Ben Lovejoy

My usual seven or eight trips a year don't come cheap, eating most of my disposable income, so this year I decided to cut back to a couple of weekends in order to be able to spend some money on other things. Admittedly, 'a couple' has now turned into four, but that still covered the D200 and Dell.

Prioritising other expenditure also meant putting the 944 engine rebuild on hold, so for this trip I hired a Sylva Striker from the Altes Forsthaus where I was staying:

And one further economy measure was sacrificing my principles and flying Lie-n-Scare. I detest the airline, whose motto should be We just don't give a ****, but the fares are almost zero and they fly to Hahn, which has very cheap hire cars for the transport from/to the airport. Return flights plus four days hire with full insurance added up to a grand total of about £100!

No longer having the luxury of having my clothes, toiletries and most chargers delivered to the Ring for me, this was not destined to be a luggageless trip. My usual laptop bag was replaced by a roller-bag (just within the cabin baggage size limit).

As I only ever take snapshots for the trip reports, I don't usually take my main camera, but as the D200 was still relatively new, I felt it would pine for me if it was left at home all alone, so decided to add my camera bag to my luggage.

And finally, while I keep an open-face helmet at the Ring, the Striker was going to require a full-face one. I've never found the need for driving gloves, but experience of some of the more, uh, interesting Easter Ring weather suggested that in an open car, a pair of gloves might be a smart idea. A quick trip to the Demon Tweeks website later, I had a pair of Sparco nomex gloves:

I'd wondered why people used these, but had to admit that the feel was really nice, so in fact ended up using them all weekend.

Fortunately, I know the rules, so know that I am allowed a laptop, camera-bag and hat in addition to a cabin bag. I was fully ready to deploy my 'What else is a crash-helmet but a hat?' argument, but to my surprise neither this nor the camera-bag attracted any comment. They did weigh my bag and declare it 3Kg over the 10Kg weight limit, but this was easily solved by removing the rather large and heavy laptop and pointing out that I was permitted to carry it as a separate item. They grumped a little, but didn't give me any further hassle.

The landing was best described as interesting. It was quite windy and very wet. As the nose came down on the runway, we were pointed a bit to the left. As they applied reverse thrust and corrected, you could feel the aircraft skidding. It took two further corrections, both with the aircraft skidding, before we were pointing in the right direction. I've been in cars that have fishtailed under braking in the wet, but never before a 737-800.

I'd managed to bag seat 1A, and as Ryanair flights have no divider at the front, you are sat opposite the two flight attendants, both of whom were looking rather worried. It's never a good sign when the crew look worried, but the adventure lasted only long enough for me to double-check the way the door handle opened.

That little piece of entertainment done, we began a rather long walk in the rain to the terminal building. Lie-n-Scare presumably buy the cheapest possible apron space, which is the furthest point from the building. That said, it was rather refreshing just to be able to walk there rather than the silly process of waiting for people to board buses to drive about quarter of a mile.

I went straight to the rental desk to collect my Smart. Which had been upgraded to an Audi A3 1.9 TDi. Which was nice.

I have once flown out of Hahn, but never flown into it, so consequently had no idea where I was going. But my upgraded car had satnav, so no problem. Um, except it is in Italian and in order to be able to change the language, I'd have to know the Italian for 'Settings'. If I knew the Italian for 'Settings', I would probably know enough Italian to let it navigate for me in Italian. A process of elimination was not terribly successful, but it was at least obvious how to point it to Adenau in Italian, so I settled for that. The arrows would do the job.

Only it seemed to be in Shortest Route mode. Or, to be more precise, Absolute Shortest Route Even If It Involves Farm Tracks And Driving Across Herr Otterman's Lawn mode. The roads it took me down would have been great fun in daylight in the dry, but were rather less fun in pitch dark, in the rain, at the end of a very long week.

The backroad route it took me meant that only very local places were signposted, so after about 40km of seeing no signs at all to anywhere I recognised, the thought occured that there might be more than one Adenau in Germany and it may be taking me in totally the wrong direction.

