My usual August holiday in Germany, with two successive weekends at the Ring and the week between in Selb.

So, trip 43 now and trip 44 in a week's time. :-)

Unless otherwise credited, all CCar action photos are by Birgit. If you're looking for on-track photos of your car or bike, there are over 1,000 photos from the weekend now online here:
www.ringphotos.com

Preparation

Unfortunately, the problem with the 944 turned out to be serious. Either the main bearings (bearings from the crankshaft) or con rod bearing. Either way, the engine would have to be stripped to find out for sure, and it doesn't make sense to do that without rebuilding it - and that is of course €€€€. :-(

The dilemma is between rebuilding or swapping the engine. A swap is cheaper, but even with an engine you can see running, and do a compression test on, you are buying an unknown quantity. A rebuild gives me a known good engine, but is expensive. (As with many things in the world of Porsches, the individual costs don't look too bad, but they all add up to some rather frightening totals.)

Joerg and Jason Burns both kindly offered assistance, so I have a number of options.

Of course, when you do as many Ring trips as I do, the effect on one's bank account is rather severe. So whatever solution I opt for, it won't be in place this season, so I would be driving the syndicate Golfs for my three remaining trips in 2005. The plan is then to have the 944 raring to go for the start of the 2006 season.

There was some discussion on Ringers about people who do wrong-side overtakes. Noting the start-up display on Brigit's sister's car, perhaps we just need to get everyone to install Becker radios?

'Please obey traffic laws'

Birgit also bought a DRT of her own ... a Nikon D70! Yes, that weekend spent playing with mine was expensive: she decided she had to have one too. And since the main reason for purchase was to take Ring pics (with the rather optimistic idea that photo sales will offset the cost), she decided that it was in fact a Dedicated Ring Toy.

This was also a neat way of redefining the cost. As a camera or a gadget, it is relatively expensive. As a DRT, it must set an all-time record for cheapness ...

Friday

Summer holiday season of course means big queues at Stansted. Not only are there more passengers than usual, but many of them only fly once or twice a year, so have to be told to put their mobile in their bag, etc.

The flight was more-or-less on time, but as both Birgy and I had had a long day, we decided to settle for a snack en-route and head straight to bed. Not, of course, before emptying the charger bag and putting various gadgets on to charge ready for the morning.

Saturday

The weather forecast was for storms and instead we woke to this:

The beauty of the CCar syndicate is that an engine in need of a rebuild doesn't put an end to your fun. The replacement CCar was pretty much finished, so we went down to TTE to pick it up. It looks much like the old one, right down to the colour:

One thing that wasn't quite finished was the driver's seat mounting. For some reason, the mounting system didn't have enough height adjustment in it, so instead of being nice and low it was like a truck seat. I christened it The Seat of Extraordinary Altitude.

It was in fact so high that with the seat the correct distance from the pedals, I couldn't reach down far enough to put the car into 5th! So I had to move the seat close enough to allow me to change gear. With the seat in this position, however, it was impossible to engage reverse gear because the gearstick was up against the seat. This called for some creative parking.

Still, the forward gears worked so off we went for a sighting lap followed by a proper one.

Great fun as the Golf is, it gave me a whole new appreciation for the 944. The Golf has a very well setup suspension, but compared to the 944 it feels bouncy, less stable and a lot more rattly and squeaky. Keith later agreed it was under-damped, so is going to play with the settings.

Photo: JW of www.jwhubbers.nl

It also took a little time to get used to FWD again. Although the caster and camber are setup to give understeer progressing smoothly into oversteer, and it's by far the best setup FWD car I've ever driven, it is not, though, the same as RWD.

But within a few laps, I was back into the Golf groove and having an excellent time.

Birgy's new-found enthusiasm for photography meant that she decided just to come along for a couple of paxlaps in the morning then go off to her camera spots.

With great optimism, Birgy had drawn up a schedule, and done some leaflets letting people know where she would be when. We put one of these in the Golf:

Her first stop was Adenauer-Forst, with the usual entertainment, both from guys having fun:

From the pic, I reckoned this one was also deliberate:

Birgy said the spectators were speculating.

There was also the unintentional entertainment, of course:

As Birgy was walking back down from AF, she met Jochen cycling up:

The car-park was pretty crowded:

But, amazingly, the track wasn't. There were a few crowded laps, but really remarkably few. Most were deliciously clear.

