August '98
Nürburgring
Easter '99
On Saturday we had a horrible journey towing two bikes down to the Ring, with heavy rain most of the way. We arrived a quarter of an hour after the circuit had closed, but just in time to see Phil Gardner's R1NGA leaving.Meeting our bikey friends in a gasthaus in Adenau, they reported that they'd managed one frighteningly slippery lap before adjourning to the Ring museum and thence to the bar.
Sunday dawned with wet roads and overcast, but at least the air felt clearer and the clouds were thin, so there was some promise for the day.
After doing a tentative half a lap from Adenau to the main gate, we met Phil and some of his merry band of ringers, then after another lap and a half we pulled off at the Adenau exit to collect a biker friend who'd never been in a four-wheeler faster than his race transporter. Before we'd done three bends he was whooping with joy, amazed at the liberties you can take in a car on a slippery surface. We were in a lovely balanced slide around the long right hander leading on to the long straight when the phone went ... once on the straight I answered it: it was Anders, lost and looking for the circuit entrance.
By the time I'd dropped Keith back at Adenau and come back to the main gate (the track now beginning to dry out), I spotted a swarm of people, at the centre of which I could just make out the blue bulging arches of the 22B. Anders was strapping into R1NGA to observe a master at work. I hurried over to book a lesson myself, and to get the keys for the 22B. Curiously, Anders handed them over :-)
Dispersing the crowd, I closed the bonnet and then Amanda & I got into the goldfish bowl. Turning the key produced a lot of electronic beeping and flashing, but no engine ... eventually we sorted it and got it started.
The 22B: Compared to our 96 UK car, the clutch is sudden and the steering quick and nicely weighted. The LEDA suspension feels just the same as ours though. Going through the gate and onto the track, I was disappointed that it didn't feel faster. The best thing about the engine is the torque which, with the gearing, makes it a lot more tolerant of poor gear choices. The grip is superb, but the thing which stands out the most isn't to do with the 22B at all: Those Brembos are definitely Scooby Accessory of the Year!
The suspension doesn't seem to be set correctly, as the scraping of wheel on arch was a frequent sound during the lap ... it needs some combination of raising and stiffening.
Amanda drove a lap in the 22B too, and loved the steering & the shorter gearing. The brakes caught her out a couple of times - she tends to brake longer and softer than me, and frequently found herself having to speed back up to corners.
By now I was starting to recognise bits of the track. For the first couple of laps, it's very tentative indeed, as every blind crest and bend may hide potential demons. In another couple of laps, you can recognise the approach of the scariest areas of the track, freeing your attention to concentrate on other bits. A couple of laps more, you're not just recognising your favourite bends when they're about to happen, but remembering them, anticipating them, and starting to get the car set up to take them properly. As the laps go by, the bends before and after your faves join to make short sections which you do well ... and so it goes on. (Phil's done well over a thousand laps - I'm sure he's still learning, but I don't know what!)
By the time I joined Phil in R1NGA I'd driven and passengered about a dozen laps, so I could concentrate on lines rather than being surprised where the bends go.
It was a very revealing experience. I'd expected a thrilling ride, but I'd forgotten the Golden Rule: "the best drivers make it all look easy". The whole thing flowed beautifully, and like all truly good drivers it felt slow, despite being whole minutes faster than my best. The most marked difference was in the way Phil's intimate knowledge took us through sections flat out in fourth, where I'd be nervously changing to third and braking because I had no idea what lay over that crest.
When we got back, Anders was heading out with Nancy, who'd been on the back of her partner's bike when he'd crashed two miles into their first lap on Saturday afternoon ... compared to that, Anders' little slide in the scooby was nothing to be alarmed about :-)
Meanwhile, Amanda had first been taken out in the 911 Carrera of one of Phil's band of Ring-veteran friends, and then she took him out for an observed run in our scooby. She was told: "nice drive: no slides, no scares, and only a couple of places where we'd've crashed in anything other than an Impreza"!
The rain returned during the afternoon, and we tried to practice the principles we'd been told, although the details of markers for turn-in points, and aiming for distinctive trees to show the line over blind crests were still a bit advanced for us.
I drove my first lap without a passenger, and without the calming influence I overdid it almost immediately, finding myself at a tricky right/left/ right/left section (Hatzenbach) with too much speed, on the wrong line, and with an M3 in my mirrors. I had to lift and brake in mid-corner, causing the M3 to do the same, and the next thing I saw was that he'd spun. Oops, sorry.