I pulled over and texted Birgit to see if she was still awake. She was, but just as I was about to ask her to look up the village I was in to see if I was headed in the right direction, I spotted a sign to Koblenz. Even better, the GPS thought I should be headed onto that road. Sorted.

I arrived at the Altes Forsthaus at around 1am, to find Frank and a group of four Brits as the only survivors in the bar. An enjoyable chat later, I headed to bed at 2.30am, thankful for the late start (11am opening), and the track was in any case likely to take some time to dry off. Frank told me they needed to change the tyres in the Striker, then he would take me for a couple of demo laps in it.

Switching on the laptop in my room to write this, I discovered that there is civilised life in Nurburg :-)

Checking emails in the morning, Anders reported that his missed-calls indicator revealed that several Ringers had felt it necessary to check whether it could really be true that he wasn't there this year. A lesson we all learn fairly quickly when not at the Ring for a busy weekend is to ensure our mobiles are switched off before going to bed. :-)

The weather was grey and the road still wet, but not actually raining. Halfway promising, anyway.

While Frank finished breakfast, I wandered down to the office to take care of an essential piece of business, picking up the cute transponder you now get with jahreskartes:

The theory is that you wave your arm at the barrier and it opens. In reality, the 8cm range is more like 8mm, and with a harness on it's pretty much impossible to get your wrist against the pad, so most of us took to keeping the transponder in our pocket or round the gearstick and then holding it out at arm's length to touch the pad. This is, though, still a massive improvement on having to insert a card. (The cards are now merely used as ID, to prove you are the rightful owner of the transponder in spot-checks.)

Ok, it's going to be that kind of a day, it seems ... The car-park was very full:

We decided to check out track conditions by doing having Frank take me out for a couple of laps in the Altes Forsthaus's other rental car, a Golf Turbodiesel. A diesel is a pretty unlikely-sounding choice for a track car, but once the turbo kicks in at around 3000 revs, it really accelerates nicely.

The track was still wet, but the line was drying rapidly. Despite a massively crowded car-park, there was almost nothing out on the track. Well, apart from a fair number of wrecks. I think we passed five in two laps. One of those was a GT2 at the entry to Flugplatz.

I asked Frank where the Mungo Racing name came from. Apparently he'd had a frustrating time with a Cobra and Viper that didn't want to be overtaken, so he asked himself who was the natural enemy of snakes ...

Nurburgring GmbH had been busy, with several improvements in evidence. The most obvious were the 'through lane' for those going straight out for a second lap, and the transponders for jahreskarte holders. But there were other modifications on the track.

At Schwedenkreuz, the armco at the entry had been brought right next to the track. Bringing armco closer to the track, and losing a large area of grass run-off, isn't the most obvious of safety modifications at first glance ... but a large number of the serious crashes there were newbies who were taken by surprise by the bend. The new armco means the bend is visible from the exit of Flugplatz, and the severity of it is much more obvious on the approach. The kerb on the inside has also been replaced with flat kerbing, to stop cars flipping over. All good stuff.

A number of trees have also been cut down, most notably in Wippermann. While this is always a shame, it dramatically improves visibility, so should cut down on the number of knock-on accidents that occur.

Back to the guesthouse to switch to the Striker. I'd asked Frank to give me a couple of demo laps, so I could see what it could do. He mentioned that it had been over-heating, and unfortunately it started doing so about halfway round, despite the fact that track and air temps were still rather cold. Head gasket failure was diagnosed, and with everything closed, that meant a repair would have to wait until the following morning. As Frank observed, "Shit happens."

We seem to be having fun anyway (Frank in the car, me in the yellow jacket, Olly the mechanic in the blue top):

As earlier evidence of shit happening, his partners had ensured that the responsibility for one such event was made clear:

So I took the Golf instead. The track was drying very nicely, just a little greasy in the usual places, but was still very empty. I did four back-to-back laps in what was the best Easter weekend morning I can remember, due to the complete absence of traffic.

