A rather wet weekend in parts, but despite suicidal conditions on Saturday, I believe that all Ringers vehicles and people remained in one piece.

A couple of minor mechanical failures were the only things we had to cope with - and both were pretty promptly solved.

Photo: Pasi Nikkanen from his gallery here

Preparation

We will move swiftly on from me booking the Fri/Sat/Sun instead of the Sat/Sun/Mon. I then had to change my return flight a second time when Ross persuaded me to join him and Matt on the later Lie-n-Scare flight back from Hahn. I normally object strongly to giving Mr O'Leary any money, but as this was still priced at the 'must be costing him money to fly me' level, I decided to make an exception.

The reason for my antipathy to Lie-n-Scare stems from the first time I ever tried the airline. I was going to Stockholm on business one February, and as I needed to catch an early flight, I decided that flying from my local airport - Stansted - made more sense than trekking round to Heathrow at some ungodly hour.

It was snowing heavily, and I called Lie-n-Scare to check that the flight was still operating, and whether there were any delays. I was told no problem, it would be on time. Arriving there, the departure displays were showing long delays for every single airline except one: Lie-n-Scare. I assumed this was an error, but asked at check-in.

I was told no, the flight would be on time. So why, then, are all the other airlines showing delays of up to two hours? I eventually learned the reason: every other airline was queuing up to be de-iced. As the temperature was apparently half a degree above the level at which de-icing is mandatory, Lie-n-Scare decided not to bother - presumably because it costs them money.

So we all boarded the plane, more or less on time, only for the captain to announce that the temperature had dropped another half a degree, so now we had to de-ice. Now, of course, we're at the very back of the de-icing queue. We were kept on the plane, in freezing temperatures, for two hours while they queued. Oh, and the catering truck hadn't arrived, so there was no breakfast available, and no tea or coffee. The toilet didn't even have any loo-roll in it.

The return flight was not much better, so I swore 'never again' - a vow I had kept until now. Ho hum.

I'd asked Rolf Kaul to see if he could source a secondhand starter-motor, as I know from replacing the 968 one that new ones are not cheap. He emailed me a couple of weeks in advance to say that he'd found one and had collected the car to fit it. The car-park was about to become a less amusing place for other people - but an easier to navigate one for me!

My week had turned into a very tiring one when a client threw a mega-urgent project at us. Three nights' work was not the most restful approach to a Ring weekend.

Friday

BAA had finally recognised the serious dangers involved in Internet Withdrawal Symptom, and had got around to arranging a wifi hotspot in the satellite - hurrah!

Birgit was spending a week in Spain with her parents and sister, so Ross had kindly offered to be my chauffeur for the weekend. Swapping a Merc driven by a blonde to a Mundano driven by a Ross ... hmmm.

Köln-Bonn airport caused some brief entertainment when I arrived at zone C and Ross was parked at zone D. He said he'd drive around the loop again, which he did - ending up back at D without ever having seen a C. I'd never noticed it before, but the reason for this is that the Arrivals area for zones A and D are on a different level to the Arrivals area for zones B and C. Uhuh. So I wandered around to zone D.

Arriving at the Pistenklause at midnight, we thought a quick beer was in order, together with some dinner for me. It wasn't long before Jeppe and Soren appeared, and it wasn't long after that before the conversation turned to Danish car taxes. That always happens, somehow.

One of the things I love about the Ring is that there are no strangers. A couple of Swedes standing by the bar overheard our conversation and joined us. Ascertaining that they were both experienced Ringers, I took the opportunity to book a paxlap in a GT3.

Somehow it got to be quarter to two, and when I headed to bed I realised I'd forgotten to eat. Oh well - my guesthouse does a good breakfast ...

Saturday

After a long week, an early start was not on the cards. I peered out of the window at 8.30am to see some sort of shiney stuff on the roads:

I texted Matt, who said it was very slippery and getting worse, so back to dozing for a while. Breakfast at 9.30am and it started raining again. From the looks of the breakfast room, I think a lot of people had looked at the weather forecast and decided not to bother.

The next step was to arrange a lift to pick up the 944. No-one at the guesthouse, so I texted Matt. No reply there, so tried Ross. Still in bed. Seems he had one or two more beers when he got back to Bren's shortly after two. JW. He's still three hours away. I told him not to rush as it was raining. He and his worn rear tyres were not overly thrilled by this news. No reply from Jeppe either, so decided a taxi was going to be easier!