Jon 'Graveltrap' Reeves was there in a rental Boxster. He was complaining about his nickname, citing the Welsh Defence ('... make 100 pieces of furniture, and they don't call you Jones the Carpenter, but you shag one sheep ...'). I sympathised, then took the 'Before' photos:

Golfs can get pretty hot in weather like this. One Brit has an inventive solution, courtesy of a mineral water bottle:

Keith was back on the correct side of the Atlantic, in a rental Z4:

I went out for a couple of paxlaps with him:

He seemed happy. The car itself felt a little flighty but certainly had plenty of grip together with sufficient power from the 2.2-litre engine. I took this shot at T13, but resisted the temptation to take shots at Maddocks 1, 2 and 3 ...

We saw a Caterham on a recovery truck just as we were approaching Wehrseifen. I observed that as it was a Caterham, it would be a breakdown rather than a crash. Keith replied that the truck would probably breakdown just from carrying one.

I think it was also this lap that we passed this safety-car-escorted old Merc convoy:

Complete with their own photographer:

On our return, Karl announced that he was off to walk the dog. I like dogs, but that man clearly has an unnatural relationship to his dog.

Suz's son Shawn was visiting from the States. Bren dropped him in the car-park, with a general 'Entertain him' request to the assembled Ringers. I took him for a lap in the Golf:

I then headed straight back out for a solo lap. The track was beginning to get a little more crowded, with more blind drivers and bikers.

After a 10-minute break, I went back out for another couple of laps. Things had quietened down somewhat, although a high proportion of those out there didn't appear to have mirrors fitted. Still good fun, though, and some clear stretches.

When I came back in, the red light was on, but if there was going to be a closure, it couldn't have been more perfectly timed as it was lunchtime.

I ran into Shawn and told him I was going for lunch. He gave me a sob story about having only 40 cents on him so I said I'd get him lunch and discuss the APR with Bren later. Walking into the food area, he made a beeline for ... the salad bar! What the hell kind of kids are people raising these days?!

Birgy texted to say she'd seen a lot of emergency vehicles coming past, so it sounded like the closure was going to be a long one. I bumped into Jon Reeves a little later, who had come past the crash and said it was a 911 on its roof just before Miss Hit Miss. This was sounding like almost a repeat performance of Erwin's crash, though this one turned out to be in the right-hander of Spiegelkurve - the left-right S-bend immediately prior to MHM.

I saw the doctor return, so asked how the driver was, and was told he was ok.

While waiting for the track to reopen, I did a little wander around the car-park:

How big is the tank on this thing??

Some Brits came very well equipped:

Hey, a working Atom:

I think the driver was new to the Ring as I overtook him on the track, but they really do look like fun. In fact, my favourite car in PGR2 is an Atom in the rain. :-)

It seems Swiss cars now have to be fitted with a large warning sign:

The BMW safety car had two notices on the rear:

The smaller one on the plate:

I was telling Job that it is really hard to think of new ways to photographically illustrate closures. He suggested a shot of the bikes trapped outside at the roundabout:

I sent Graveltrap a text:

Stelvio had got just past the barrier when the track was closed. He was thus waiting there patiently. Watching with bemusement while I took a shot Birgy required for www.ringphotos.com - to show where the proceeds go:

There was quite a crowd gathered to await the wreckage, not realising that as it had happened at Spiegelkurve, the recovery truck would go off at Breidscheid.

The closure was a long one, but Stelvio said that at least he would be first out when the track reopened. Unfortunately ...

"Ladies and gentlemen, the track is open for cars only for the first ten minutes."

I had seen the ambulance return and so knew the track was about to reopen, so had jumped into the Golf and strapped in. As soon as the announcement came, I was rolling, so was the third car out. I waved to Stelvio as I passed him at the barriers.

The lap was fantastic. The first car out was a 911 that disappeared into the distance, and I quickly overtook the second car. The rest of the lap was utterly clear. Fabulous!

There was a huge oil-spill at the crash site, but very well signposted, complete with temporary speed limit signs. Within a few laps, there was a clear line through the cement dust.

Straight out for a second lap, and still not much traffic - great!