Considering how little traffic was out there, the crash ratio was incredibly high. There was at least one new crash on each lap, usually more than one. Fortunately, none appeared to have serious injuries, and all were being well flagged, so no need to stop.

I came in for a quick rest, and met Niek, Mike and Adam in the Grunne Hoelle. Mike told me the crashed GT2 at Flugplatz belonged to a friend of theirs, and it was being driven at that time by one of his friends. Coincidentally, I'd had some email correspondence with the guy who turned out to be the driver. Apparently the car landed askew after jumping the crest at QH, fishtailed and the rest is history. Not a good way to buy a GT2 ...

I offered to take Niek for a couple of laps in the Golf. I was low-ish on fuel, and the road to and from the petrol station was a nightmare, so I decided to come off at Breidscheid instead. My tank of petrol was very kindly sponsored by Ronan McGrath.

Back on at Breidscheid, we continued the lap. Until approaching T13, when the car started to lose power. I immediately pulled off onto the wide tarmac area opposite the stadium. There was a marshall there flagging a crash, so he came over. As he approached to ask what was wrong, the explanation dawned on me ...

It was some random, mysterious, inexplicable fault. Just one of those things. Nothing that can be figured out. You know, sometimes things just happen, right? No reason for them, just-

Ok, ok. The more observant of you will have noticed that I thanked Ronan for the tank of petrol. Which would have been an excellent thing to put into a petrol car. In my defence, I would like to state that I have never owned a diesel car. And there was no real clue, right? Well, apart from maybe a teensy-weensy subtle one on the roof of the car:

So, er, anyway. Niek and I did at least have an excellent view of the GP track while we waited for the recovery truck:

The ADAC man declared that the car would probably be ok after the fuel was drained and the system flushed. He said the worst that might happen is the fuel-pump might need to be replaced, and that turned out to be due for replacement anyway as part of the car's next power upgrade.

Team mechanic Olly was equally sanguine about the affair, and I was at least able to repeat Frank's earlier words to him: "Shit happens" :-)

Thanks to my ADAC membership, I avoided the €175 Euro recovery fee. For Ringers, an ADAC membership really does come highly recommended.

I suggested one further Golf modification Frank might like to copy from my Audi rental:

Ok, so that's two cars we've got through in eight laps. Perhaps it might be safest to wander around the car-park for a while. Adam was enjoying his RUF 911:

Usually Ferraris and Lamborghinis are not the best driven cars out there, but this Gallardo was being very well piloted:

I didn't spot him with an empty passenger seat, but made a mental note to keep an eye out.

This was more typical of the supercar genre, posing in the car-park and then leaving without, I think, ever venturing onto the track:

Birgit arrived at around three-ish. Martin was following in a rented BMW 6-series, and Birgit passengered to help guide him round his first few laps.

I also handed over to Birgit the Sigma 70-300mm lens that she'd been borrowing for her Ring photography and which I'd subsequently replaced with a Nikkor 70-210/f4, which had all the length I needed.

My Windows Mobile was playing-up most of the day, constantly losing signal. Infuriatingly, when it can't find a network signal, it refuses to allow you into the network settings control panel so you can't do anything about it! By a combination of brute force and cunning, I eventually managed to persuade it to let me in. Jocke has the same handset, so I asked him which network he was connected to, which was O2.de, so I manually set mine to that and all seemed ok.

Euan and Espen had apparently been doing their usual double-act of closing down all the bars in town the night before, and it was well after lunchtime when he finally put in an appearance. I hopped in for four very enjoyable passenger laps. (The usual cheating with photos, as these weren't when I was in the car.)

A guy called Jamie who I'd had some email correspondence with introduced himself. He was a VLN and 24H racer, and he invited me out for a lap. He said he hadn't had a good day, having crashed a friend's car. Hmmm ... how many cars could have been crashed by a friend in one day? Was it, I enquired, a GT2? It was indeed. It's a small world at the Ring ...

