Preparation
Manic attempts
to get the 944 registered in time for Easter unfortunately failed.
Birgit did manage to get a lot of the steps completed, including reserving
a registration number for it and insuring it, but as it didn't pass the
TUV first-time we simply ran out of time to complete the registration
process before the weekend. Ah well - I'll just have to use it as an excuse
to sneak in an additional 1-day weekend once it is all sorted ...
In the meantime,
I was again grateful for the C-Car.
This was likely to be busy over Easter due to me failing to persuade Matt
to bring his Scoob (he gave some kind of pathetic story about not wanting
to drive across Belgium) and Keith writing-off his 968 a week earlier.
The vultures
were of course quick to descend on Keith,
with Kees after his engine-block and me after his shocks (and the loan
of his seats - a story I'll tell in the next trip-report ...).
The Ringers
stickers arrived just in time
for me to bring them over. These are static-cling stickers, relying on
a combination of vacuum effect and static electricity to 'cling' to either
glass or paintwork. There is no adhesive involved, and they can be peeled
off and re-used as many times as you like. Available from me in the car-park
(€10 for two).
Birgit had
recently bought a shiny new desktop PC, so I took over a few
new CDs for her to rip to mp3. (From which you would be correct in assuming
that the latest gadget to achieve his-and-her status is an iPod. That's
added to the Digital Ixus and StreetPilot III. Annoyingly, by buying later
than me, Birgit ends up with better versions - so she has the 40Gb iPod.)
As some of
you know,
my all-time favourite singer-songwriter is Harry
Chapin (tragically killed in a car accident in 1981). I learned recently
that his daughter, Jen Chapin, also became a singer-songwriter. That created
incredibly high expectations which I was sure would be disappointed, but
that wasn't the case at all. You can listen to some sample tracks here.
And no, this has nothing to do with the Ring, but it's my website, so
there. :-)
Thursday
Truly it is
a small world.
My usual cab driver, Chris, is a fellow petrol-head, so the journey to
the Stansted always passes quickly. This time he couldn't make it, so
sent a friend in his place. This turned out to be Dave, a biker I'd met
at the Ring last year. Found out that he lives approximately 500 metres
from my place.
Being a bank
holiday weekend,
I was expecting massive queues at Stansted, but in fact everything was
quite normal. It always amazes me that the security people never ask to
look at the huge numbers of gadgets, batteries and cables in my bag and
jacket, but they never do. (Hah! See Monday ...)
I recently
decided to buy a Nikon D70 digital SLR, so I nipped into Dixons
to see if they stocked it. They did, but - like the rest of the UK - didn't
have any in stock. I checked the tax-free price: £850. This is the
best price I've found yet. I'm flying out of Heathrow on business in 10
days, so I'm hoping they'll have one in stock there.
Last trip
there was a 30-minute delay, this time 40 minutes.
Last time Birgit arrived early and managed to find a nearby solarium open
to fill the time, so I gave her a call to suggest another visit, but heavy
traffic meant she was running late herself.
We arrived
at Pistenklause in time for dinner.
While we were there, The Other M3 Norwegian Espen (whom I hereby christen
TOMNE) arrived. He confirmed that he was the Xbox Live one. Matt said
Tomne's habit of shunting the opposition into the armco made him certain
he was the original Espen. Tomne is on the right here:
Friday
The morning
was a little misty,
but dry:
It was, however,
bitterly cold - something that remained true most of the weekend.
Half the time people only went out lapping in order to warm up!
Martin and
Karen were over, with Adamanda in tow,
but only with the BMW Touring. They were just doing a few laps and mainly
walking and drinking beer. I did, though, follow Martin around on a touring
lap, and he followed me on my first lap out on Saturday or Sunday:
Photo: www.derliebesonnesagt-de
We fully expected
this weekend to be carnage, partly just because Easter always
is, and partly because we expected all the Xbox Heroes to be there, thinking
they knew the track because they could do a 6:15 lap in PGR2.
Our first
view of the car-park seemed to confirm
that things were going to be crowded:
In fact, the
track was almost totally empty!
We did entire laps hardly seeing another vehicle - all the more surprising
because we didn't begin our laps until 11am. For most of the weekend,
Matt and I were sharing the C-Car. As he's a parent, he does mornings.
So we arranged that he would have it from 8am to 11am, then again for
the last hour of the day, and we'd have it in between. This worked really
well for all concerned.
