I've recently started my own business (well, two businesses: technology research and photography). This is, of course, excellent news, but the downside is that I've been working 12-hour days since I started, so the last thing I wanted to do over Easter was spend more time in front of the computer. I have thus settled for a rather shorter-than-usual trip report.

Photo: JW

The business had led to a cunning plan ...

As much of my work can be done from anywhere, my plan is to base myself at the Ring a few days a month, work during the day and then go out to play in the evening sessions afterwards.

Where possible, I'll go out a few days before the main public weekends and then stay on for the socialising afterwards, having already had my track-time. This will give me the best of both worlds: decent driving time, and the ability to enjoy the craic of the public weekends without worrying about how much driving I get to do.

There was no chance of putting my plan into immediate action. I was in Paris on business until Weds lunchtime, and had a shoot in London on Weds evening, getting home at midnight. On Thursday, I had to do a long day's work, unpack, pack and get to Stansted. I was not planning any early morning starts this weekend ...

Preparation

In theory, there was no real prep to do: I'd booked my flight, guesthouse and the Ringhaus Striker months ago, and all my driving kit was already at the Ringhaus. All I had to do was book a cheap rental from the airport, throw the usual clothes and gadget collection into a bag and walk out the door.

The first slight hitch in this plan was my work schedule. If anyone ever mentions the freedom of running your own business in front of me, they will have to excuse the hollow laughter - or, at the moment, hostile stare.

The normal schedule for technology research is one project a month. They are all multi-country, and there's a lot to organise and do. With none of the corporate overhead - management meetings, team meetings, account planning meetings, forecast meetings, review meetings, meeting planning meetings ... life should have been nicely-paced.

Except I was offered two projects, both to be completed by the end of April. I spent a fair bit of time figuring out schedules and workloads and found it was just about do-able. I'd have to work a lot of 12-hour days and every weekend but Easter, but it could be done. And I know from past experience that small businesses tend to be feast and famine where work is concerned, so when it's there, you take it.

I knew this was going to leave me rather knackered by Easter, so rather than having to drive to the Ring at 11pm after a very long day's work, I decided Plan A was to try to bum a lift with someone. It was the last Ryanair flight into Hahn that night, so it seemed likely that other Ringers would be on it. Except this time, it seemed.

Mario and Dave were both stars and offered me a Plan B in the form of lifts, but rather than drag them out of their way, I decided to bite the bullet and rent a car. But the aforementioned workload meant I left this rather late. Ah:

Haven't seen that before from a rental company! Europcar was the same story. Back to Plan B. I already had Dave's details, so a quick check that he was still ok to do this, and my lift was sorted.

Thursday

As it's a long walk from Hahn to the Ring, I decided my chauffeur deserved a decent tip:

I also took my usual quick look in Dixons (why are the airport branches still Dixons when the high-street ones are Currys Digital?), and managed to escape with my credit card intact.

As it had taken Stansted rather a long time to get wifi access in the Servisair lounge, I was pleased to see they now had The Cloud - as I have an unlimited-use monthly subscription:

Incidentally, this is a top tip for anyone who needs UK hotspot access more than twice a month: an unlimited-use subscription is £12/month, and since you typically pay about six quid an hour for hotspot use, this quickly starts saving you money. The network rollout was slow in the early days, but there is excellent coverage now.

We boarded more or less on time, and I got the prized front-row seat for a prompt escape at the other end, but the door remained open for a long time after everyone was aboard.

Ryanair was about to live up to its reputation as a comedy airline ...

The dispatcher came on board and advised the cabin crew that they should have 179 passengers (ie. the gate crew had collected 179 boarding pass stubs). The cabin crew informed him that their headcount was 180 - a 100% full aircraft. A brief discussion ensued before they concluded that they should repeat the headcount. Well done.

The headcount was again 180. The dispatcher disappeared off to find out the name of the passenger whose boarding pass stub hadn't been collected. He returned about five minutes later to announce that it was a Mr Grey, passenger number 180 (ie. the very last passenger to check-in).

The cabin attendant made a PA announcement asking for Mr Grey to press the call button to identify himself. No response. The cabin attendant asked the dispatcher to remind her of the security number printed on Mr Grey's boarding pass. As the headcount was 180 and the number she'd had to remember for all of 30 seconds was 180, one suspected that her party trick was not some kind of memory game.

A second call was made without response. Boarding passes were checked again, and Ms Memory advised the dispatcher that a passenger with pass 180 was on board but his name wasn't Mr Grey. 'What was his name?' asked the dispatcher. 'Something German' came the reply.