There hadn't been too much of a Ringers presence in the car-park earlier in the day, but more and more had gradually arrived, so I called the Fuchsrohre to book a table for 15-20. No, not even for three or four, I was told. I nipped back at the Forsthaus. Could they feed 15 to 20 of us? It seemed they could. I texted a few people to spread the word.

I'm not quite sure what Jochen was doing to Euan, but as Sofie was there too, I guess it couldn't have been anything too worrying ...

Jocke was Kazless for a few hours, so consoled himself with an invisible girlfriend:

When Jochen's meal arrived, Frank warned him that the plate was hot. He wasn't quite fast enough to clear up the resulting fries spill before I got the camera out:

Jocke was more worried about running out of beer, so when one appeared to be going spare, he snaffled it:

A Ringers dinner just isn't a Ringers dinner without some sort of gadgetfest. There was one particular gadget much in evidence:

And Jocke's O2 XDA Exec got to meet its Orange counterpart, the rather less catchily-named SPV M5000:

Although inwardly identical, the O2 version is black while the Orange version is silver, which makes Jocke's version about 20Mhz faster. I vowed to correct this by fitting mine with a Ring sticker.

Nobody was silly enough to leave their mobile unattended, but Robin did leave his camera on the table while he visited the little boy's room. Could a camera be set to Korean, I wondered? Hmmm - it would appear the answer is 'yes'. :-)

Jocke was describing the Highway to Hell at Eupen. The good news is that they are resurfacing it at present; the bad news is that in the meantime you are required to drive on 'boulders'.

People gradually drifted away with the usual talk of 8am starts, and so to bed.

I cast a bleary eye out of the window at 8am to see that it was foggy and damp. Breakfast at 10am, then. The fog did at least give Birgit some atmospheric photography:

As I was running low on cars, I went to fetch the CCar. Marc told me he'd fitted a shift light as a present, but it wasn't yet working. The car turned out to have only two functional indicator bulbs, but as luck would have it this was the front left and rear right.

And yes, I was very, very careful to ensure that fuel and car were matched ...

The skies were rather grey, but it was dry - which I reckon is perfect Ring weather: comfortably cool, keeps some people away and persuades a lot of people to stay in the car park.

The tyres were getting a little squirmy by the final lap, so I let the pressures down a bit. At about 12:20, the first of what was to be the regular afternoon closures happened. A car and bike had come together at Mutkurve. The biker was fortunately ok.

It did at least provide an opportunity to photograph the new on-track barrier for those going straight out for another lap. This makes a huge difference to traffic flow - a definite hats-off to Nurburgring GmbH for both this and the transponders.

I met up with Jocke, Kaz and Clair for lunch. Which reminded me to make my phone faster than Jocke's:

I saw a huge queue in the straight-back-out lane, so correctly guessed that the additional lane next to the exit lane would be empty:

Sierra Cosworth's do seem to expire regularly at the Ring, so I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised when one of them did that in front of me inside the Karussell. When I got back, the car-park was jammed, as was the road outside:

Back out, then. There seemed to be bike crashes everywhere, but nobody hurt and all being flagged. Whatever Fabian does wrong, I seem to do right: two fairly crashy days and no need to flag a single one! By the time I got back, the red light was on again.

Fortunately that was a short closure. Back out, I came round Maddock Bend to find a wall of cars in front of me. Some rapid braking ensued. A 993 had gone straight on, hit the armco on the outside, bounced back across the track and ended up in the armco on the inside. It was a very, very ex-car, but the driver was amazingly ok.

The way cars stopped short of the crash across the full width of the track made it very lucky that there wasn't a follow-on crash. Jeppe, in the Opel Speedster, had been complaining earlier about the brakes. He was just ahead of me and said afterwards he had been looking at the four cars ahead of him, trying to decide which one would be least expensive to run into ...

There was a bike crash at Mutkurve. I stopped, but he was ok. The ADAC guys were having a busy afternoon.

