A recent fatal accident at Schwedenkreuz - in which an M3 rolled several times, completely crushing the roof - underlined the sense of a DRT. Never has a rollcage looked more of a bargain. I strongly encourage regulars to invest in one.

Preparation

The 944 was due an emissions test, which Marc organised and the car passed with no problems. Marc has also introduced a standard DRT safety check for 35 Euros. This covers a thorough check of brakes, tyres, hoses, etc. So I asked him to do this also.

I did one further bit of prep, and bought a comprehensive toolkit for the 944. One that would enable me to tackle absolutely every job I'm capable of:

Thursday & Friday

Thursday became a bit of a nightmare when a brief for a large project hit my desk and I needed to design the study as well as cost both UK and global elements by the end of the day. That saw me arriving home very late and feeling knackered.

Friday then started at 6.15am with a call on my mobile from our New Zealand office to discuss the stage of the research they would be handling. Let me say that again for the benefit of those who know me: 6.15am. I thought by now that the entire world would be perfectly well aware that Ben Lovejoys do not, repeat not, do 6.15am.

But with an 11-hour time difference, there is absolutely no overlap in our respective working days, so I guess I will forgive them. In time.

I also had to set off a bit early for an important company-wide meeting: Dragon Boat racing.

I forget why. Something to do with team-building by all being equally incompetent at something, I think. Though events conspired against the actual boating bit, it wasn't such an unpleasant way to spend the afternoon:

Though if I'd know about it further in advance, I could have changed my flight from Stansted, as the balcony shown above had an excellent view of ... London City Airport:

Oh well.

Stansted wasn't looking entirely encouraging on the weather front:

But an uneventful trip saw us in the Pistenklause shortly after midnight, and to bed by 2-ish.

Saturday

Working late Thursday and starting work at 6.15am on Friday wasn't leaving me overly inclined to sleep for five hours in order to get to the track by 8am. In any case, it was raining when we woke, so we had a leisurely start and got to the track just after 10am.

I set off on a sighting lap. Although it has to be admitted that some sighting laps do tend to get a little faster as the lap goes on, my first lap of each weekend usually is at genuine sighting pace. Despite being in 'Hello track, hello trees' mode, we still couldn't help passing a gaggle of nine 911s who were tracing the right-hand side of the track, bumper to bumper, at around 50kph.

The track was soaking wet, bone dry, damp, greasy, grippy ... a typical lap of the Ring, then. With track conditions so varied, it wasn't a tremendous surprise to come in after a single lap to find the track closed.

JW arrived while we were chatting in the car-park. When the track reopened, JW said he would be leaving soon, so we took advantage of a limited opportunity for a ride in his new company car. We wandered over the road to find it, JW leading the way to this gorgeous blue T-

Oh. Sorry, it's the the other one: a Seat Ibiza Cupra 1.9 turbo-diesel:

Setting off on the first lap, we found a biker in the tyre wall on the outside of Hatzenbach 2. JW pulled off onto the grass on the inside. The biker was ok, but in a rather vulnerable position, so I ran back to flag.

Of course, the car being new, JW didn't yet actually have a flag in it. I thus learned two things. First, waving a white helmet about makes a very effective flag. Second, waving a white helmet about on a rather warm and muggy day is bloody hard work.

The biker got back on and managed to restart the bike. In a gap in the traffic, he was able to get onto the grass on the inside, and ride on to the safety car position. As he was ok, and said that he would ride on, we left him to it.

The rest of the lap was uneventful, and the Ibiza proved itself worthy of the title Squealmobile 2.

Straight out for a second lap, we found a Nissan had done a very creative crash exiting Eiskurve, somehow managing to impact with the rear of the car on the inside of the bend. The car was off the track with a safety car in attendance, so we carried on. At the bottom of Spunghugel, in the place where Joerund crashed, was an ambulance attending to a biker laying on his back on the inside of the kerb that comes in to meet you. :-(

The track was of course closed when we got back.