Arriving at the workshop to pick up the key, Matt was there keeping an eye on how the MCCar was coming along: so-named (and number-plated) as it was the replacement for the CCar after the Mattzgesfeld incident.

It was almost ready. Marc had spent a long time looking for the two missing belts from the 6-point harnesses. Which was not unreasonable, but we hadn't actually ever gotten around to replacing the 4-points it came with, so the harnesses were installed in a rather interesting fashion:

We do, though, need to replace those with 6-points.

Matt gave me a lift to the garage to retrieve a novelty: a 944 with a starter-motor. Hurrah!

En-route to the Ring, it started to rain ...

The Ring was extremely wet and extremely slippery, with predictable results:

The entire day was to be a sequence of dry-wet-crash-closure. Repeat at approximately 90-minute intervals. The closures were generally used to recover a whole bunch of crashed vehicles, so tended to be quite lengthy.

With the MCCar sorted out, both the syndicate's corporate cars were there:

I did a couple of paxlaps in the GCar with Matt, then four back-to-back ones with Soren in the 318:

Now, I can remember the days when Soren was a nice quiet Danish boy who never did any harm to anyone. I think sharing a DRT with Christer has done odd things to him. He was taking advantage of the wet track to kick the tail out at every bend.

Of course, he wasn't just being a hooligan for the sake of it. He was 'familiarising himself with the new suspension'. Never mind familiarity, by the end of the day the suspension must have been expecting his children. Anyway, most entertaining laps.

As it was so slippery, a few of us thought that a RingTaxi lap would be a good plan.

I wandered over to the posh new office (previously used only on corporate days) to find out if there were any cancellations. Unfortunately, they had just finished for the day. They said we could go onto the waiting list for tomorrow, but I said we'd see what the weather was like. I don't think they realised this meant we'd only be interested if it was wet.

There were several 350Zs around. Jeppe really liked it, and was bemoaning the fact that there wasn't a 2+2. That'll teach him to have kids.

One of them was a couple of journalists there to do a feature for Car magazine: GT4 versus real-life. They were using a Canon 10D mounted on a chase car to take photos which they intended to match to GT4 snapshots. They had a camera permit from the office, which was just as well as I think the marshalls may have noticed this:

My own tastes run mostly towards older cars, though there are some that I admire but am not sure I'd actually want to own:

Then there were sights like this:

I quickly found something else to fill my visual cortex:

With the track as slippery as it was, most of us had decided that discretion was the better part of valour, so a considerable volume of coffee was consumed:

It's funny how Ring experience does that to you. When I first started coming to the Ring, I didn't mind the rain at all. I just enjoyed the empty track. A few years later, having seen the increase in carnage occuring on the wet track, especially among experienced Ringers, I just decided it's not worth it. If you go fast enough to have fun, you're always worried about crashing. If you don't go fast enough to have fun, then why bother going out at all? Easter of course rather reinforced that view.

Karl texted around 2pm to say that he and Ross had made a start in the Pig. A couple of hours later, I decided the rain wasn't going to stop and they had the right idea. I drove over to Adenau to join them.

It seemed there was no getting away from the accidents even in Adenau high-street: the car on the left, with the people gathered round it, stopped to let someone cross at the zebra. The red car behind it didn't. The amount of damage was impressive for a low-speed shunt.

There was a town drunk at the bar. Karl explained something about him abstaining from alcohol for a month for a religious something or other (it may have been the death of the Pope, I forget now) and making up for it now.

When he announced he was going home, apparently just across the road, the barmaid pointed out that he was never going to make it, and Karl was despatched to escort him. Karl apparently found him clinging to a lamp-post, swaying gently.

Karl also demonstrated his technique for sending a text from the Pig. He said something about poor coverage, but I reckon someone had told him he made to make like an antenna to send texts.

Speaking of mobiles, there is a Ringers tradition that makes it inadvisable to leave one's mobile unattended. I thought Greek was a suitable language for Ross's phone:

Ross automatically blamed Karl, it seemingly not occuring to him that Karl would be hard-pushed to switch on his phone, let alone change any of the settings.

It somehow got to be 8pm, so those of us who'd managed to stick to non-alcoholic drinks made our way back to Nurburg for dinner in the Lindenhof:

As the forecast for the Sunday was somewhat better, I decided not to make it a late one.