The closure was a lengthy one, during which I had a chat with Bren. He had a confession to make. I've been sworn to secrecy, but here he is explaining:

I did learn one lesson from the closures: when you see the red light on, go into the 'straight on' lane to park so that you are ready to get straight out when the track reopens:

The car-park situation wasn't being helped by loads of bikes parking in the 'No parking' zone by the office, turning it into a one-way road and slowing everything down:

JW and Matt arrived, and when the track reopened JW jumped in for a couple of passenger laps with me.

We were held up round most of the second half of the track by a German biker who was quite clearly aware we were there, but who did not want to be overtaken. Herr TR PT1 should be aware that he is not winning friends and influencing people ... The laps were otherwise enjoyable.

A Ferrari had gone out just ahead of us, and I was surprised to see that we didn't catch up with it ... until Adenaur-Forst, where it was sat on the grass.

JW then returned the favour in his SEAT. I can confirm that he does indeed take Fuchsrohre flat - rather impressive. The car is actually quite astonishing: it has serious amounts of torque, handles extremely well and the brakes are superb. JW also knows how to drive, so he was surprising quite a few people out there. :-)

When it reopened, I took my life in my hands by taking Lucky for a couple of paxlaps:

After those, I did two final solo laps to end the day. Spying the Viper in my mirrors, I noticed after he overtook me that that he takes an efficient approach to indicating: he just leaves his left-hand indicators on permanently.

I'd noticed a car with a www.rent-a-racer.de web address on it, and made a note to check it out when I got home. Either the car didn't make it through the weekend, or they discovered that the running costs were rather higher than imagined, as the website carried just a single line of text when I checked it out: 'Dieses Angebot wurde eingestellt' ('This offer has stopped').

Birgit had managed to book the upstairs room at the Pistenklause, which was set out rather like a conference setting, and it turned out to be a rather select gathering:

Niek had gone home, which was a shame as I'd planned a photo of him with his former passenger, Clair, so I had to settle for this one of her in Niekified form:

The smallness of the dinner crowd didn't stop us covering all the usual Ringers dinner pursuits between us. Slideshows of the day's pics (in this case, Birgit's) ...

The car's owner, Simon, emailed me to advise that the damage was caused when he hit a deer on the track. The temporary repair was carried out with cardboard, gaffa-tape and a Halfords carrier-bag. :-)

Geeking (in this case, Jocke emailing me video clips from his phone to watch on my laptop) ...

And listening to Highway to Hell. Jocke had earlier asked me how I liked my new laptop. I told him I loved it, and I think the volume of the sound was demonstrated quite well when the waiter appeared to tell us they'd had complaints about the music volume from people in the rooms upstairs!

We then moved downstairs to meet up with the Norwegian group, and more slideshows followed. My laptop doesn't have an SD card slot, but we still have the technology - I put Bjorn's card into my phone to run a slideshow on that:

Euan found a rather interesting photo on someone's phone. Negotiations are currently underway for the deletion of this photo. I opened the bidding at a Ferrari 355 (it really is a very interesting photo) and the anonymous person concerned countered with the offer of a very small model of a 355. I felt confident that things should end up more towards my end of the proposal, so emailed her boss to advise that she would be needing a pay-rise.

Thanks to wifi, the trip report was available (if unindexed) in real time by the end of the evening.

Still, a leisurely start to the day is no problem, and the Forsthaus is properly equipped for wet weather:

Chatting in the park-park with a few of the usual suspects, and looking for a paxlap to see just how wet things were, Fabian declared that he was off to do a lap in the van. That will do nicely.

His bike is in the back, in a stand, but otherwise only secured by being jammed in amongst lots of other stuff, like bedding. "Is this the slowest lap you've ever had?" he asked? I told him that the double-length bus ride I had was a bit slower.

Now, you might think that in a diesel van with a bike in the back, you'd want a bit of a run-up to Ex-Muhle. Not Fabian: he pulled off at Breidsheid to make sure the bike was ok:

So we then took Ex-Muhle from a standing start. Ok, that was quite slow. :-)

Back to the car-park, and the track was closed. Ho hum. Used the opportunity to refuel. "Diesel in a diesel car, petrol in a petrol car ... ok, I think I'm getting the hang of it now."