JW had to make a move, having set off at 5.15am:

Birgit and I went for a wander around the car-park:

I also took the opportunity to buy an essential accessory for a 944 missing a piece of plastic behind the bonnet hinges:

The ADAC air ambulance flew over and a road ambulance emerged with blues-and-twos, presumably from the bike crash.

Shortly afterwards, the Nissan came out on the back of the recovery truck:

As soon as the track reopened, we took the 944 straight out for another couple of laps. Or, er, one lap, then: returning from it, the track was closed again. :-(

This was more than a little bit silly. Despite a very crowded car-park, the track itself was relatively quiet. The changeable weather and slippery track was very obvious, and if that weren't enough, you would have thought that two closures in the space of a few laps would have made the point that you need to take it easy out there. But seemingly not.

Another car-park wander ...

The heat-shield of a British Ferrari had cracked, and fallen down on top of the exhaust. This produced a lot of smoke, and a car-park repair was undertaken:

I couldn't decide whether this was the guy's name, or whether this was a warning about the standard of driving among some Brits:

As it seemed likely that my flag was going to see some action, I moved it to a more accessible place:

There was a great photo pinned to the noticeboard in the cafe. Shame about the focus, but the shot overcomes such technical details:

When the track reopened, we wasted no time in jumping into the car and heading straight out. This time we managed TWO whole laps before the track closed. And we only saw one crash in those laps.

One particular biker was trying very hard indeed to become an accident statistic. As he was catching me after Mutkurve, I indicated right and started moving right on the approach to Klostertal. He waited until I was about a car width away from the right-hand side of the track and dived into the closing gap for a wrong-side overtake. There could have been no more than about 30cm of clearance, probably less.

I memorised his number-plate as best I could: WIZ ZX32 or WIX ZX32. I forgot to notify the office until about 40 mins later, so don't know whether he was still there then.

It always feels uncomfortable reporting someone to the office - a bit like telling tales to teacher - but it is a very easy way to save someone's life. If they are unaware of basics like which side to overtake on, and what it means when someone indicates right, it can only be a matter of time. I hope they managed to find him to have a quiet word.

Back out, another two laps and again only one crash: a 911 that had run wide at Brunnchen 2. It was sitting in the gravel-trap but looked, from what I could see in my mirrors, to have stopped short of the armco. Great laps.

Photo: Jochen: www.nurburgring.be

By this time, the track was dry but the 944 was still moving around a lot. Looking at other cars out there, I could see the same was true for them, so I guess just a lot of crud on the track.

As the day was getting hotter, I decided to recheck the tyre pressures. After having tried a variety of tyre pressure theories, I've gone back to the first one I followed: do two laps and adjust the hot pressures to the normal recommended cold pressures. This works better than anything else I've tried.

Sure enough, the hot pressures - set earlier in the day - had crept up by just over 0.1 bar:

Restoring the usual pressures improved things a little.

It was too hot to eat much, but we decided a light lunch was in order. His-and-her light lunches:

The usual evidence of various fluid leaks in the ca-park:

Although the weekend was originally shown on the website as two full days, there was a minor Oldtimer Festival there. The track was closing at 3.30pm to allow the Oldtimer cars and bikes to do flying laps on the combined Nordschleife and GP track. We managed another couple of laps between crash closure and Oldtimer closure.

I think it was on one of these laps that I nearly had an interesting tale to tell ...

Entering Schwedenkreuz offline to overtake lots of slow traffic, the RingTaxi zooms up behind. I abandoned my overtake of a red 911 in front of me, and pulled right on the approach to Aremberg. Sabine overtakes with a wave, and I slotted in behind her. The 911 now holds her up down to Aremberg (fair enough) and all the way round Aremberg.
Sabine is flashing her lights.

Starting the run down Fuchsrohre, I expect the 911 to finally move over, and it's clear that Sabine does too as she is accelerating hard.