Sunday

Which was a good plan. After a slightly damp start, the morning brightened up into this:

It was quite windy, so nt overly warm, making it the perfect weather for more driving than car-park socialising.

Of course, with good weather comes crowded track and car-park:

The car-park bit wasn't helped by Ohlins, who set up a bike shock salesroom at the top of the car-park, when proceeded to use the area next to it as a workshop:

There were quite a few people unamused at the chaos this was causing, and much muttering about Ohlins being crossed off shopping lists.

But hey, it's sunny, it's dry, we have DRTs:

The 944 caused some brief bemusement when it refused to start. I decided to start by exhausting my own mechanical abilities: checking the fuses. But it seemed that even this required some assistance ...

Of course, the Ring being the Ring, it wasn't long before a friend of Tor-Helge's called Oyvind came to take a look. In what seemed to me like an incredibly short time, he tracked down the problem to a broken clip on the crank position sensor. This was allowing the contacts to move apart, breaking the connection.

My own gaffa-tape-based solution lasted for about a third of a lap, so I came off at Breidscheid and nipped up to Ring Racing. The gaffa-tape was replaced by a very neat cable-tie arrangement: one secured around each connector, then one on each side through the loops, holding it tightly together. A fifth cable-tie secured it to a bracket:

Straight back to the Ring just as it started to rain ...

Nurburgring GmbH had installed a new barrier machine especially for Brits in RHD cars:

As someone remarked, you can't quite picture a UK company doing this for LHD cars.

As mentioned, the weather pattern was dry-wet-damp-dry-wet-damp all day. so closures were frequent and lengthy.

The Grunne Hoelle was again doing good business:

The car-parks were equally crowded:

Some were more prepared than others:

But hard to compete with these wheels:

Suz said that she'd managed to get the BMW stuck in some mud over the road, so a few of us wandered across to rescue it. On arrival, it appeared that by 'some mud' she actually meant 'a ditch':

Note the completely unloaded suspension:

Fortunately, the rescue operation went smoothly. The view across onto Dottinger-Hohe was not encouraging:

I did a couple of laps:

Photo: JW

The DH queue was very tiresome, so wandered around the car-park again:

Kiki was enjoying herself:

Not everyone was. This guy was reputedly trying to deny that he'd hit the armco ...

Stelvio asked me if I'd take a Danish friend for a lap. She was new to the Ring and had come to see what all the fuss was about. I said sure, and took her for a couple of laps.

Photo: Pasi Nikkanen from his gallery here

She seemed to enjoy herself, and Stelvio asked if now she understood. She said yes, but she still wasn't sure she could understand coming seven or eight times a year. I said it was quite straightforward: there was a box at the entrance, and you simply deposit your brain and wallet there, and away you go.

Photo: JW

Sometimes in life, timing is all. Chatting near the entrance, I spotted Anders arriving and hopped into the passenger seat. He warned me it was cold tyres, as it was his first lap after spending the day in Cochem with his family, so wouldn't be the fastest lap, and I said that was fine.

He'd also been having trouble with the gearbox, with successively more and more gears becoming hard to select. (By the end of the weekend, only 5th was working on the track - making for an interesting remaining lap - but things freed up on the road.)

Of course, a few bends in, all this cold tyres stuff was history, and the gearbox wasn't proving too much of a hindrence, so it was a very enjoyable lap. By the time we got back, the red light was on.

The closure was a long one, I was quite tired and it looked like it was about to rain for whatever was going to be left of the final hour, so I headed early to the Pistenklause to book a table for 12 and copy across the photos. It wasn't long before others started arriving, and then it was time for one of these:

My laptop also proved useful for running a slide-show of JW's pics as he hadn't bought his. He shoots in raw rather than JPEG, but fortunately my slideshow software can read Canon CRW as well as Nikon NEF files.

Jochen then did the same on his laptop with his photos. Unfortunately, he'd been let down by his portable backup device which had somehow turned itself into a mere portable device, meaning that a morning's worth of photos were lost. :-( When Anders joined us a little later, Jochen told him the good news was that he'd taken a really good photo of him, and the bad news ...

There was some discussion about a solution to Anders' gearbox problem: buy JW's CCar share. :-) Anders looked like he was seriously considering this ... for about 10 seconds.