Back to the track, it was still very wet when it reopened. What can I use as a delaying tactic? Ah! Lunch. This was kindly sponsored by Carlo Rimassa:

928 Alex bought a Golf as a result of the CCar syndicate, so it seemed only reasonable to go for a couple of paxlaps in it. A drying line was slowly emerging.

The Golf cost £200 on ebay. The upgraded suspension came from a guy with an ebay shop, and all the other parts came from ebay. He was talking about approaching ebay for sponsorship. :-) Total cost of the car so far: £500! (Ok, plus a lot of his own labour.)

On the second lap with Alex, we passed a crashed British Saxo at Klostertal. The crash was a big one, but the safety car was already in attendance, so we didn't stop. The track was closed when we got back.

The driver later approached me for help with translation in a call to the breakers yard where the wreck had been taken. Admittedly my German vocabulary does include 'broken car', but I suspected someone else would make a better job of it. Jochen was duly recruited as duty translator. Arrangements were made for the owner to retrieve some parts from the car and leave the wreckage there.

When the track reopened, I took Alex out for a couple of paxlaps. There was now a dry line almost the whole way round, and there was no traffic out there - lovely!

I had a quick chat with Achim, then grabbed a couple of passenger laps with Jeppe following JW. This provided an opportunity to enjoy the Speedster, Jeppe's driving and to enjoy JW's SEAT from the outside view.

We then met up with Christer. After his experiences with the race TT, and mine with the 944, we decided we should form a broken engine club for mutual sympathy.

Drinking coffee with Christer, Jeppe, Kim and Matt on the GH balcony, I spotted the Gallardo heading out. Was that an empty passenger seat? Yes, it was! I literally ran down the steps, only to see that he was in fact heading out of the exit to the roundabout. Ah well, maybe tomorrow.

Went back out instead to drive a couple more laps in the Golf. This was turning into the perfect Easter weather: enough grey skies and rain to keep people in the car-park, but in fact almost a perfectly dry track. There was hardly anything at all out there. Brilliant.

Of course, there were closures, but my through-lane parking tactic at least reduced the pain.

Not everyone was having such a great day - this Nissan was looking very secondhand:

Carbon-fibre everything, fabulous leather seats and a rather tasty power upgrade. All yours, for the right price ...

I spotted Dave-can't-drive coming into the car-park in his black Elise 111, and as I'd noticed him yesterday failing to live up to his nickname, I jumped in for a couple of paxlaps. Great handling car, great noise, great driving - what more could one ask?

I suggested a coffee-break and another Ben joined us, there in a 160bhp 1-Series BMW rental. While chatting, I noticed a biker walk in with water on his leathers - yes, it was raining again. Grabbed a paxlap with Ben, who was being sensible in the rapidly-changing conditions, but it turned out to be dry most of the way round.

Soren was just finished for the day in his shared DRT Beemer, and took an enormous amount of persuasion to go out for one more lap:
"One more?"
"Ok"

JW said he'd tag along in the SEAT, Dave-can't-drive decided it would be rude not to join us, and we met Matt at the barriers, so it turned into a four-car convoy. Jochen got excellent photos of all of us - watch this space.

The ones at T13 were excellent. Steilstreckekurve had too much grip - not a common complaint about the Ring in the damp ...

With the Ring closed for the day when we got back, plans were made to adjourn to the Chinese restaurant in Adenau. Jochen had been recommending this for some time, and my asking for a table for 10 and mentioning Jochen's name got us broad smiles and fast service.

Dinner was of course the cue for slideshows. I'd brought my laptop, and JW, Jochen and Matt had brought CF cards with them.

While Matt may not be one of the usual photographers, he does have an eye for an interesting picture - in this case JW trying to get into an Opel Speedster. Or trying to get out of it. Or trying to mate with it:

Matt here demonstrates the correct technique for getting into a Speedster/Elise (4 second video, 1.3Mb). I later tested this technique for myself and confirm that it works well. I do, though, need the video on the technique for getting back out ...