Seconds later, Sabine slams on the anchors as the 911 hasn't moved. I brake heavily to avoid rear-ending the Taxi, and console myself with the thought that I could at least have turned it into a good story about Sabine being so slow I ran into the back of her.

The 911 finally realises that the large white thing with lots of headlight flashing may wish to overtake, and moves over. I get past too, and manage to stay behind Sabine through AF, which I hope someone got a pic of, before she disappeared.

We then dropped the 944 back at the guesthouse, and applied its new accessory:

I'm pleased to say that this did the job, and the interior of the car remained dry despite a torrential downpour later.

According to the couple who run the guesthouse, the car got a lot of attention from passing pedestrians. Perhaps they thought it was disguising a new test car ...

We then parked the Merc at Bastard Bend for a spot of Oldtimer spectating. Birgit was planning to shoot some video footage, so she started with a bit of gardening to clear the camcorder's line of sight:

As it turned out, the long gaps between the cars weren't really suited to videoing, so I just took some snaps with the Ixus.

I've hardly used the Ixus since buying the D70, so am now totally unused to shutter-lag. The auto-focus also had varying degrees of success, but enough excuses, on with the pics ...

After half an hour or so, it became clear that we were just seeing the same cars each time, with no new ones joining the parade, so we decided to call in at the Altes Forsthaus. I'd long ago identified this as a huge opportunity, but the two previous tenants hadn't seemed to have made the most of it. I'd exchanged some emails with the new tenants who seemed determined to do so.

We spent an enjoyable hour or so being shown around the place, then sitting in the bar drinking beer and discussing everything from their plans to offer DRT rentals to helicopter flights over the Ring (when they told me they had some aviation contacts, I told them they had to organise this, and they have promised to look into it).

One of the partners in the venture, Elena, is from the Ukraine, and they do some consultancy in Moscow, so we swapped a few Moscow stories. Everyone who has ever been to Moscow has at least one entertaining story. Entertaining in retrospect, anyway.

Niek texted me to say he and Jochen were in the Pistenklause. I suggested they join us at the Forsthaus, which they did. More beer was consumed and more car chat ensued.

Dinner was at the Pistenklause, joining Mike, Jo and Adam among others. Sadly, I had no luck trying to persuade Mike and Jo to adopt a 42yo son.

911 Christer and Thorsten arrived to say hello, and I naturally took the opportunity to invite myself back into the passenger seat of the 911. Unfortunately, we didn't manage that. And so to bed, safe in the knowledge that Sunday had a civilised 10.15am start due to more Oldtimer laps.

Sunday

I could pretty much summarise Sunday in one sentence: it was much like Saturday. Do a lap or to, find the track closed. Repeat.

I do like Oldtimer weekends. We didn't need to go any further than the guesthouse car-park to begin seeing them:

Filling up with petrol, I found this stunningly-maintained E-Type doing the same. The snaps really don't to justice to her immaculate condition:

The car-park was not crazy, like Easter, but was moderately busy:

But the track was remarkably quiet. It was also bone-dry, and the temperature was pleasantly warm without roasting you. However, the Oldtimers had been out first thing, and they usually drop oil on the track, and things did indeed feel rather slippery.

We managed four laps without a closure! On the fourth, the car was starting to slide around a lot more, which I suspected was the tyre pressures increasing with the temperature.

Photo: Simon Jessop

There was something blue behind us, holding position. I'm not keen on unknown cars following me, as you never know what they might do, so I slowed a little and indicated for it to pass. We didn't recognise it, but Birgy saw people waving and thought it might be Esther and 'the Chilean'.

We followed, and sure enough, it was Cisco at the wheel with Esther and the Cookie Monster in the passenger seat. Once I knew who it was, I was happy to play convoy, swapping places a couple of times before coming alongside to say hello on Dottinger-Hohe. However, the slidiness meant it was time to adjust the pressures again. By the time that was done ...