A flurry of activity ensued. The kind of activity that gives one the impression that the main thing being achieved is to show a flurry of activity.

The dispatcher disappeared and reappeared with the news that not only was the passenger's name not Mr Grey, but his boarding pass number wasn't 180 either. They were in fact looking for someone with boarding pass number 165, name unknown.

Another announcement was made, this time asking mystery passenger 165 to identify himself. Nothing. Then a further announcement asking anyone who still had both halves of their boarding pass to come forward. Finally, success!

I had to take a photo of this, otherwise you wouldn't believe me. Not even on Ryanair, you would tell me, could it be true. But it is: the passenger who had forgotten to hand over his boarding pass at the gate, and who then ignored the request to check whether he was holding boarding pass number 165, and who only finally realised it was him we were looking for when he looked to discover he still had both halves off his boarding pass, was this gentleman:

Yes, that is a white short-sleeve shirt he is wearing, and yes, that is a Ryanair staff pass around his neck, and no, it is not a coincidence that he seems to be dressed like flight-crew. The gentleman concerned was, in fact, a dead-heading Ryanair pilot! Dead-heading being a particularly apt expression in this case ...

I texted Dave to let him know that we were 30 minutes late and heading for 40 mins by the time we pushed back.

We had long since lost our take-off slot by this time, so the half-hour delay caused by the combination of Ryanair's paperwork and the attentiveness of one of its pilots meant that we finally pushed back 55 minutes late and landed almost exactly an hour late.

A few of the passengers had been passing the time with various commentaries on the joys of flying Ryanair. I was seated next to a lawyer, and I said that I could at least assure her that the cause of our one-hour delay would be moderately famous by Tuesday morning. She asked for the web address, which I wrote and gave to her, appropriately enough, on a torn-off bit of my boarding pass.

As Dave is a thoroughly nice chap who ended up hanging around for an extra hour to give me a lift, there will be no mention of the car-park ticket entertainment. This is, instead, an impressionistic photo of an Elise in the dark on a bumpy road. It will, long after my death, sell for fifty grand to the Tate Modern:

1.30am saw me arriving at the Ringhaus for a Wiessbier with the Ringhaus crew before bed an hour later.

Friday

A leisurely start was most definitely in order. There had apparently been fog earlier, but this was the view outside my window at 10.30am:

The Striker has a new 1.6 engine developing 100bhp, which ought to be enough power to have fun given the weight and proximity to the ground. I was looking forward to driving her.

I got to the barrier to find that a marshall was demanding papers for the car as the TUV sticker was out of date. I asked if I could do one lap before fetching the papers, and was told this was ok. Fortunately, Bob was there to photograph this, as it was to turn out to be the one opportunity ...

The car was great, with one exception: the tickover was too low, so it died when you took your foot completely off the gas while stationary. This was a bit of a pain in the queue off the track.

I drove back to the Ringhaus to meet Frank, only to find that it was true: the TUV had indeed expired. Apparently he had it booked in 10 days ago, but a kit-car TUV can only be performed by specific inspectors, and the one who was supposed to be there wasn't, and subsequent attempts had proven unsuccessful also.

Frank offered me one of their other Ringtools: a BMW 325e. This didn't offer the raw appeal of the Striker, but is a well setup car with a decent amount of power, so life could be worse.

I hoped this car would be trouble-free as I met Matt in the car-park who told me the Golf's gearbox had died.

Photo: JW

The car had enough petrol for one lap, but not two, so I did one lap and came off for petrol. The Ring was closed as I returned from the Ed Tankstelle, with long queues of traffic in all directions, so it took me 45 mins to drive the half mile or so from the petrol station back to the Ring.

En-route, a Beetle drove into the back of the car behind me.

Things were busy:

The car-park and approach roads were far busier than the track, but there was one particular lap where a number of British cars were oblivious to their mirrors. It ended up with two or three slow Brit cars holding up about seven other cars for almost an entire lap. As the two cars ahead of me were making no headway at all in terms of alerting the Brits to their presence, I decided I might as well write off the lap and just follow them round.

A red 911 three cars behind me apparently decided he was going to force his way past the group, and began by deliberately taking to the grass just after the exit of AF to overtake the car in front of him! He got away with this, but I think it must have scared him enough that he didn't try repeating the exercise.

As I was typically getting one or two laps between closures, I did for a while manage a sneaky approach to the queues: staying in the DH lane and then parking behind the cones:

This worked twice, but after the third time I was politely asked to behave.