Jeppe was talking about a great lap with Ulf, which resulted in a very confused conversation about what sort of rental Ulf had - before it finally became clear that he was talking about a different Ulf! The Other Ulf, as I think we will now be known, was seemingly getting good value from his rental Beemer. :-)

Jeppe was apparently also saying that he approves of the syndicate's choice of Golfs ... because he hates them and thinks they deserve to suffer.

It was a great evening with some hilarious conversations that you can of course never remember the next day.

Monday

The forecast for Monday had been mostly sunny. Things looked promising in the morning, though the car-park of course reflected the weather:

There were a fair number of 944s in evidence:

My wonky headlight was sometimes necessary to tell which was mine ...

Jules was driving a very similar Porsche belonging to a friend. The friend had left early, and left Jules with the Carerra GT. Hmmm ... I really need to get a better class of friend.

For those not familiar with it, the Carrera GT is made from carbon-fibre and has a 5.7-litre V10 engine generating 610bhp. That's 200bhp more than a 996 Turbo in a car weighing 160Kg less! 0-60mph/100kph in under 4 seconds, and a top speed of 205mph/328kph. Only 1500 will ever be made, and that'll be £338,000, please.

I'd arranged with Jules to grab a paxlap in it, and true to his word he found me in the car-park and asked the stupidest question of the weekend. About a millisecond later, I was glued into the passenger seat.

It's as lovely inside as out, and that engine note ... ! It's a rather strange feeling sitting in a car that is worth considerably more than my house.

It was quite amusing seeing Jules reverse the car about 25cm at about 0.1kph when turning round in Nurburg. I understood exactly why - the idea of damaging the car on a kerb outside the circuit would be just too embarrassing. :-) Jules later observed on the Ringers list that there was another reason for the slow speed here:

Was also my desire not to stall or burn the clutch. When moving off (unless
you're after a dramatic take-off) you need no throttle at all - and bring the clutch up very carefully - even on a hill-start - and it's fine. Touch the throttle and it'll
stall, unless you're too aggressive and then you burn the clutch or tyres.

It's not difficult, it just requires care. The clutch is ceramic composite.

Jules was being appropriately careful with someone else's very expensive motor car, but even at a level which was clearly very comfortable for Jules, the experience was impressive. The acceleration away from the cones had me laughing aloud, the car was rock-solid around bends, the engine note was just fabulous and it was quite something to be in a car that could avoid the rubber-band effect with bikes by out-accelerating them on the straights! The combination of car and driver was quite something.

Kiki had been hoping for a lap in the GT herself, but Jules had to leave after my lap. I said I could offer a lap in something at the other end of the Porsche spectrum, so she settled for that.

Photo: Pasi Nikkanen from his gallery here

I also got a 944 paxlap myself, in Dave Maling's 944 Turbo. This is very similar indeed in performance to the 968. A most enjoyable lap. :-)

Ross was again raising the tone of the place:

He'd been doing some laps in the Mundano hire-car, and had apparently waited at the cones to follow me around for a lap, but the track was busy so he got held up in traffic. As I didn't recognise the car, I didn't realise he wanted to follow, so didn't wait.

Those with good memories may recall that I lost my watch last trip. This at least served as an excuse to buy a new one, and the new one happened to synch to the atomic clock in Frankfurt. A 5-county project provided the opportunity to buy it in Germany and then test it as far afield as Moscow, where it picked up the signal perfectly.

Reaching into the back of the car to collect my jacket, I found my old watch. This doesn't synch to an atomic clock, though the watch face is a solar panel which powers it, so it does have some gadget appeal. I have a feeling that Birgit is going to be a little suspicious of the convenient timing of losing the watch in time to buy a more gadgety replacement, and then finding the old one again on the very next trip ...

Karl had been under the impression that I'd left on Sunday night, so sent me a text telling me the weather was perfect. I enjoyed disappointing him, and claimed some passenger laps as compensation for his attempted jibe. Heading out from the barrier, we saw a Golf ahead with the most extreme camber I've ever seen!

The blonde woman driving it was fast. Very fast. As in, quickly out of sight - and Karl most decidedly does not hang around. She'd obviously experienced some sort of problem later in the lap, either of the mechanical or soiled clothing variety, as she was cruising around when we overtook her at Werseifen.