Photo: Dexter Bressers of www.creativephotoart.nl
Matt had taken
a step up in the rental world
since his Smart of a fortnight ago:
There wasn't
that much exotica in the car-park,
though perhaps this is just because GT3s don't cut it as exotica any more
at the Ring. Nissans get more looks:
Richard was
also there in his Radical:
Photo: Birgit
There were
additional orange-vested marshalls in the car-park
enforcing a one-way system in the left-hand car-park. Shame they didn't
do the same in the right-hand one (diagram available on request, Nurburgring
GmbH :-)), nor did they stop people parking outside the office.
The car-park
marshalls also put out barriers at the main entrance
whenever there was a closure. This made a huge difference, as
it stopped the whole world ending up in the car-parks, and also stopped
the log-jam at the roundabout. If you arrived during a closure, you had
to park over the road until it reopened.
While waiting
for Matt to hand over the C-Car,
we spotted Sabine peering rather anxiously down the exit lane. It appeared
that her trainee Ring Taxi driver was out there and had been gone for
almost 20 minutes.
However, the
Taxi appeared,
with no damage. The trainee driver explained that she'd stopped to help
out at an accident:
People were
wandering up every now and again to ask for stickers.
I'll have them in the car-park at all future weekends if you want some:
Ruud was,
as ever, fiddling with his car:
Matt said
that he had some C-Car damage to report.
He seems to have some kind of magnetic attraction to birds. This one hit
the headlight first:
then the windscreen:
Our first
little drama also came early in the weekend.
We were following another Golf around Galgenkopf, and there was a lot
of black smoke behind it. I thought at first that it was a badly-blowing
exhaust, then spotted flames underneath the car.
I pulled alongside
it on the final straight
and Birgit gestured to them. They nodded, in an 'It's ok, we know there
is a problem' fashion. We signalled that the problem was a little bigger
than they realised, and they pulled over. I went a little distance beyond,
grabbed the fire-extinguisher and ran back while Birgit phoned the office.
As they got
out of the car, they saw the problem.
There was more smoke coming from under the bonnet. They opened this, and
there were very large flames at the back of the engine compartment. Describing
it to Matt afterwards, he said it sounded like a leak in the fuel lines,
which was catching fire on the hot exhaust manifold and then dripping
down beneath the car.
I got the
engine bay fire out,
but had no plans to peer beneath the car, so handed the extinguisher to
the driver and went back up the track a little to wave people across to
the far side of the track.
I then saw
a safety car coming up the track against the traffic,
so started flagging a little more vigorously. By the time the safety car
got there, the fire was out - not bad for a handheld extinguisher!
The owner
of the Golf was suitably grateful,
and volunteered to pay for the extinguisher. I didn't know what it had
cost, but accepted 50 Euros.
The video
ban means the best we can do
by way of a photo is the empty bracket where the C-Car fire-extinguisher
used to be ...
Back in the
car-park,
the car smelt a little of smoke (I'd had the rear hatch open to get at
the yellow vest used for flagging), so we left it with the windows open
for a while before heading back out.
Photo: Birgit
Kurt had the
Speedster again, this time sharing it with Dave from Jersey -
who I totally failed to recognise at first as he had been on a big-time
diet! This seemed like an excellent opportunity for a cute photo:
followed by a passenger
lap:
Photo: Birgit
They feel
identical to the Elise,
and really are a fantastically fun car. I think even with an unlimited
budget, you'd definitely want to have a Speedster/Elise in the fleet.
The C-Car felt a little heavy on the next couple of laps!
Photo: Chris Hellegers from www.nurburgring.nl
I also wanted
to get a passenger lap in Tony's X5.
I was curious about what it would be like around the Ring, but every time
I spotted him he was just coming in:
I think it
was Sunday before I timed it right and got a lap.
This was four-up, so rather a good demonstration of what the beast can
do.
Having passengered
with Tony before in other vehicles,
I was rather disappointed by how slowly he was driving. It felt like about
30mph. Then I looked at the speedo and saw we were doing 100mph. :-) The
X5 is so high, so quiet and so well-mannered (despite some body-roll four-up)
that there is no real sensation of speed.
The quietness
was explained when Tony suggested looking at the windows.
I lowered mine to see that it was double-glazed!
Out on another
lap,
coming
into Hatzenbach 1, we saw a trail of oil leading to a recovery
truck with a red Golf with an SB number plate on it. I didn't think there
could be two such, but neither did I think Karl could have killed a second
gearbox quite that quickly, so I texted him to ask. His reply confirmed
that, in fact, he could:
More on this
later.