The car is very easy to drive and deceptively fast, something I usually find with BMWs.

Photo: www.mw-sportfoto.de

A number of the usual suspects were in evidence (the closures accounting for the less than ecstatic expressions in the first shot) ...

Photo: Bob

It's a pain when people take up room in the car-park when they have no intention of driving, but sometimes you have to forgive them ...

If you think you can't afford such exotica, the dealer will be pleased to help. Just hand over a mere €150,000 deposit, and the car can be yours for just €7316 per month ...

It would appear that yellow is the new black:

Though matt black is still in fashion:

I'm pretty sure this was never in fashion:

Another interesting choice of Ring car was this Cortina, here being noise-tested by a marshall:

I suspect it was actually in decent mechanical condition, and that it had been deliberately made to look a mess, but the marshall's verdict was: "The car is much too loud, and I think it is not in good condition".

Some visitors seemed a little confused:

Though he had managed to find his way to the right place.

Achim's celebrity status seems to have accorded him his own parking space and gazebo.

There can't be much real Mini left in there any more. There was a nearby reminder of the real thing:

Esther was there with a couple of sailing friends, Anne-Wiek and Kees, plus her constant companion:

I took her out for a paxlap, arranging to swap with Anne-Weik for lap 2. We had just swapped over and passed the barrier when the red light went on. As both the doctor and the ambulance were heading out, I was a good boy and parked-up, this time having a legitimate excuse for parking on the track:

Which gave me a chance to notice this hut, almost opposite the exit. Hmmm ... convert that to a garage downstairs and a small apartment upstairs, and I reckon that would be the perfect holiday home.

A few of us passed the hour's closure time chatting

Steve apparently having a conversation with his wallet:

Finally the track reopened, and I took Anna-Wiek out for a lap. This was her first time at the Ring, and also her first time in a track car, so I gave her the standard spiel: just put a hand out towards the dash if she feels worried, and I'll slow down. I also explained the rules: no screaming, crying, vomiting or attempting to exit the car whilst it is in motion.

She didn't ask me to slow down, and didn't break any of the rules, but apparently came close on the vomiting one. The photos here are by Esther ...

Before:

After:

By 6pm, the track was a lot quieter, and the car-park surprisingly empty:

I did a last couple of laps, I think making nine in all for the day.

JW had made an hour's detour to pick up a camera-mount for Jochen (not for use on the Ring), but only one of the two parts were in stock. Perhaps he can steal this approach?

As the Pistenklause was likely to be packed out, Adenau seemed a sensible plan. Esther and friends were eating at the Pig, with Niek and Lasse joining them. A few of us decided to tag along. I got there first, so reserved a table and commandeered a seat by a power socket to transfer and resize pics.

I ordered the fabulous bacon soup. I was asked whether this was as a starter or main. Anyone who has ever eaten one of these will know what a stupid question this is! They take a whole loaf of bread, slice off the top, hollow out the middle and then fill it with a thick, filling soup. You could comfortably feed a family of six for a week with one of these.

The usual Ringers conversation flowed, with more nostalgic stories than usual due to the presence of Esther's friends, who hadn't heard them before. Christer popped in to raise the cultural tone; I apologised for him to Esther's friends. Twice.

At one point, the waitress stumbled and managed to spill Niek's beer all over him. Though I reckon he somehow engineered this to get some solicitous attention from young Dutch ladies:

I wasn't the only one feeling tired, so we had paid the bill by about 11pm. We must be getting old.

Back to the Ringhaus, writing the trip report and bed.

Saturday

The BMW had been hired for Saturday, so they did a quick prep of the Golf TDi for me. The rear spoiler was not permitted in TF sessions, so had to be removed.

The short-shift kit was new, and was a real delight.

I was a bit concerned about the TDi brake bias, etc, being set up for the downforce of the wing and now lacking it. The car was indeed quite lively, but once I got used to it, a huge amount of fun. The more I drove the car, the better the handling felt. The car was fitted with semi-slick tyres that were lovely.

Photo: Andrew Mulholland

Next it was time for a paxlap with Bob. His Elise had previously had 155bhp, and was now fitted with an Audi TT engine developing 250bhp. 250bhp in an Elise is rather nice. :-)

Time for a wander. Nice number plate:

These guys were installing a rather unsubtle camera setup in full view of the car-park:

Now that is brave!