Fuel time, then spotted Bren with Suz's Beemer, so invited myself for a couple of passenger laps:

Since Bren is so short-sighted, it doesn't really matter which way he looks while driving:

Bren had the standard biker steering technique, with only two steering wheel positions: steering or not steering. He thus turns the wheel about 45 degrees at every bend and then waits for the understeer to end and the car to start turning. As a result, and as JW no longer has a use for it, we decided Suz's car can inherit the Squealmobile title.

On the second lap, a bike had just gone down at Wehrseifen. I ran back to flag, only without a flag. I took off my helmet and used that, standing behind the tyre wall. Colin stopped and ran up to me: "There you go, Ben" and handed me a flag.

One of the biker's mates was standing a little further round inside the armco. At Wehrseifen. I called to him and tried to signal for him to get behind the armco. There was a gap close to him. I waited for a gap in the traffic and ran to the gap and he followed.

The biker got himself upright and there seemed no harm done, so he decided to ride on. We set off too.

I asked him Bren what tyres the car was running. "I don't know, whatever it had on when we bought it." Ok. What pressures are you running at? "I don't know, I don't think I've checked them since we bought it." As succint a description of Bren as one could get, I think. :-)

It started to rain just as we exited the track. That 'just started raining' time is the worst in my experience, with no clue whether any given bend will be wet or dry, slippery or grippy - and a dry entry is no guarantee of a dry exit. I decided on a coffee and another car-park wander.

This 911 was lapping a lot, and there was a 944 in the same paint scheme:

A gorgeous dog was wandering around the car-park, so of course needed to be stroked. After a few minutes, the owner called it. It looked at her, looked at me and decided it was staying where the strokes were. It promptly rolled over and demanded tummy rubs:

Obviously, I delivered those in a cool macho motorsports sort of way, you understand.

GT3s may be ten a penny at the Ring, but you don't see too many of these:

The owner said that his main ambition for the weekend was not to bend it. I said this was understandable.

I know that a car with a wooden chassis is ridiculous, but I can't help liking them:

The sun was back out, so I went out for a sighting lap. It was very mixed wet and dry, but everyone seemed to be driving accordingly, so no problem.

By the second lap, it was dry all the way round, up to and including the entry to Bergwerk. But, uh, not the exit. The exit was very wet. I managed to avoid contributing to Net & Stahl's profits, but let's just say the spectators got good value.

Not everyone was so fortunate. Dutch Scoobies do seem to make a bit of a habit of this sort of thing:

It started raining again, and there was a huge rainbow visible:

The rain stopped within a few minutes, and I set off to do another couple of laps. Jon said he'd follow me round. The track was very slippery, but obviously so. The second lap, I waved him past at the barriers to follow him. The track was drying nicely during this lap.

And that was pretty much the story of this weekend's weather. Rain every now and then, but dry again within 10-15 minutes.

There are two GT3s with GT3 plates, Anders and a Finnish one. I think this is Anders' one:

Was this some explaining to do, or merely parking over the road?

Now, the last time a Ben got into the passenger seat of a Jon Reeves rental, he ended up in the gravel-trap at Aremberg. Was I feeling lucky? I decided I was:

Sure enough, we made it less that halfway round before the crash.

But this time it wasn't Jon. At the left-hander at the top of Fuchrohre, a German Corolla lost the back end big-time. It went front-end into the armco on the left and bounced halfway back onto the track. Jon brought the Boxster to a rapid stop.

It looked like a big impact. They all seemed ok, so I ran back to flag. Once I'd had a chance to assess, I could see there was remarkably little left on the track - just a small amount of dirt at a point where most cars would be straight and bikes upright.

It wasn't somewhere you wanted to be whilst standing inside the armco, and it was very difficult to give much warning from behind it, so I settled for calling the office and we then drove on.

When the Corolla got back to the car-park, I could see how fortunate they had been. What looked like a big impact had clearly been only a glancing blow, and it must have been catching on the dirt or kerb that pushed the car back out onto the track:

The track was closed shortly afterwards, and since there was only 20 minutes left, it was obvious it wouldn't open again. But I couldn't exactly complain ...