The track
was still lovely and quiet:
Photo: ? from www.nurburgring.nl
The standard
of marshalling was really excellent.
Accidents that would previously have resulted in a closure were instead
well-flagged, with cones around the scene, and everyone required to slow
to a crawl. Anyone who didn't slow sufficiently had their details radio'd
back to the car-park where they were met by a marshall. We saw at least
one driver sent away from the Ring following such a chat.
There were
quite a few RX-7s there, some of whom were having better days
than others:
The car-park
just kept getting busier,
but the track didn't:
The lack of
notes means I can't recall exactly what happened when,
but there were remarkably few accidents, and I think only five closures
the entire weekend. Most of the time, it was just fun laps on a very quiet
track.
There were
always plenty of Ringers around
to chat with in the car-park:
There were
a few oil-spills,
including this one in the car-park:
I started
out doing four laps at a time,
but the street tyres really couldn't cope with this, so I switched to
doing two at a time.
Photo:
Guido Pützer of www.fastlap.de
This Barchetta
with Ring history seems to be there quite a lot:
And then it
was time for the Ringers dinner
at the Pistenklause:
Soren is apparently
the new messiah:
A Ringers
dinner wouldn't be a Ringers dinner
without at least a small gadgetfest:
JW started
composing his trip report:
Jeppe announced
that he would be a parent in two months,
so I felt it only right to suggest that he have lots of sleep and sex
within that time as he wouldn't get any more for the next 18 years. There
was also considerable talk of projectile vomitting and other parental
delights, by way of encouragement. Spot the fixed grin:
Matt came
to the rescue
by saying that it wasn't as bad as you might expect, and that the green
poo stage didn't last too long. (I think he may have put it a bit more
positively than that.)
With a civilised
start planned for the morning, after Matt's eight laps, it was
time for another bottle of our usual wine:
After dinner,
the waiter suggested that we should all try their special dessert of ice-cream
and strawberries, put into the oven for 30 seconds. Well, ok:
It was delicious.
I will omit the bit about Sabine being rude.
Saturday
Keith was
only going to be there on Saturday,
so we'd agreed he could have the car for most of the day. I said I'd like
to do four laps at 11-ish and would then leave him to it. He texted me
to say the brake-pads were toast and he was off to Ring Racing to change
them, so we said we'd meet him there.
Ring Racing
was unsurprisingly busy:
While were
were there,
we took a look at Karl's gearbox history to date. Gearbox one:
Gearbox 2
(note the large hole):
And the oil-coated
underside of the car:
Keith is experienced
at changing pads,
and I'm experienced at standing around watching people change pads, so
we each did what we do best:
We caught
up with the status of the 944.
It seemed another problem they hadn't mentioned before was a leak in the
steering rack. I asked Uwe if they could source it locally,
but Ring Racing don't really seem to understand the concept of breakers
yards and merely said that they could phone Porsche ...
I've since
found a rebuild kit,
so hopefully that will sort it.
Pads fitted,
and tested by Keith, it was time to grab the car for four laps.
Photo: Oliver Wegen of www.wegen.de/ring
Photo: ? from www.nurburgring.nl
I couldn't
find Keith afterwards, so snuck in an extra one before returning
the car to the car-park:
Soren seems
to be buying one car per Ring trip.
Well, half a car this time: he bought a 50% share in Christer's BMW 318:
He took me
for a lap in it.
The car has no front suspension to speak of at all, and feels absolutely
awful, bouncing and rattling around with the front wheels only intermittently
in contact with the tarmac! Hopefully a new front suspension will solve
this.
Keith's other
transport was the famous Kaul & Will Smart.
Some rude person was suggesting that perhaps insurance companies were
now replacing cars with ones suited to proven driver ability ...
The crowds
were getting bigger,
but still a quiet track:
I went in
search of passenger laps
while Birgit went off to take some photos and videos from the trackside.
She got quite a few from Bastard Bend, including this shot of Keith (with
me in the passenger seat) following Soren:
Photo: Birgit
A couple of
other sample shots
(video to follow):
Birgit's camcorder
battery was playing up
so she only got a few brief bits of video, but she did manage to catch
a couple of clips of me doing some solo laps:
Click
here for 23-second WMV clip (785k)
On the subject
of which, a brief reminder for Soren. When Birgit is standing
right next to me in the car-park, you do not say "I noticed
you were driving quite a bit faster when Birgit wasn't in the car"
...