JW was also in a helpful mood, taking this photograph to show me what petrol and diesel pumps look like:

Ringers scattered in various directions after dinner, some heading to the Pistenklause, and others headed to bed after another excellent day's Ringing.

It was dry in the morning, but as Matt and Jochen would be exercising the CCar first thing, I had a leisurely breakfast anyway.

Esther and Cisco arrived. They had not been having the best of starts to their visit for unrelated reasons, and Cisco wasn't entirely convinced that his jahreskarte ID number was the best of omens:

Matt said he was done with the car as it looked like it was about to rain, so he planned to switch to his rainmobile. I decided to grab a couple of laps before the rain.

Dave-can't-drive jumped into the passenger seat, and I went out for a couple of laps. Although the variable conditions meant you never knew what grip was going to be available on any given bend on any given lap, it was in fact mostly dry and reasonably grippy.

We decided that hot chocolate was the order of the day. Dave, JW, Jocke and myself sat in the GH and chatted for a while.

While there, the reason for the closure emerged: a very battered British BMW exiting the track:

It's not recommended to head anywhere other than the office car-park in such circumstances, as that can lead the marshalls to believe that you're intending to leave the Ring.

A marshall ran across the car-park and stood in front of the car to direct it into the office car-park. Getting stopped like this tends to attract the crowds:

The driver was then taken back to the scene of the accident in the safety car. We later saw him being taken away in the back of a police car.

It turned out that he had crashed at the Baby Karussell (not the main Karussell, as was being reported at the time), then driven on from there, trailing large amounts of coolant behind him. This is how much was still leaving the car as he entered the car-park:

The coolant slick went around the centre of the track at Galgenkopf. There were reports of four bikes going down, though I only saw one:

Even if you take a selfish view, driving off after a Ring crash is dumb. Instead of a €175 recovery fee and an armco bill, you will be charged for the armco plus:

- the concrete dust needed to cover your oil-slick
- the marshall time needed to lay the dust
- the safety car time taking you back to the scene,
- the track closure time to deal with the oil (at €1350 per hour)
- the track closure time for any subsequent crashes (same rate)
- the track closure time for the police investigation (ditto)
- any ambulances required
- the cost of all vehicle damage from subsequent crashes
- compensation for personal injuries resulting from subsequent crashes

You will also be arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident. The police have absolutely no sense of humour about that. Here is the driver having just got out of the police car:

The office has CCTV recordings of cars exiting the track, so spotting the car with the damage and reading its registration and seeing the driver is trivial. There are countless photographers around the track who will have photographed the crash site and the damaged car driving off. There are marshalls dotted around the track with radios back to the office.

As I note that the driver has presented a different picture elsewhere of both the fluids and what happened in the car-park, I thought it helpful to add a few quotes from witnesses. First, regarding the fluids on the track:

I actually arrived on the scene not long after it had happened, while the car was still at the side of the track. With hindsight, I should have stopped and waved down oncoming traffic, perhaps they wouldn't have run away after all as well if someone else had stopped. However they were out of the car and clearly OK, and I also felt as the car was off to the side of the track there wasn't an immediate danger to traffic (only danger was the amount of dirt scattered onto the track, but this could be driven around as I did) so I decided to continue and let the safety car deal with it.

To me, it was clear there are no fluids on the road either before the accident, or afterwards - so it could only have been that car that
caused the trail around Galgenkopf. It also questions his argument that
there was oil on the track that caused his accident - I can see none
unless it was hidden underneath the dirt he scattered onto the track.

I was standing near the Viper office-van when he came off the track, and a marshall had to practically jump in front of him to get him to turn into the carpark instead of continuing straight on. Took quite a bit of pointing and armwaving before he turned the wheel.

The marshall definately had to step out in front of the car, and the BMW, was already at this point, slightly beyond a comfortable turning to the LHS car park. If you followed the fluid-tracks I seem to remember them being bent in a curve that was higher (towards the roundabout) than the 90 degree line of driving into the car park. If that makes sense. From that I'd say his intention was not to drive into the LHS car park.