Being a syndicate car, with a fixed contribution plus a per-lap fee, we have to keep track of our laps. I picked up a click counter ages ago - it seemed rather appropriate. And the tally was pretty good:

Job and Jeroen were staying at the same guesthouse as us:

Job's Merc looked the business:

As the weekend was busy in the car-park if not on the track, I'd called the Pistenklause to book a table. Of course, I forgot that Germans don't do first names:

Jochen was running a little late and concerned that he might not get a seat, so we made an official place marker for him:

He also won the prize for sillest expression during an official dinner photo:

JW can be forgiven for cutting off half Birgy's face as he was holding three cameras at the time - efficiency if not perfect framing. :-)

An American called Ken Persons emailed me to suggest that my Donations page would be more fun if I enabled people to 'sponsor' parts of my trips - and then credited them in trip reports with photos of what they'd paid for. :-)

I thought this was a great idea, so have now listed various items on the page:

Coincidentally, a biker I'd tried to assist after an accident had sent me a donation, so I'm pleased to say that this:

was kindly sponsored by Vladimir Mandic. :-)

We of course had the now-traditional dinner slideshow of the day's photos from our three intrepid photographers: Birgy, Jochen and JW:

Jochen's slideshow wouldn't auto-run, so he had to employ a slideshow timing device:

Which is also pictured here in another traditional dinner shot:

I don't recall who suggested that we persuade the Pistenklause to produce some of their wonderful baked ice-cream, but I reluctantly went along with the idea.

A Chinese guy walked to the gents and Job informed us in hushed tones that this guy would probably be the first Chinese F1 driver in a year or two. We duly had our cameras ready(ish) when he returned:

I told Job I would never remember what he'd told me about him, so it was therefore his duty as resident mine of information to type same into my Treo:

Courtesy of his note, I can thus inform you that his name is Ho-Pin Tung ("Check that spelling on google"; I did, and added the hyphen) and that he is currently an F3 driver. You can read about him here, and if he later wins the F1 championship, you can say you heard it here first, courtesy of Job.

What else did we talk about over diner? Oh yes: Scoobs. And how every year we think it would not be physically possible to make the car any uglier and yet, every year, somehow they do. We concluded that they must have an Undesign Team.

Keith pronounced Golf bottom strut braces to be as good as 968 M030 sway bars, and I was told I must include this in the report. I'm not sure why, but there you go.

JW's phone flashes a bluetooth LED every few seconds, and after a few glasses of wine I decided it would be interesting to see if I could time a photo just right to catch it on. First time. Now there's a saleable skill.

We took a photo of the key combination Keith hopes Sixt will never see:

And that led, by some process that seemed logical at the time, to this:

Birgy couldn't even put down her D70 at dinner:

Which explains why I saw something I'd never seen before. The D70 has a frame-counter which shows the number of frames remaining. In RAW+JPEG mode, with a 4Gb microdrive it starts the count at 638. By the end of the day, after she had nipped back to the guesthouse early afternoon to clear the card onto the laptop, this is what was showing:

Keith was this month's phone victim. Did you know that Siemens offers an Arabic option?

Speaking of phone settings, JW advised us that on Ring weekends he sets his phone to 'VIP only' - which means only calls from pre-selected people are accepted. We decided it would be much simpler to have an Anti-VIP setting, as everyone could just put Niek and Euan in there and be safe.

I asked if any of my fellow syndicate members wanted the car first thing. Jochen said he would, so I handed over the keys. And so to bed.

Sunday

We saw him sneak the car out at 9-ish, so not very first thing, and then return it about an hour later having warmed the tyres and created a dry line - thank you kindly, Sir.

By the time we had emerged, the weather looked like this:

A Brit called Simon arrived just as I was heading out for a sighting lap, and asked if he could have a paxlap. I said sure, come for two. His mate Welly ("no-one calls me Dave") hopped in for another one later (Simon right):

Simon must have enjoyed the laps as he bagged another one later. Welly, meantime, informed me that Simon likes Golfs: "he has about 30 of them". Well, 30 projects, it seems. Ebay can do that to you, I guess.

We only managed one lap with Welly. I got to the barrier and noticed this, instead of the usual 'Please insert your ticket' message. The red light went on. Ho hum.

Incidentally, that is absolutely and positively the very last photographic idea I have for illustrating a closure, so I must now formally advise everyone that crashing is now absolutely prohibited.