Photo: Birgit
I then joined
her for a brief bit of trackside photography
(well, snapshottery, anyway) at T13:
and Galgenkopf,
where the Ixus auto-focus didn't always:
John, a friend
of Ross, had been knocked off his bike at Adenaur-Forst.
It sounded very nasty, an out-of-control Swiss car going across a kerb
and straight into him, hitting his leg and hip. Amazingly, x-rays revealed
no broken bones, but the hospital was concerned about the battering he'd
taken so decided to keep him in ITU for a few days.
Back to the
B&B at the end of the day,
and some Easter eggs had appeared in the garden:
Then the Pistenklause
once more for dinner:
Matt had earlier
gone to Adenau with Karl,
and it seemed that either he'd pulled or started hitting the beer:
Speaking of
Karl,
some unkind person decided to work out the cost of his second gearbox
on a per-lap basis:
Sabine appeared
with the key to the new Ring Taxi.
She handed this to me:
Photo: JW
and had some difficulty
retrieving it (it's Sabine's hand you can see bottom left ...). The car
itself was parked just outside, though I'm not sure that a photo of a
black car against a black background at night will help very much:
And so to
bed.
Sunday
Job was there
for more VLN prep,
and had given a lift to Niek and Asia:
I was about
to go out for a couple of laps
when Tor-Helge asked if I wanted a lap. Silly question:
This was most
enjoyable.
Both driver and car are excellent. Birgit got the next one and was grinning
before they'd left the car-park:
Then out for
a somewhat slower couple of laps:
Photo: Guido Pützer of www.fastlap.de
Photo:
Jochen
During one
closure,
we heard the helicopter ambulance had gone out for a British Porsche which
had overturned at Flugplatz:
That didn't
sound good,
but we later heard that the helicopter hadn't been needed and that both
driver and passenger escaped with minor injuries (which is more than can
be said for the car).
The closure
wasn't a long one,
so it was soon playtime again:
Photo:
Jochen
The Porsche
occupants weren't the only luck ones this weekend. Several bikers
walked away from what could have been very severe crashes in Mutkurve,
Hatzenbach and Pflanzgarten III.
Dale from
Performance Bikes
also had a crash, on some coolant at Brunnchen. Although the damage initially
looked minor, it turned out to include a badly-dented rim, so there was
no prospect of riding home on it. Fortunately he managed to blag space
for him and the bike in a van:
Jon Felstead
was there
in a recently-bought Nissan NSX200. He offered me a couple of passenger
laps in it, and I jumped straight in. The car has around 200bhp in standard
form; Jon promptly had a front intercooler fitted and the turbo boost
increased so that it produced 270bhp:
Photo:
Jochen
The car was
amazingly good.
Plenty of power, and although a little soft on the standard suspension,
the car coped fine despite the tarmac rally tyres! The grip from those
was superb. I then took him out for a couple of laps in the C-Car - not
quite the same amount of power, but he seemed to enjoy himself.
Photo:
Guido Pützer of www.fastlap.de
Another fun
passenger lap was in Jeppe's Civic Type R.
He was just coming in when I spotted him, but I persuaded him that he
needed another lap after a short break. Another excellent car with very
smooth and fast driver:
This Morgan
looked fantastic:
We were discussing
our dream fleets during a later closure,
and mine would include one of these just for leisurely Sunday afternoon
drives to a pub lunch.
Another Brit
beauty was this,
though I must confess I'm much less sure I'd want to own one:
There is usually
at least one comedy vehicle
present each weekend, and we were not disappointed:
And this guy
was also doing quite a few laps:
Photo: Birgit
Another day's
lapping done,
and another Ringers dinner. Even the Pistenklause can be a bit much night
after night, so we booked at the Lindenhof instead:
JW was of
course updating his trip report:
Jon Felsted
was seen in unusually earnest mode:
The wine list
at the Lindenhof isn't the most extensive.
Indeed, the selection of bottled of red amounts to, well, this:
I think we
won't make a habit of the Lindenhof!
But the food was good, and so ended another day.
Monday
Monday was
again cold but sunny:
We packed
straight after breakfast:
Ok, ok, I
admit this isn't fair,
but I couldn't resist it. Although it is true that the laptop bag on the
left was all I brought with me, and Birgit brought the rest, her luggage
included all of my clothes and all of the chargers for our his-and-hers
gadgets.