More car-park wandering. Furry dice at the front, nodding dog at the rear:

We met up with Esther and Cisco in the car-park. The Cookie Monster was taking a nap in his portable hammock:

Esther had found some cookies she just had to buy:

The Cookie Monster wasted no time in tucking in:

Another failed noise-test, another Red Bull can solution. But this one was sensibly inserted in the middle of the system, where it couldn't fly out:

Zakspeed seems to have a new vehicle:

More car-park repairs, both in progress:

and completed:

Christer's 911S:

Which Jochen caught in action in a JW-style shot, all the more appreciated because JW doesn't do JW-style pics any more ...

Some more eye-candy:

A Smart that I suspect was not 100% stock:

And a somewhat unusual DRT which you can read about here:

It was to turn out to be rather ironic that the very next photo I took was of the recovery truck heading out in front of us when the track reopened:

More on that later ...

Two fun laps with no crashed vehicles, a brief ice-cream break and another closure, giving time for a couple of arty shots ...

Er, ok, I'll get my coat ...

A couple of people told us there was a big oil spill at Breidscheid. The closure was quite a long one, then the 'Cars only for the first 10 minutes' announcement.

The reason for this became clear approaching Miss-Hit-Miss. The oil spill started there, ran all the way round the right-hand side of MHM, all the way round the right-hand side of Wehrseifen and then patchily down to the entrance to Breidscheid where there was masses of the stuff.

Clearly the culprit was well aware of the leak as they were on the right-hand side of the track the whole way. Unbelievably, I learned after the weekend that the culprit was the Ring Taxi! Unsurprisingly, harsh words were had with the driver.

Not all such culprits are identified, so I do think it's time for a video system at the Breidscheid exit. Then when an oil-slick appears and the car or bike (as happened not long ago) does a runner, they can be identified.

Straight out for another lap, the rest of the track was great fun, with no incidents. Of course, this was too good to last, and we just caught the tail-end of a closure announcement as we came in. This was followed shortly afterwards by a more detailed announcement: there were no fewer than six separate accidents, and the track would be closed for 'a minimum of one hour'.

We usually check out from out guesthouse and collect our luggage just before we leave, but we decided we might as well do that now and then leave things in the Merc for the short time remaining before it would be time to go. Wandering over to collect the Merc from the dirt car-park, the two Edo Porsches made a pretty sight:

By the time we got back to the track, it was still closed. By the way, if you've ever wondered how the cement-dust is applied to the track ...

This is the answer:

We started hearing bits & pieces of the story. Apparently the Volvo estate I'd photographed earlier had started leaking coolant just beyond Bergwerk. Jochen managed to flag it down, and Karl flagged the spillage. A biker panicked when he saw people waving, lost the front under heavy braking and went head-first into the armco.

That didn't sound good, but we later heard from a bike marshall that he was knocked out for five minutes and completely ok when he came round.

Quite a long time later, a recovery truck came out with the Volvo and one of the bikes (I'm not sure whether or not this is the Bergwerk bike, but I think not):

The bike marshall then told us more detail. The Volvo had a tear in a coolant hose, but was stopped fairly quickly, and as far as we know, nobody went down on the spillage from this (apart from, indirectly, the Bergwerk biker).

A Golf was also leaking coolant, this time intermittently but in large patches each time. Apparently most of the other bike crashes were caused by this. This started at Klostertal, and the Golf finally pulled over or broke down just before Schwalbenshwanz. Seemingly the police wanted to speak with the driver, and it sounds like quite a few people will be wanting to speak to his insurance company ...

Fortunately, nobody was seriously hurt. However, there were still several bikes plus the Golf to recover. It was 20 mins before we had to leave, and the recovery truck that had just taken away the Volvo apparently needed to return to pick up the Golf, so it was unlikely that we'd manage another lap. Even if we did, the spills meant it would have to be effectively a sighting lap, so we decided we might as well make a move.

We dropped the 944 back to Marc's workshop, put its fetching blue raincoat in place and left a note asking him to check her over before tucking her up ready for our next visit in a fortnight's time. :-)

And that was the weekend. Rather crashy, but overall great fun. Can't wait for the next one!