My Trips to the NürburgringSeptember 2005I arrived in Nürburg late on Thursday afternoon with about an hour of the Touristenfahrten session still to run. However, due to the appalling weather I decide not to venture onto the track, and instead go to check in to my hotel, the 'Zur Burg' in Nürburg village.
Friday dawns - and it is still raining hard. After breakfast I decide to take a trip to the museum where they have a fine selection of old racing cars, from pre WW2 Bugattis to modern DTM and F1 cars. You can see a selection of my photos of the museum here.
When I exit the museum at around noon it is a pleasant surprise to find that the rain has stopped and the sun is shining. After a spot of lunch I head over to the circuit entrance and spend some time looking at the other cars waiting for the track to open for the afternoon. There seems to be an abundance of Porsche GT3's and BMW M3's present.
The track opens to the public at 14:15, and it is still damp for most of the lap. Unfortunately, due to these slippery conditions, it is not long before the first accident occurs, and the circuit closes whilst it is cleaned up. When the track reopens I go out for my first lap. After more stoppages I only manage four laps in the day.
Saturday brings bright sunshine and from my hotel room I can see and hear that the track is already in use, so after breakfast I head out into the woods to check out the action.
The circuit was due to open to the public at 13:15 so I head over to the paddock with the intention of getting some laps in early in the session. However, I can't get near the paddock and end up parking in one of the overflow car parks across the road. It turns out that the Cannonball Run is in town, and the paddock is absolutely heaving. The Cannonballers' cars included Ferraris F430, 360CS and 550 Barchetta, Aston Martins Vanquish and DB9, a Lamborghini Gallardo and a very rare Mosler. After a lot of waiting around the track is finally opened, with the Cannonballers being allowed onto the circuit first.
At around 14:00 I finally manage to get to the toll gate and out onto the circuit. The track is dry all the way around the lap which allows me to push much harder than yesterday. However, so busy is the circuit that there is a massive queue to leave the circuit and return to the paddock, a queue that runs almost all the way back to the timing gantry at Döttinge Höhe!
Midway through the afternoon, though, there is a shower that misses the paddock completely, but leaves the circuit damp from Breidscheid all the way around to Pflanzgarten. I take it easy on the damp track, but others are less cautious. On one lap I pass four accidents between Steilstrecke and Brünnchen! By the end of the afternoon I have completed another seven laps.
Sunday again brings bright sunny skies, and with the circuit opening at 08:30 I head out early. On my first lap I gain a passenger, a guy who has driven over from Dorset in his Alfa 145. Despite the early hour the track is very busy but we still make good progress, passing, amongst other things, a Lotus Elise, a Mitsubishi Evo around the outside of Bergwerk and a BMW Z4 around the outside of Eschbach.
My second lap of the morning is relatively clear (see the video below), but the third was slowed considerably by others' accidents at Tiergarten and Adenauer-Forst. At that point I decided to call it a day and headed off to catch the afternoon ferry home from Calais.
The following video shows my fastest lap of the weekend, 9 minutes 30 seconds BTG, run early on the Sunday morning. Considering how busy the track was over this weekend I think I was lucky to get such a clear lap, only being held up by slower cars through Hatzenbach and the Adenauer-Forst / Metzgesfeld / Kallenhard section. It was also the only lap I got that was completely dry and free from other people's accidents.