I told Karl that he may need to be promoted to Lord Bastard. He is now absurdly fast while driving frankly ridiculous lines. On many bends, he simply doesn't bother, and just approaches them from the middle of the track.

The final lap of three was quite interesting. First, we came round Mutkurve to find a biker pulling off the grass diagonally across the track in front of us. No sign of any oil or debris, and no obvious damage to the bike. Perhaps, like another biker I'd seen at Steilstreck earlier, he had just pulled over for a call of nature.

Then at Hohe Acht, a marshall ran across the road in front of us. Granted that you can't see anything from the crest, he must surely have been able to hear us coming from some considerable distance. I was wondering how much Nurburgring GmbH charges for a replacement marshall.

I'd been recommended to get a paxlap with Gary in his Pug. This was every bit as good as advertised.

In the Grune Hoelle, the next generation of Ringers were practicing:

A few more 944 laps on a somewhat busy track, and it was time for some more go-juice. The Ed Tankstelle was obviously doing particularly good business, as he was out of Super Plus, so I had to settle for Super (95 rather than 98).

It was just starting to rain as I got back, but as I was about ready to call it a day, I decided to do a couple of careful laps before it turned into an ice-rink. The first was fun, the second was sliding around at any speed, so I was glad just to make it back to the car-park without any real drama.

Marc at TTE had been away for the weekend, so we had no way to get the cars into the garage. As we finally tracked down the source of the leak (a missing piece of plastic trim at the rear of the bonnet), I wasn't keep on leaving it on the forecourt in the rain. My guesthouse kindly agreed to let me put it in their garage, and Marc said he'd pick it up the next day.

This turned out to be a good plan as Matt told me afterwards that the heavens opened as he was leaving at 7.30pm.

Ross texted me to say he'd pick me up in half an hour, so I transferred across the rest of the pics and started on the trip report. I did more of it in the car on the way to the airport.

Well, I say airport, but actually Hahn is a shed in a field. I thought Ross was joking when he turned onto the airport approach road:

But no, this really is Hahn. Or, as Ryanair would have its customers believe, Frankfurt.

We were there a few mins before check-in opened, which generated a little entertainment. Ross has flown Ryanair to Hahn many times before, so correctly guessed which check-in desk would be used for the Stansted flight. About 10 or 12 Americans, meantime, had guessed incorrectly and were queuing at the next desk over.

One of them barged over and tried to push in front of us. I simply placed my bag on the check-in desk and ignored him. He then proceeded to accuse us of queue-jumping. I politely informed him that we were in fact the only people queuing at this desk, and his party was queuing at the next desk over.

His objection to this appeared to centre on the fact that, had they known, they would have been waiting at the correct desk, and that as they were there before us, they could have been in front of us. I agreed with him that had he been waiting at the correct desk then yes, he could have been in front of us, but as he hadn't, then he wasn't.

This little exchange was, for my part, merely to pass the time. Ryanair in fact boards the first 65 passengers as one group, so it makes not the slightest difference whether you get boarding cards 1 and 2 or 64 and 65. But as he was getting so wound up about it, it provided an amusing diversion.

Once checked in (ahead of him ...), we went upstairs to eat. Amazingly, the airport bar does quite a decent steak. Not bad for a shed in a field.

Wandering down to the gate, I'd predicted that our American friend would be there to ensure that we didn't get on the plane before him. Sure enough, one of his party stepped in front of us to block our way while the 10-12 Americans walked out. I waited until they had all walked out, then proceeded to walk past them all on the 5-minute walk to the plane, securing seats 1a and 2a for myself and Ross. (There is no partition at the front of Ryanair planes, making 1a the pole-position seat for arrival at Stansted.) Having only one bag plus a carrier-bag, I couldn't do anything for Matt and Nick, but they ended up only one row back.

And so ended another excellent Ring weekend. Ross, Matt, Nick and myself said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. My taxi driver was Dave, a biker who goes to the Ring himself. He'd asked me to take some money across to pay a deposit for some room bookings. I did that, and he more than repaid the favour by refusing to accept a fare for the return journey. Home rather than later than usual, and the rest of the trip report to write.

As always, there are bound to be things I've forgotten, so it will as ever be added to as I remember incidents, and I also hope they'll be a few on-track photos of me to add.

And now rather a long wait before the next trip ...