Whoever Matt
had last taken for a passenger lap
must have been a little larger than Birgit:
The track
was a bit busier today,
and there were quite a few incidents. I only stopped at one, a biker that
went down at Brunnchen 1. Although he was ok, he and two others were trying
to lift the bike up, and were standing right in the line of fire, so to
speak. I ran back up Eschbach to flag just before the left-hander, but
made sure I was standing strategically close to the armco! Once they got
the bike upright, they hopped over the armco themselves and we continued
on our way.
Photo: Jochen
Oh, we wondered
how seriously the Breidscheid speed limit was being enforced.
Well, we got an answer of a kind: we followed a safety car through the
bend. While it wasn't quite lighting up the rear tyres, it most certainly
wasn't doing 50kph ...
There was
a Mini club there,
and they had somehow managed to bag an entire row of parking spaces:
The Ring Bunny
was visiting,
and came over for a chat with Birgit:
We're sure
Euan is responsible for this:
Another example
of the sublime
...
to the, uh
...
Esther had
grabbed a passenger lap with a Dutch BMW driver,
held onto his ticket during the lap and then forgotten to give it back
to him:
She went wandering
around the car-park
trying to find him while we headed out to play:
Photo: Ben Pike of www.pikeynet.com
There was
a long closure shortly after 2pm,
so we decided to take the opportunity to have some lunch and be entertained
by the occasional bike helmet:
The closure
was for a serious crash at Flugplatz.
A road ambulance came out and was given a police escort, and shortly afterwards
the helicopter ambulance flew over. We later learned that the air ambulance
was heading to a crash just outside the track.
They also
used the closure to clear up some earlier accidents,
including this yellow GT3 we'd seen embedded in the bank on the inside
of the exit of Ex-Muhle:
The wheels
were pointing in two very different directions.
At 3.40pm,
the track reopened
to cars, with an announcement that it wouldn't be open to bikes until
4pm. That suggested a pretty big oil-spill, but nothing prepared us for
what we found at Flugplatz.
The entire
width of the track was absolutely covered in oil
from Maddock 2 (for the uninitiated, this is the first left-hand kink
between Flugplatz and Schwedenkreuz) all the way into and part of the
way through Schwedenkreuz itself! I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't
seen it myself. I still can't imagine where so much oil can have come
through - can one vehicle drop that much??
There was
another oil-spill in Kallenhard.
Oddly, neither had warning signs despite the fact that both were only
visible once you were already committed.
Our final
lap of the trip brought one last piece of drama.
Rounding Pflanzgarten 1, the right-hand side of the track was entirely
full of crashed car, and the left-hand side was entirely full of dirt.
Masses of dirt. There was absolutely no way to brake, and no
gap to aim for, so I just had to hold my line and hope for the best. The
car went sliding right the way to the left-hand kerb, but fortunately
no further. It was a very close thing, though!
We told Matt
he was lucky to have a car to be handed over,
said our farewells and walked across the road to collect the Merc ...
to find that there had apparently been a crash on the road outside the
track and that was closed:
Matt told
me afterwards that a bike had crashed
while trying to overtake a car that turned left at the junction, and that
the rider died. :-( It was this crash that the air ambulance was called
to. Horribly ironic way to die ...
We went the
long way around and, on the way out, saw just how full the Brunnchen
car-park was!
On the plane
on the way over,
I tempted fate by writing: It always amazes me that the security people
never ask to look at the huge numbers of gadgets, batteries and cables
in my bag and jacket, but they never do. I won't make that mistake
again ...
First, Germanwings
check-in
queried the fact that my passport says Benjamin Lovejoy and my booking
said Ben Lovejoy. She would have to call her supervisor. She did so. Her
supervisor said that my booking had to be amended to match my passport.
She couldn't do that, and nor could the check-in girl, but someone else
in some other place had to do it. This was duly done.
Then at security,
they asked to put my laptop bag through the machine a second time. Then
they took the laptop out and put it through an explosives sniffer. Then
they pointed to something on the display screen and asked me what it was.
I'm sure the
people trained on those machines can look at some orange fuzzy
line and tell you what it is, but I'm not and I couldn't. I guessed it
might be the mains adapter for my Vaio, so showed them that. No, it wasn't
that. Perhaps it was the small bag of attachments I carry (modem cables,
firewire cables, etc). Nope. At which point I gave up and emptied everything
out of the bag. It turned out to be the camera clamp I was carrying in
case we needed to go karting during a snowstorm. They asked me what it
was and why I was carrying it. You can imagine how that explanation went.
The flight
home was delayed by almost an hour,
but that at least gave me time to write most of the trip report.
And that was
the Easter weekend:
four dry days, pretty empty track, few accidents and few closures. :-)
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