Caught in action by Ken Ngai here:

Photo: Ken Ngai

Christian was there in his 968:

You may recall this from a previous trip report. The damage was still there, now with the explanation:

The usual car-park repairs were going on:

A nice stag do:

I like the aerial:

I think probably only at the Ring and in Monaco could you see so many Ferraris per square metre ...

And this sight too:

Taking Esther out for a paxlap, I noticed what sounded like a rubbing noise on right-hand bends. Strangely, it was coming from the right-hand (ie. unloaded) side.

Photo: JW

We drove on up to the Ringhaus to get it checked out.

Andy couldn't see anything obvious, so he suggested I take him out for a lap so he could hear it. He was puzzled by the noise and we drove back to the Ringhaus. Inspecting it more closely, he noticed an oil-drip:

This was clearly going to take some time, so I returned to the car-park for paxlaps while he investigated. First-up was a lap with Steve in his CSL:

That car really is incredible, and Steve knows how to drive it.

A mystery warning light came on toward the end of the lap. Steve didn't know what it meant, but it seemed to be indicating some kind of gearbox issue:

Fortunately it was easily repaired: switching the ignition off and on again made the light go away ...

A group of off-roaders appeared, apparently after an off-road driving course. Led by a Landrover, they all did a very slow convoy lap hugging the right-hand kerb.

Knightrider was there:

I saw Steve going out 3-up, which would obviously leave the car dangerously unbalanced, so I volunteered to solve the problem.

Photo: Jochen

A black GT3 did a spectacularly dangerous overtake at Brunnchen. A car had moved to the right between Brunnchen 1 and 2 to allow Steve past, and as Steve was alongside it, the GT3 dived between the two cars!

This was doubly stupid as there are marshalls with radios among the spectators to report incidents back to the office. I took a photo of the number plate at the end of the lap, and later took it into the office. They had obviously already received a report of the car and were happy to have the number plate. Hopefully he won't be doing anything that stupid again, but if you see this car ...

Steve's front-seat passenger turned out to be Nigel, who had created the spectating point page:

He had just bought a Golf DRT, and took me out for a paxlap:

Every time I drive or passenger in a Golf, I can't help thinking that there is no better bang for the buck in terms of a DRT. Sadly, the car was not to survive the weekend ...

Many people had gone home, so the track was beautifully empty much of the time, and even the car-park was fine.

I had told Niek earlier that I hadn't had a paxlap with him for years, and it was time to put that right. I spotted him about to go out, so jumped in.

Niek was driving extremely sensibly, no kerbs, and I was suitably impressed by the unfamiliar sight of a mature Niek.

He mentioned that his rear tyres were cheap and old, and I told him I expected to see some drifting at Steilstrecke. I repeat, Steilstrecke. No mention was made of Adenaur-Forst.

At AF, Niek was so restrained, he even let someone overtake him halfway through the sequence. He made it through to the exit, then decided to have a little play. He oversteered right, then left, and then over-corrected. The car was now sideways with the front of the car facing the right-hand side of the track. At this point, he sensibly decided to let the car continue rotating until facing backwards and then stood on the brakes.

This almost worked, but unfortunately the left rear slid onto the grass, caught, and that pivoted the car rear-end into the armco.

By the time we hit, we were literally doing 5-10mph. Niek's commentary was (and although I'm quoting from memory, I'm pretty sure I have it exactly): "Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks".

We got out to inspect the damage:

The car was well off the track, so no need to flag. To ensure there was no Simonesque mistake over us driving off, we phoned the office and they sent out a safety car.

The armco had taken a previous impact in the centre, with red and yellow paint marks. Where Niek had hit was just a few scratches by the post. The car was clearly ok aside from the cosmetics, with no structural damage.

While we were waiting, Steve arrived and went to pull over. Niek waved him on and said "The last thing I need right now is more Ringers to take the piss."

When the safety car arrived, they initially thought Niek was responsible for the bent section in the centre, but when we pointed out the paint and the actual marks, they said all was ok, no harm done, and no armco bill.

Niek drove slowly back. As we did so, I had a call from Andy telling me the Golf was repaired, so arranged to meet him in the car-park.

Gary Bocking found these earlier photos, and had wondered whether they might have been Niek ... (If the photographer could please email me, I'll credit you and link to your website if you have one.)

JW suggested that Niek's new nickname (Niekname, perhaps) should be the Drift Queen on the grounds that he wasn't quite there yet as a Drift King.

After the mandatory car-park piss-taking, I drove the Golf for a lap with Andy passengering. The race tyres were apparently worn out, so the car was now on street tyres, and the difference was dramatic!

