Don't even ask why my 944 wasn't ready for this trip. Suffice it to say that German bureaucracy is even worse than you could ever possibly imagine.

But hey, that's what the C-Car is for.

Preparation

I thought I told you not to ask about that?

Ok, short version, registering a car in Germany involves rather a lot of steps. To give an idea of what the process is like, the first couple of steps are to get a Brief (detailed specification of the car, right down to the tyres fitted) and a TUV (like a stricter MOT).

There is, however, a teensy-weensy catch. You can't get a Brief without producing a TUV certificate. And you can't get a TUV test without producing a Brief.

You can't continue to drive the car on UK plates in the meantime because you have to prove that it was deregistered in the country of origin to get a Brief. So while this little process is underway, your 944 sits at Ring Racing not knowing why nobody will allow her out to play.

To add to my frustration, I got a fax from Ring Racing confirming that the car was ready (and enclosing a rather impressive bill).

Now, can we please change the subject? Thank you.

Friday

At 7.30am, I got a text from Karl telling me there was glorious sunshine and the forecast was for more of the same.

At 2pm, I got another text from Karl: "Better make sure you bring your snow-chains." Ah, the joys of the Eifel ...

Anyway, at least I didn't have to drive across Belgium. Germanwings delivered me to Köln-Bonn airport, where my chauffeur-driven Merc awaited. The road past Brunnchen and Pflanzgarten was icy ...

Flying in does mean arriving rather late, but Matt and Ed were still in full flow, along with a few other Brits. We didn't expect the weather to permit an early start, so indulged in a bottle of our usual wine.

Ed was telling the story of discovering that his left-front tyre had no air, shortly after setting off. With no spare, and the local garage having no air, he put in a can of emergency tyre filler. Noticing that this appeared to make very little difference, he put in another half a can. He then continued his journey and proceeded to start lapping the Ring on Friday afternoon, only stopping when he found the car was rather reluctant to turn right ...

The souvenier cap from the can of tyre foam

Ed was in a story-telling mood, so retold the story the Pistenklause waiter had told him last time:

The waiter, meantime, was telling Birgit in German a somewhat different version!

Emerging at around 2.30am, at least it wasn't actually snowing:

Saturday

The next morning was cold but dry, however I suspected the Ring would be icy, and the lack of engine noise confirmed that the Ring was closed. We thus opted for breakfast at a civilised hour.

We booked our room for the rest of the year (well, all this year's weekends, rather than continuously, sadly). We also asked about hiring a moped or motorbike for the 24H weekend, and the Schmitz's rang the bike shop in Adenau to be told that they don't do rentals, but there is a new place opening soon that may. The Schmitz's know the new people, so they will find out for us.

It's a pretty well-kept secret, but I'm not a huge fan of driving across Belgium. Keith was doing a trackday in France (strange man) and the following sequence of texts were exchanged:

The man has quite a decent turn of phrase.

First on the agenda was to go and settle my Ring Racing bill for cage, head-gasket replacement and various odds and ends on the 944. This required a visit to here:

These pics were taken inside the workshop, where there isn't much light, hence rather blurry pics:

The blown head-gasket was indeed rather blown:

Of course, being Ring Racing, the place was full of the usual suspects. And the usual suspects' cars, some of which were in a disgraceful state - don't these people ever wash their cars? ;)

Ring Racing also has copies of Mike's Alzen DVD, so we bought a copy of this:

There was the usual mix of DRTs from the C-Car to:

We'd brought absolutely all of the 944 paperwork along so that RR could fill in the gaps on the car specs in preparation for The Great 944 Registration Adventure:

We've obviously all paid RR enough over the past year or so ... their new reception was looking very swish indeed:

The rumour was that the Ring would open at 12.30, so at 12.15 we set off back for the track. Passing T13, we could see that it was already open. :-) The car-park was relatively full for a cold weekend in March:

We'd met both Kees and Rene at RR, and they must have come down at around the same time as us:

Matt had risked flying Lie-n-Scare to Hahn, where he picked up his transport. He was feeling suitably proud of it:

However, he was a bit concerned about handling all that untamed power so had asked Sixt if they had a slightly less intimidating model. They duly obliged:

Also feeling very pleased with himself was Soren, who had managed to register his gorgeous new Boxster the previous day:

We met him in the office while we were all renewing our cards, and Birgit and I took the opportunity to book our passenger laps.

Meantime, in the C-Car, our street tyres hadn't arrived. It appeared there might be a reason that Keith's new cheap tyre place was so cheap: they were selling non-existent tyres. Keith ordered them, phoned them to double-check that he would be able to collect them the next day and then drove all the way to Bonn to do so. When he got there, he was told that although the computer said they had them, they in fact didn't. They seemed completely unconcerned about this, and offered no hint of apology.