On another lap, we were gaining on a Dutch scooby (a green one) on the approach to Adenauer Forest - a very deceptive and difficult S-bend over the crest of a hill. We'd just overtaken a people-carrier on the way up the hill, and crested the rise to find the track blocked by the scooby: evidently he'd spun and was reversing back on to the track!
On my last lap Sunday evening, I was thrilled to discover I'd improved *so* much that I was catching R1NGA on a difficult downhill section (Wehrseifen). As I overtook I saw that Phil was in the passenger seat, giving another lesson ... well, I didn't really think I was that good :-)
In fact I felt pretty bad ... just after I'd overtaken, I made a hash of the left-hand hairpin yet again ...
On Sunday night we had a great dinner with Phil & his mates at their home- from-home in Nürburg. A nice bunch of people ... and they don't care how many wheels are driven, or how many wheels a thing's got, as long as it goes like stink and they can use it at the Ring :-)
Monday morning was beautiful, with a crystal clear sky. Our hotel was ideally nestled in a hillside, overlooking picturesque Eifel valley panorama with the sun bringing out dazzling colours in the autumn leaves, and wisps of low-lying mist affording the odd glimpse of valley floor.
It was bloody cold too though, but the sun had melted the ice on the screen by the time we'd had breakfast. The track didn't open until noon, so we went to the excellent Ring museum, in the GP complex.
Amanda did our first lap of the morning, and I was in exactly the right frame of mind for my go.
More than anything else, it's that lap which will sustain me until our next trip (around Easter). I was relaxed, it felt fast yet smooth, I was in tune with the track and the car, my lines felt good ... I haven't uploaded the GPS track yet, but I expect that'll be by far my fastest lap of the weekend.
The standard of driving on Monday was a lot higher than Sunday. On Sunday we were easily overtaking potentially very fast, flash cars, but on Monday they were all out of sight and even supposedly inferior cars were blitzing us. It makes me laugh when I read stuff on this list and others about whether this car's better than that one ... and now I have this mental image of the Clio which passed me like I was standing still, and then went on to pass the 911 ahead of me. The bikes which had been nervously wobbling round on the wet and/or drying track Sunday were literally making up for lost time on Monday: I vividly remember a bike overtaking us (approaching Kesselchen), where my crappy old car was wheezing up the steep hill around 90mph and he flashed by at 140+ and then swept into the left hander under full power. I'm so looking forward to next spring!
Phil generously spent a lot of time with us on Monday, first taking us in R1NGA for a medium-pace lap with full commentary (where "medium pace" means going round a corner sliding four tyres, and calmly taking a hand off the wheel to point to a turning marker). Then we each drove a lap with Phil passengering and talking us through, and then we each drove a lap following R1NGA at a suitable pace. The other memory I'm going to keep for a while is the last three miles of that lap, as the speed gradually increased and I stuck doggedly to R1NGA's tail as it swung from side to side in the esses. Bloody fantastic.
All too soon we had to leave to get the ferry and we had another shitty trailer-towing journey back, the highlight of which was seeing a huge piece of lorry tyre in my lane on the M25. I forgot the trailer was there and swerved to avoid it, then watched in horror as the trailer fishtailed and tilted crazily from wheel to wheel, with the bikes swinging around on top trying to capsize it ... I'm not an experienced enough tower to say whether the scooby handled it well, but the trailer's owner in our back seat was very, very impressed.
I was disappointed that of all the UK scooby owners, only Anders made the trip with us. After the positive response I got from my Catalunya report, I thought folk realised what driving pleasure there is to be had outside Surrey ... but I expect you all had nice weekends too, eh? :-)
Well that was a pain in the arse ...Fizzy brought his 2-berth trailer (bearing Darthjoy's CBR600 & Fizzy's own FZR400) to fortress Curtin Friday night. It had already had an adventure when Ben's bike had slipped off the ramp during loading, ending up with a front disc bearing the weight of the bike.
At 5am Saturday we hitched it to our car, and about 5.15 I started to hate the thing as I went around a gentle bend, hit a bump and caused enough of a jolt to dislodge a tie-down, so Fizzy's bike lost a mirror. Note to self: bumps are bad.
Halfway round the M25 we overtook a lorry which flashed us up. On the hard shoulder, we found that the light-board had broken free of some cable ties and had dragged along the road, breaking the bit where the wires went in - so no lights or winkers.
From there to Liege went relatively incident-free, although it was quite stressful hitting bumps and watching the bikes joggling around.
At Liege, someone decided it would be a good idea to find Le Halfords to get another light board, so we drove around some of the shittiest, bumpiest, cobblediest streets known to man in a vain attempt to find one. And we got lost. And I had to reverse my artic around corners on many an occasion. I hate Belgium.