No matter how boring closures may be for drivers, it is worse for the photographers. Birgy's desperation in photographing leaves made this point well (I shall spare you). Jochen was out with her and was also getting bored:

Is it coincidence that he appeared to be doing his best to look angelic?

The closure was due to a British Aprilia down at Kallenhard. I didn't think it was likely to be too serious, but the closure was a long one, and the helicopter came and went. I later heard that the rider had a dislocated hip but was otherwise ok, and is now back in the UK.

When it reopened, I headed out for a solo lap.

Approaching Schwedenkreuz, I could see someone flagging. I eased right off and the first thing I saw round the bend was a huge pile of tyres where the start of the tyre wall used to be. This isn't looking good. The car, which was unrecognisable at first, was a BMW 3-series. There was red paint across the bonnet and roof, and the right-hand side of the car was very heavily damaged (almost completely destroyed at the front). It had obviously run wide, hit on the right and then tipped up on its side before landing the right way up.

I parked on the grass the far side of it and went to grab the first-aid kit. Nowhere to be seen. :-( Oh well, t-shirt if required. I was expecting to see very serious injuries indeed.

Someone ran up to me and asked if I had a knife. The passenger's seat-belt was trapped, and the engine was smoking. No knife, and no portable fire-extinguisher. Which was the point at which I realised that my switch of car had been a bit casual and I should have transferred across my emergency kit.

I ran to the car and opened the driver's door. No driver, just the passenger. My first concern was to free the belt so we could get him out if the car caught fire. The button was broken, but I was able to force the mechanism and release the belt. The passenger door was also jammed.

More people had arrived by this time, so I asked a couple of them to stand on the driver side so that we could pull the passenger out that way if the car caught fire. I then called the office and asked for an ambulance. My German may be exceedingly unimpressive, but I can manage "Unfall. Schwedenkreuz. Krankenwagen, bitte."

I could now turn my attention to the passenger. He was conscious and breathing normally. I asked him where it hurt. "All over." Could he moved his fingers and toes? Yes. Was he knocked out? No. Could he remember the crash? Yes. Any neck pain? No. Any numbness? No. I told him he was lucky, and the ambulance was on the way.

His only apparent injury was to his right arm. The side window had smashed in the crash and there was a little blood on his arm and on the window-sill. Someone was supporting his arm. As the bleeding seemed minor and I had nothing clean to put on it, I decided that could wait for the ambulance. From the combination of the minor bleeding but quite bad pain, I suspect he also tore a muscle or perhaps had a minor fracture.

The doctor arrived followed fairly quickly, followed by the ambulance. Setting off afterwards, I had to remind myself that the track was closed. If I crashed, it would be quite some time before anyone found me. I put my hazards on and cruised around.

I knew Birgy and Jochen were at Schwalbenschwanz, so I intended to briefly pull over to let them know what was going on, as the wreckage would obviously take a while to clear, but they had got bored and left before I got there.

Arriving back at the car-park, someone pointed out a bulge in the right rear tyre:

I phoned Marc and he said he wasn't at the workshop but someone else was. Keith said there were two spare part-worn tyres there or in the lockup, so I went down to have it changed.

This took a little longer than expected as there were a lot of tyres there, and I was looking for a pair of them. It eventually turned out that one of them was no good when inspected, so that left only one, which was why we couldn't find it. Back to the workshop for fitting.

Simon followed me down just so he knew where to come if he needed work in future, and Jeroen also came down. Birgy also met us there so I could see some of her pics while the work was done. While we were there, it started raining again.

But then then sun came back out. I headed back to the Ring and straight out for two laps. It was a little slippy buy drying fast.

Unfortunately, I only had time for one last lap after that. Keith announced he would follow me, and JW said that he happened to have the Ringbunny with him, so he would passenger with Keith.

Simon passengered with me, and a friend of his tagged on the back in their Vento.

The track was drying very well, though still a bit greasy in parts. Traffic was mixed, but it was still a fun convoy lap.

Finally, the time came to leave. We'd arranged that Keith would take over the car, so I handed over the keys after making him pose for proof that I'd handed over an armco-incident-free car. :-)

Even heading home wasn't quite the end of the Ring story - we didn't think there were any prizes guessing where this truck had just come from:

I'm spending the week on holiday at my German home, and then we're back for trip 44. :-) Hope that's as good as this one!