The noise was still there. He took the car back for further investigation.

It was pretty cold in the car-park by now, and I suggested we go inside for a coffee. JW suggested that his car-heating would do a better job of warming us up. Oh, go on, then.

I told him he couldn't crash, or I'd inherit Lucky's nickname. He saved me from this fate with two enjoyable understeery laps.

JW then jumped in with Bob:

A Carrera GT was in the car-park with the engine hatch open. This of course quickly attracted a crowd.

Have you ever seen such a clean engine?

It was now a few minutes before closing, so I arranged with Matt to get a lift to dinner, and went back to the Ringhaus to dump my gear and pick up the laptop.

I met Frank who told me that the strange noise from the Golf was nothing more than a noisy wastegate from the larger turbo. We didn't know why it was louder, but there didn't appear to be any problem, so it would be ready for me tomorrow.

Then a fun dinner full of the usual Ringers chat, and of course photos.

Esther gave me her camera to copy the before-and-after photos of Anne-Weik. She also had some other interesting photos on the card, including this one of Cisco ...

And this one of Laurens and Julie:

The object is he holding is in fact a pregnancy test for Julie ... which was positive! I'm not quite sure why he is looking so happy about something which will cost more to run than a 355 but will be very much slower, but there's no accounting for the parent gene.

Speaking of which, Kees (the original one, not Esther's friend) emailed me and attached a photo of his Ringchild. Reassuringly, he didn't actually bother to mention any name the child might have. Anyway, here he is in his first vehicle:

And that was Saturday. Two more days to go. :-)

Sunday

I started the morning by filling up ... I include a photo of this for no particular reason ...

The car-park was crowded but the track itself was very clear. As soon as you go onto the circuit, it was hard to believe it was Easter.

Photo: JW

The car-park soon reminded you, though:

The street tyres were Chinese or Polish or something ... They slid a lot, but it was the same amount of fun, only slower.

A Ring photographer called Hardy introduced himself, and I took him for a paxlap. I then went for a lap in his BMW.

Then it was time for a car-park wander. This was very green:

As were these t-shirts:

There seems to be a Cannonball or Gumball or whateverball run almost every month these days.

There are also now many racecar.de rentals - they are apparently now up to 10 cars.

And a great many Brit Fords:

If you have too many cars to keep track of them, you can always barcode them:

Then it was time for another couple of laps. The sun was out, the track was perfect, there was almost no traffic - on one lap, I saw two other cars. And this is Easter!

Photo: Andrew Mulholland

Back in the car-park, it was definitely Easter. I had to drive round both car-parks twice, and this was the best space I could find:

I had lunch in the GH with Steve and Kevin, who then invited me out for a couple of very enjoyable paxlaps in his M3.

We were three-up:

Out for another lap in the Golf, it suddenly lost power going up Ex-Muhle. The engine seemed fine and all indicators were normal, so it appeared that the turbo had failed.

Photo: JW

I dropped it back to the Ringhaus to be checked. I was hoping it was just a loose hose.

Tom was there, so he took me out for a couple of paxlaps:

Chatted in the car-park for a while, before hopping into Steve's CSL again for a couple of four-up laps with Matt and Ed. I can't keep out of that car. :-)

Ed had forgotten to pull his seat-belt tight, so was having trouble hanging on:

On the second lap, there was an unbadged BMW (suspected by our resident BMW experts to be either an M5 or 540) who did not want to be overtaken which held us up for about a third of the lap. As Steve passed it exiting Bergwerk, we made sure to wave so he could see we were 4-up.

Back at the Ringhaus, Frank told me the Golf had indeed just had a leak in the turbo system, now fixed.

I joined the Ringweekends crowd for dinner at the Pistenklause. Tony, a Probe driver, had left his brake-pad change a little late. This is what happens when a brake-piston punches through what is left of a brake-pad:

And this is man and pad:

Andy phoned during dinner to say the good news was that the Golf was mine for the morning, and the bad news was that it wasn't for the afternoon. As anyone who knows me will realise, this was entirely the wrong way around. Ah well, an early night, then.

Sunday

It's Easter, we've had three successive dry, sunny days, so it can't last, right? Wrong:

The more observant of you will have noticed something very odd about this photo: the length of the shadows. Yes, I really was out of bed at eight something!

A Brit called Simon had the Golf from noon, so I invited him out for a couple of paxlaps so he could see what the car was like. The Golf was back on form and going well. I really am impressed by that car. With lively handling, I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner, but for someone with a decent amount of Ring experience, it is tremendous fun.