In the great weather at the Ring yesterday, we unloaded Ben's bike from the trailer - because I refused to tow it all the way there and back without it touching tyre to German tarmac - and it seems that it's loading accident has bent the disc so that one of the floaty-things touches the fork leg. Arse.
After enjoying the ring for as long as we could, we set off with hardly any contingency time. On the great road away from the circuit, Ben decided to go ahead for a play. He got about a quarter of a mile - only a couple of seconds ahead of us - and rounded a corner to find roadwork traffic lights on red. He hit the brakes. We hit the brakes. The ABS did it's juddery thing, I steered to go around Ben and he edged forwards. For a second I envisaged one crash damaging all four vehicles, but then we seemed OK. Fizzy jumped out of the car to check the bikes, but they too looked OK in the mirror.
However ... the front wheels of both bikes had popped out of the wossnames on the trailer and they were resting on their soft underbellies. Buggery arse.
They were very very well tied down indeed after that, and even the crap Belgian roads couldn't dislodge them. In Eupen we stopped in the street of a thousand Halfordses, and eventually got a lightboard. By the time it was discovered, bought, attached and fitted with number plate, we'd lost over an hour and were well late for the ferry.
A few hours and a few broken speed limits later, we arrived at Boulougne one minute after the last possible check-in time. Which turned out to be plenty, of course. Checking the trailer over, we spotted that it lacked a number plate, which Darth said had fallen off about five miles from Eupen. Good job I didn't choose the expensive one with 3D carbon fibre lettering ...
Just one more trailering incident to go ... on the M25 a black mark on the roa d loomed out of the darkness. Fizzy called out to watch it, and I jerked the car over to miss the bit of lorry tyre - or was it a girder? Then Fizzy said "f_ck", and looked behind: I'd totally forgotten about the trailer, and we all watched in horror as the thing fishtailed about, tilting crazily from one wheel to the other as the bikes swung around, trying to capsize it. Thanks again to my slow reactions (which have saved many a potential highside) I didn't back of f the throttle, and the thing sorted itself out.
(Doesn't that adrenalin feel cold?)
I know it's cruel, but I couldn't get out of my head the image of Ben's bike falling off the trailer and then him running it over in his car :-)
Well, that's the joy of trailers and I hope never to repeat it. There are plenty of other ringy tales, and Ben put his dark powers (which I admit I doubted before but certainly not now) to good use in laying to waste many, many Belgians. There are a couple of other incidents which make me wonder about the value of Ben's IAM certificates, but I'll leave those for later blackmail opportunities :-)
Well,What a weekend it was. Glad to see that everyone got back safely - at least now there are more of you who understand why I rave about the Nürburgring....
Saturday ferry was delayed due to the Force-6 blowing up the channel! Breakfast stayed down, but the restaurant was strangely quiet.
Set off for the Autoroute in buckets of rain that stayed with us right to the Nordschleife. Interesting to note that not even 4WD can prevent aquaplaning, but it sure as hell makes it easy to handle. The Lotus's and 911's with us were suffering on those badly drained Belgian roads.
We passed A&A's car and trailer fairly early on and we were at the trackside by mid afternoon.
Having spent many many weekends at the Ring, we knew that our first few laps should be cautious, lest any changes made to the track surface since last visit should catch you out. Sure enough one or two sections had been repaired and the bitumen was still new enough to leave the track slippery for quite a distance afterwards in the wet. Also a couple of badly worn areas have become even more slippery and great caution was needed to allow time for our mental ECU's to remap themselves!
Since last time, I have fitted STi 4-pot calipers and discs, set the geometry more aggressively to cut understeer and changed tyres to Bridgestone S-02 Pole Positions (sticky ones).
First impressions are that the brakes are much improved - never once did they fade or feel anything less than capable, but they are still mighty spongy when really pushed. The Ring drops over 1000 feet on the first 7km and with 3 or so people in the car, the brakes take a hammering. It's not like on a short circuit, although long, smooth and firm braking pushes any brake setup to the upper end of its limits. I'm sure that a bleed will get things back to normal now though. The 99 cars will be a revelation to everyone I'm sure.
New geometry combined with S-02 PP's produce simply unimaginable grip in the wet. I soon got used to it, but all my passengers we agast at the G's generated even during torrential rain by this setup. In the dry they still hold on as expected, although 3 hard laps got then hot enough to start really moving around. Well recommended though.
Part of the grip characteristics come about from the new geometry settings and the current Prodrive suspension setup (Eibach springs and Bilstein dampers). At present the car runs 1.7 degrees -ve camber / 1.6mm toe-in on the FRONT, with parallel rear toe-in.
