the time. Ring Racing had given the car the most extreme track settings possible with the current suspension, and advised that this would fun to drive without being scary: they were 100% right. I couldn't have been more happy with the way the car was performing.
The only minor glitch we experienced was a temperature warning light that came on towards the end of some laps. The water temp gauge never went much past halfway, and I didn't see the oil temp go above 106, so the reason for the light was a bit of a mystery. A few theories were ventured, of which the most likely was a malfunctioning light (the C-Car electrics are rather Heath Robinsonish), but I didn't want to take any chances so I left it to cool down when the light came on, which meant a few single laps amid the more frequent back-to-back ones.
Having forgotten to have lunch on Saturday, we decided that we'd better remember today. We had no sooner sat down with our food than a grinning Christer appeared to inform us that the C-Car would be leaving its parking place for a while. He duly returned the car after a couple of laps, confessing that he'd had rather an interesting moment with the back stepping out at Pflanzgarten 1. I knew there was something I'd meant to mention to him: for most of the day, the car started with a little understeer before the back joined in and it drifted nicely on four wheels, but there was one bend where the back stepped out first. That would be Pflanzgarten 1.
By the afternoon, the rear tyres had pretty much had enough and the car became noticeably more tail-happy. However, it never really grew worrying. All the same, I can't wait to try her on R tyres!
Jochen was there with his dad and enquired about C-Car availability. As he was there until 6pm and we had to get away by 4pm, we arranged to hand it over to him then. JW kindly gave Birgit a lift to Ring Racing to pick up the Merc while I did a final couple of laps with Job on board. While handing it over to Jochen, I took a set of 'after' photos to prove she'd been returned with all her bodywork intact. :-)
Jochen & Karl check
to see whether she'd burnt any oil
I use a private car company for my airport runs, so I'd had a Merc deliver me to Stansted and now had another Merc (complete with cute driver) to deliver me back to Köln/Bonn:
It really is a very civilised way to do a Ring trip, though we did spot another civilised way en route to the airport:
There was a bit of a downer in the form of a phone call from a mate to say that a mutual friend had wrecked his car. Fortunately nobody hurt, but not a great end to one person's weekend.
My flight was a bit delayed, but I couldn't care less - I didn't have to drive across Belgium!
The combination of pretty painless travel and the performance of the C-Car was such that it's causing me to think very hard about my future approach to the Ring. I'd always worked on the basis that one all-purpose car suited me best, admittedly one which has a fairly clear focus. The C-Car was really just intended to tide me over this weekend, and to be there as a backup in case of any car trouble. But now I'm really wondering whether that's the right approach.
Although the prospect of a crash at the Ring is never one to be taken lightly, and we always want to drive with a decent amount in reserve, I must say that it is somewhat more relaxing to be driving a car which would be financially painful rather then disasterous to write-off. Some thinking to be done and discussions to be had, methinks ...
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