Matt and JW nearly required cardiac care when they found me and my car in the car-park having completed two laps by about 9.30am.

Simon obviously enjoyed the paxlaps as he recommended them to his presumed other half, Anna. I did my usual spiel about holding a hand out to the dash if she got worried, and she said she hoped she wouldn't as she wanted to have a fast lap sometime over the weekend.

A Belgian biker called Nigel asked for a paxlap, so I took him out for one and then did a swap to take Anna out for the second.

On Friday, I was saying that this would be my last Easter as it was just too crowded and too crashy. But as the weekend went on, it got successively less crowded. This was the scene at about 10am on Monday:

Even later in the day, the car-park remained clear and the track was beautifully empty.

On one lap, there was a biker down at Steilstrecke, but he was moving and the ambulance was there along with a lot of stopped cars, so I kept going.

On the same lap, a Golf was sitting facing the wrong way on the approach to Hohe-Acht with the front-end missing. Again, everyone seemed ok, and it was already being flagged.

I later heard that Nigel had also crashed his Golf at Pflanzgarten 1, writing it off. He lost the back on the double-apex right-hander, and wasn't quite sure how & why it happened. A few of us helpfully pointed out that he'd be able to analyse the crash tomorrow from multiple camcorder angles on youtube ...

By the time I handed the car back at noon, I'd done 9 laps, which I figured was a good morning's work.

A bunch of us went for lunch in Adenau - this was good timing as the track had just closed. The restaurant car-park was full, so we had to park in the Lidl car-park. Where else in the world would you find this parked in a Lidl?

Or this parked at a pizza place?

During lunch, the track reopened long enough, apparently, for a car to catch fire as we saw the fire-engines go on at Breidscheid.

I got a lift with Matt, and the short-cut back to Nurburg was open by then. We did have ti wait a short time as a recovery truck was just dropping off a bike from a crash on the bridge.

A couple of women were making themselves comfortable:

Matt has a superstition about half laps, so we did a half-lap back to the car-park, the other half of the lap back to Breidscheid and then the back-road back to the car-park. So, er, not such a short-cut then ...

Matt's car was shy: "No publicity, please."

These things looked pretty cool. Apparently they are hand-built and amazingly expensive.

And yes, they were heading out:

Hmm, extra gauges ...

Must be another Bob lap:

Jocke and Kaz were packing up, and had quite an audience from other bikers unable to believe they could fit two bikes into an Espace:

Matt added a small modification:

Jocke had taken the Espace out for a lap with one bike in it, so awarded it a Ring sticker. He was doing a very professional fitting, starting by washing the paintwork:

Bob thought this was taking too long, so rapidly fitted another sticker while Jocke was still at the washing stage:

Meanwhile, over in the professional-fitting workshop:

I'm not a fan of the new sticker design, but it does go well with the Cosworth badge provided by Karl:

I reminded Dave he hadn't taken me out for any paxlaps yet this weekend, so he kindly corrected this.

At the barriers, we spotted Bren- Well, you can hardly avoid spotting Bren in those leathers! - being pulled by the marshalls. Apparently they had spotted the antenna cable from his tailpack and mistaken it for a camcorder.

Lucky arrived and the sun went in.

Would you put a carbon-fibre bonnet and those orange wheels on this?

Dave provides a handy scale gauge for these exhausts:

Steve decided to keep the suspension mod:

This is apparently an R26 F1:

This particular one was fitted with hand-controls for use by the owner, Dave. The ring is the throttle (pull closer to the steering-wheel for gas), and the lever bottom-right is the brake. The clutch is a button on the gear-stick. Very neat indeed.

Can anyone tell me why the new(ish) Klostertal sign is in the wrong place? (Obviously this photo was shot from the trackside with a long (and dirty) lens ...)

A bit more chatting, then back to the Ringhaus to pack and check-out.

So despite my misgivings on Friday, it actually turned into an excellent Easter. Four dry, sunny days. One crashy, crowded day, then increasingly clear and empty after that.

Matt gave me a lift to Hahn, stopping at Bren's en-route to collect Ross. I wrote Monday's trip report in the car. Matt and I had both done a web check-in again, so were able to head upstairs to the restaurant for a burger while Ross joined the lengthy queue. He texted us when he was close to the front and we ordered his burger.

Then a late flight back home, arriving at twenty to one at which time I had to unpack and repack ready for a business trip to Amsterdam the following morning.