Overall I was very pleased with the way the car went this trip...... .....right up until I drove the 22B!!!!
We met up with Anders, A&A and a few of the LEXUS (I know, I know!!) mob on Sunday morning. Anders already had a fag on and had the shakes after his first lap on his own!!! This is a perfectly normal reaction for drivers new to the Ring and shows a healthy respect for the place. Those that finish Lap 1 on a confidence high usually need pulling out of the Armco by Lap 3!! I offered Anders a lap in my car which he happily accepted. One of his friends took a close-up picture as he fastened his belt - he looked a worried man to say the least! He asked if he could hold on!?! No problem.....
.... I think he took his second breath about 4km into the lap though!!! I could tell that he was feeling more confident as he started to talk to me again after about 5 minutes, so things must have been going well.
We had a spirited lap, although I appreciate that it might have been difficult for him to pay too much attention to the turn-in, apex and exit points of all 122 bends!
But he must have been fairly happy as he very kindly let me have the keys to his 22B for 3 or 4 laps. I am very grateful to Anders for this as it was quite an eye-opener for me as to what LEDA/Brembo have going for them in the Ring environs. Observations;
Overall the 22B was excellent at the Ring. I never imagined that I would get the opportunity to try one there without buying one first, but it has now given me a difficult decision to make. I MIGHT have the offer of a UK one (I have the "we'll let you know" letter from Sam Burton), but the price will be the final decision maker. I have set my heart on an STiV (undoubtedly with LEDA B and possibly Brembos), but if the UK 22B's come in low as some rumours suggest, then I don't really know!! Decisions decisions!
- Everybody looks at you in a 22B! You feel you need to put on a good show.
- The clutch in the 22B is OK provided you use good revs and slip it a lot. I stalled it as I tried to move off first time! See point 1 above!
- First lap was 4-up and the car felt nicely torquey and revs more freely than mine. This is probably due to the lower gearing as much as anything else, but it's certainly easy to rev the engine to make good progress. It sounds noisier inside, although we both run the same exhausts.
- The LEDA suspension feels totally different to my Prodrive setup. The damping is undoubtedly taughter and perhaps the spring rates are different (Pete C - any info?), but the car feels very well sorted to me. Interestingly Adams' car with a broadly similar (might even be the same) setup feels almost identical and from the passenger seat felt to handle similarly. The cornering composure and general feel is wonderful - more so than on mine. Grip from the big 235 P-Zero's is high as you would expect, but there was none of the twichiness and threatened snap-oversteer that I had expected. Moreover the car could be drifted very nicely under power irrespective of the number of passengers. The only problem (which is adjustable anyway I suspect) one both LEDA cars was grounding of wheelarches against tyres. The Ring is fairly extreme though, and it only occurred under serious provocation. Quality suspension.
- BREMBO Brakes. These are seriously good bits of Kit! They have all the stopping power you could ever want and they always felt the same, regardless of level of abuse. The only point worth making is that the 22B (like the other Type-R's) doesn't have ABS, which gives the pedal masses of firm feel anyway. I really like firm brakes and I would have no concerns in ditching ABS for the improved feel that you get. I suspect that I would think very highly indeed of the standard STi 4-pots without ABS at the Ring anyway, but the Brembos really do cut the mustard.
My thanks to Anders for being so trusting as to let me drive both him and his friends round the worlds most dangerous racetrack in his pride and joy - at speed in the wet!. Cheers matey! Thanks to A&A for their compliments - I used to lecture programming courses for a living, so teaching is what makes me tick anyway! I'm very glad that you've all caught the bug! We do about 6 trips a year now, which makes the summer just fly past and improves your German no end.
See you there again next time.
Aufwiedersehen,
Phil G
R1NGA
Here's a brief Ring trip report; no doubt more to come!!Friday AM, Jeff W rolled up to Castle Aardvark on his 1100 Suzi beast and was promptly stuffed full of fried pig and baked beans.
I stuffed a couple of pairs of socks in the soft panniers and slung 'em on the Jota while Jeff was swilling an extra coffee and then we booted off South. Utrecht, Eindhoven, Venlo, yawn yawn and then we hit the autobahn and after a bunch of roadworks we hit the autobahn. The quiet pipes on the Jota really kill the top end so poor old Jeff had to put up with bimbling along at a measly 200 km/h.
We made great time to the extent that I ripped past several junctions where we aiming for the 'Ring and it wasn't until we stopped for gas that I realised how far we'd come.