This left us on the R tyres. R tyres and cold tarmac are not a brilliant combination, and the first few laps were quite slidey.

The first lap was amazing. After seeing the car-park, I expected to find the track at least doing reasonably brisk business. Instead, it was utterly deserted. I was doing my first sighting lap of the season on a cold track on cold R-tyres, and was driving accordingly. Yet perhaps two or three cars overtook us the entire lap.

Photo: Chris Hellegers of www.nurburgring.nl

I was interested to try the new tarmac. Most of it felt good, even in such cold conditions. The only part I wasn't totally convinced by was Hatzenbach I, but then I guess an off-camber downhill bend is never likely to feel grippy.

The weird part was the exit of Metzgesfeld. Of the left-right S-bend on the way down to Kallenhard, the left had been resurfaced and was lovely, but the right hadn't, and was very slippery in comparison. Then you got to Kallenhard, which was again resurfaced. Very strange.

Matt and I were sharing the C-Car, and as it was a bit of a pain adjusting the seat and harness each time, we took to doing about five laps each at a time. Or, rather, I did. Matt was still feeling a bit delicate, so found that two back-to-back laps were enough for him. Suffice it to say that the C-Car didn't spend much time here:

Spotting Soren back in the car-park, we decided it was time to grab those paxlaps. I went first, then Birgit:

I was too polite to comment on his horrendous driving error, which he repeated on Birgit's lap. Birgit took him aside for a quiet word afterwards, and he then took me out for another lap with the error corrected. We did, however, notice that he put the roof back up again afterwards ...

We heard that Karl's gearbox was leaking oil. I texted him to find out the situation, and to suggest that he come and cry into his beer at the Pistenklause that evening. His reply:

During a rest, we wandered around the car-park. The machinery on display ranged from the sublime:

to the, errrr ...

There was of course the usual 911-fest:

I particularly liked this impromptu display of two generations, about 20 years apart:

There were two GT2s there (sadly the photo-ban means no on-track pics, which was where I saw them together).

We were also pleased to see an MX-5 out there in the approved configuration, maintaining the tradition. I think this was Eric, but didn't see anyone around when it was parked:

It was also good to see a de Jong at the Ring. A woman walking across the car-park pointed at me and started running over. I was relieved to find that this wasn't someone accusing me of some heineous crime, but was instead Laurens' sister Esther. She was looking very happy, and was there with her boyfriend Francisco (which I've probably spelt wrong).

Birgit went for a coffee with her while I went out for a couple of laps with Ty, an American guy who'd emailed me. First I passengered in his hired Merc to give him some pace-notes. It was his 4th ever lap, so these were of the basic "Right-45 beyond this brow" variety.

Afterwards, I took him for a lap in the C-Car. He said he'd have hired a Golf if he'd known they handled that well.

We passed about five buses while on the C-Car lap. They're quite long when you meet them at T-13.

On our return, I went to grab a coffee before joining the girls. On the way up, I ran into Francisco and he told me he was there with his 'fiance' Esther. I raised an eyebrow and commented that things seemed to be moving at rather a pace, at which point he reaised that the English word he was looking for was 'girlfriend'. I asked him what it was worth not to mention this to Esther.

While sat on the balcony, we were treated to the sight of the buses returning. Birgit had already grabbed a shot of them heading out:

None of them had passengers, so it appeared to be some kind of familiarisation exercise.

While the car-park was moderately busy, the track itself was - apart from the occasional bus convoy - delightfully empty all day. The photo-ban means this is the closest we can get to showing it:

One thing I love about the Ring is that you learn new things all the time. Even better is to learn lessons from other people's experiences. For example, one lesson we were able to learn from Kees was 'Always do up the cap of a bottle of oil before you do a lap, especially if your phone is next to the bottle of oil'. Nokias do clean up quite well:

With the track so empty, we'd been able to lap away to our heart's content, and I'd actually had enough by about 6pm, so we passed the word about dinner in the Pistenklause at 7pm and headed off.

Once in the Pistenklause, we thought it might be sociable for a few of us to send Karl supportive texts:

But he managed to press-gang his sister into baby-sitting and turned up. We were a small but select gathering:

There was a certain amount of discussion about Karl's gearbox, and why it might have failed. This discussion was purely of a sympathetic and encouraging nature. Karl decided to defend himself with a gear-by-gear description of a lap.

It must be said that Karl did appear to spend rather a lot of a lap with the gearbox being subjected to 6700 revs in a gear lower than most of us used. Kees was a particular advocate of Karl trying a higher gear occasionally.