Having been emailed by the driver, I invited him to give me his side of the story, but he has so far declined to do so.

Dave, Matt, Sofia, Stelvio and Till sat in the GH waiting for the track to reopen and, preferably, the rain to stop.

Matt borrowed Sofia's PMR radio to try to raise Jochen. This was unsuccessful, but Jochen arrived shortly afterwards. He'd been on a different channel. Matt reminded him that the Ringers channel was 7-30. Jochen told him: "I know, that's why Sofia and I are on a channel as far away from that as possible." Only Ringers could whisper sweet nothings in each other's ears via PMR ...

We agreed some lunch arrangements, and Till offered to take myself, Jochen and Dave out for a 4-up wet lap in his Evo:

This was quite an eye-opener. The car has phenomenal grip in the wet. We were speculating that Till must have ordered the optional hairdryers in the front spoiler. Fast, sensible, fun.

There was of course much car-chat over lunch, including Sofia declaring that in an area with lots of supercars, her Barchetta gets lots of attention. I suggested that people were merely waiting to see what was going to fall off the car next. Sofia protested: "Nothing has ever fallen off my Barchetta. Oh wait- The exhaust did."

Till gave us a lift back to the track, and we persuaded him to skip the car-park. It was still quite wet out there. There was the aftermath of a double-hit accident at Spiegelkurve (between Kallenhard and Miss-Hit-Miss).

I decided a couple more paxlaps were the better part of valour. Robin was next on the list. From his number plate, it would appear that he couldn't decide whether to get a GT1, GT2, GT3 or just a Playstation game before finally settling on a Golf:

Funnily enough, there was one particular wet bend where he was especially cautious.

And the police doing some spot-checks on cars, seemingly comparing VIN numbers with documents:

This may have been prompted by a bike crash in Wippermann where the biker apparently jumped over the armco and ran off, and the crashed bike was subsequently found to have been stolen.

As we'd lost most of the Max Power crowd by this stage, Dave did his best to do the open-bonnet-bling thing:

I advised him to polish the engine and install some blue neons. I also warned him that the police were doing checks, and it was clearly illegal to have the roof up on an Elise. He replied that it takes about 20 minutes to remove or replace an Elise roof, which is about how long it takes for it to either start or stop raining. I told him I wouldn't report him to the police if he took me for a couple more paxlaps.

For a man who can't drive, he kind of does ok, if you like that sort of thing ...

I decided to refuel the Golf during the closure (I opted for petrol). When I got back, the track was open so I headed straight out. JW was at Brunnchen 2, but he was still setting up shop when I came past. On the second lap, he was chimping (ie. looking at an earlier photo on the LCD screen) ...

I'd briefly bumped into Mario of Barchetta fame earlier in the weekend, and did so again now, inviting myself for a couple of passenger laps. Dave followed us round on the first lap. Most enjoyable. JW was chimping again!

As Sofia owns a Barchetta too, I introduced them so they could talk Barchettas.

A Brit car with track plates (ie. plates which could not possibly be the actual registration number, no matter how you mangled it) had been behaving like a complete arse. He didn't like being overtaken, and did like queue-jumping, even if doing so involves almost running over pedestrians. I was not terribly surprised to hear that he had come to grief.

And then it was 7pm. I decided to avoid 'one last lap' syndrome, especially as I had half an hour to drop the Golf back to TTE, fetch my hire car, check out of my guesthouse, pick up my luggage and return to the car-park. These tasks were duly accomplished.

I then followed Matt back to Hahn. Matt knows the roads well, so I decided just to trust his speeds into bends. It was a fun drive.

Stopping off to refuel at the petrol station by the airport, I again did a double-check!

Matt's timings usually get him there in time to be at the front of the check-in queue, but this time things were really busy:

I managed to snaffle seats 1A and 1B, so a fast exit at Stansted. And so ended another excellent trip!