To give an indication of how long this conversation took, I think it took about 20 minutes before Karl's description reached Hatzenbach. Karl said he approached Hatzenbach II in 4th. The following exchange ensued:

Kees: I'm in 5th there
Karl: Why are you in 5th?
Kees: Because I've run out of 4th

I helpfully explained to Karl that this was the traditional reason for using 5th.

Karl was upset that we wouldn't let him tell his gear-lap story uninterrupted, and decided to sulk. Historians may like to record that Karl can sulk and drink beer at the same time.

By the time the Karl and Kees Show had reached Pflanzgarten I, I figured there couldn't really be much further debate about gears (though I had earlier suggested that Karl might like to stay in 4th all the way through Schwalbenschwanz, only dropping down to 3rd for the entry to the Kleiner Karussell). Birgit was also tired, so we took our leave.

Matt, being a parent, does mornings. I explained that we don't, and he'd be welcome to have exclusive use of the C-Car from 8am until a civilised hour.

Sunday

Sunday was a little more crowded. In particular, it drew the spectators, both at the barriers and all around the track:

There were, for example, about four photographers at the Kleiner Karussell alone. I decided that multiple photographers was probably the equivalent of an ice warning sign ...

Matt was staying until Monday so very kindly said I could have the car as much as I wanted as I was leaving at 4pm. The track was a little less empty than Saturday, but still really quiet. There was one closure at around noon, when a Mini Cooper hit a deer. I tried to find someone with a BBQ set, but no joy.

Other than that, and one modest crash at Hocheichen (a white car, I didn't see what), I'm not aware of any other incidents. There were, though, an unusual number of breakdowns:

Matt did a few laps when I was having a break:

Matt had recommended a paxlap with a 911RS driver called Julian. Apparently Julian had been coming to the Ring for eight years, and had owned the car for seven of those. This sounded like a good recommendation to me, so I stood by the barriers and forced him to go out for another lap:

Both car and driver were first-rate. We also had an enjoyable little spar with a CSL. He was chasing us and caught up at a yellow flag before doing a naughty overtake past the scene of the recovery (a breakdown only). We then followed him, and I was very impressed by the handling.

Then it was time for some more C-Car laps:

Photo: Chris Hellegers of www.nurburgring.nl

In the next break, we saw Achim pulling into the car-park so went to say hello:

It seems the Ring Minis have fans of the feline as well as human kind:

Achim said he had been too busy buying a new house to have much time to work on the cars.

We also spotted Sabine in the Ring Taxi and went to say hello to her too:

The car-park was again 911 city:

Though Richard Levitt was there to break the German car monopoly:

As was the Zakspeed Viper, in its new tasteful livery:

As on Saturday, the almost complete lack of closures made it easy to get my fill of laps without any difficulty. We did our farewell lap and had 15 minutes to spare. With perfect timing, Julian was just heading out again.

This lap nearly lasted rather longer than scheduled. Coming up Kesselchen, we were gaining on another 911, which was itself gaining rapidly on a BMW. The BMW indicated right and then absolutely dived right, ending up on the grass. He swerved left, back onto the tarmac. He lost the back big-time, the car ending up literally sideways across the track in front of us. Julian hit the brakes, and, being an RS, it decelerated at about 45Gs. The BMW made a massive correction and went about 45 degrees sideways the other way. He amazingly then gathered it all back together.

That little entertainment over, I jumped out of the car ready for a rapid departure:

Back in the Merc to Ring Racing to drop the helmets back into the 944. We also dropped off the Ringers 'Hospital Kit', aka about 60 car and bike magazines. That way, if a non-German-speaker ends up in hospital, at least they will have something to while away the time. We'd planned to hand this over to Karl in the car-park, but as he wasn't there I texted him to ask him to pick them up next time he was there.

One annoying thing about Koln-Bonn airport is that the lounge I have access to closes at 5pm on Sunday, so no comfortable environment in which to work on the trip report. But then I found a BA lounge open. Technically, my Exec Club card only gives me access when flying BA, but things worked out, so I got a quiet corner to work:

Which was just as well, as my flight was delayed by almost an hour. The trouble with catching the last leg of a particular plane's journeys is that you end up with the cumulative total of all its previous delays throughout the day. But eventually it turned up, and I was first on board and thus able to grab seat 1C ready to be first off the plane at the other end, which was duly accomplished.

And that was my start to the 2004 Ring Season. A registered 944 would have been nice, but it was still a most excellent beginning. :-)

With only two weeks to go until Easter, it seems unlikely the 944 paperwork will be ready by then either. But then, it's Easter. Take the usual amount of carnage and add in all the Xbox Heroes who think they know the track on their first visit (flat at Schwedenkreuz in a GT1, anyone?), and I suspect we will be mainly treating the weekend as a social occasion. See you all then.