A quick bimble through the Eifel mountains and we're in Adenau. We picked up a bunch of tourist info stuff, picked the cheapest gasthaus on the list and got settled. Wobblin' Mayhem and the succulent Nancy (VFR750) rolled up shortly followed by Spike (GPz900). We then had a few beers, followed by some beers which we washed down with a couple of nice refreshing beers before having a bunch of beers as a nightcap.
Saturday started wet, and the wee man at the Adenau entrance to the 'Ring told us that it might be open after 5pm, after some car school thing was done. So we went up to the museum thing at the main entrance and had a look around. Very nice, lots of race cars & bikes. All went fine until some woman dragged us into one of them simulator machines... locked in a hot shoebox and shaken violently up & down when you've had a real skinful the night before... just what the doc ordered I don't bloody think. I didn't have to let the side down by hitting the emergency stop button, but I did lurch out somewhat green and clammy when the door opened.
A coffee in the caff' put me to rights and then (after finding out the kart track was booked solid... thank God... "Mummy, Mummy, I overtook that man and he puked on me, bwaaaah!") we rolled back to Adenau and hung about at the entrance until the track opened.
So; after some shuffling of feet and "Ohh, we'll follow you, Keith" 4 bikes and 5 folks (Wobblin' had Nancy on the back) rolled out onto the Nürburgring, yeeha!!
In the pissing rain that is... and it's seriously Autumn so there was a thick carpet of wet leaves everywhere. Bloody great... I think we managed about 1 1/2 km's before I heard the inevitable scrrrrraaawp-crunch behind me and looked back to see the VFR, Mayhem and Nancy skiting along the road in fine style. No injuries and the bike looked OK so we carried on. Roger me with a splintered gatepost, but it was really, really, really slippy. Never seen worse in me life, and I've raced round the Isle of Man in the rain, I kid yez not.
We got up to the main entrance without further problem, where it turned out that the VFR had cracked an engine cover and was losing oil; so the Mayhems left the track and bimbled back via the road. Jeff, spike and m'self rolled on. There's a bit of wibbling around to avoid the end of the GP track and then at the first proper corner there was a mud-covered BMW cage parked in the ditch. Ahar, thinks me, and I rolled off a bit. Just at this the tail of the Jota started to slide out... yeeks... off the gas a bit more and it stopped sliding... off a bit more and it came back into line and the folks sitting on the tyre wall (the BMW driver & mates I guess) jumped up gave me a standing ovation. I considered getting off and pushing; more stable and probably bloody faster too...
Had a wee gasp at the exit when Jeff (who started as tail gunner) turned up before Spike, but the GPZ showed up eventually and then we retured to the gasthaus. Adamanda, with Darth and Fizzy in tow showed up as we were well into some calming beers and we settled into an evening of frequent cries of "Another fifteen over 'ere Fraulien". Various assorted sports car people rolled up through the evening (Adam'll tell ya who & with what, I was having some trouble remembering my own name by this stage) and glasses of Cola started to make an appearance... eech, don't they know that stuff rots yer teeth?
I surfaced the next morning and was inhaling coffee and looking purposefully at a bread roll when Amanda came in smiling sweetly and told us lot to get a move on, everybody's up and ready to play... awww, she asks so nicely and with such a nice smile, how could we refuse? Easily... "Aye aye aye, you guys go on, we'll catch you up"... That got rid of 'em and we could get back to admiring the shape and form of the bread rolls and waiting for the caffeine to get as far as the cortex.
We eventually packed up and left the landlady grinning like she'd just won the lottery and rolled up to the circuit entrance. I sorted Mayhem with some Araldite to glue his Honda back together and watched the cars hooning around for a bit. The rain had stopped but the track was still wet so it seemed like spectating was the smart option.
Then Adamanda's red Subaru rolled in and yeeha, Adam took me for a wazz around. Waaaaa-bloody-hooooo! Let me tell yez, wet leaves and shitty roads, this four wheel drive stuff is the bizz! Adam was giving it the real Colin McRae sliding around bit, the anti-lock brakes clicking away every corner, it was pure bloody brand new!! We overtook loads of people and only slowed down to answer the phone and stamp our ticket. Scored a clean hwun-hundred-an-eightyyyyyy on the thrillometer, thanks a whole bunch mate!!
After a wee while and some more Honda glueing things started to dry a bit and I decided to bimble around on the bike again, this time with Fizzy in tow. It was still a bit yukky, a dry patch, a wet patch, some leaves, a hyooowge oil spill where someone had stacked a Kawa in ayhem's paint scrapes. It was pretty much good enough for the car guys to give it the beans (I guess a wee ton-plus slip on wet leaves bothers 4 wheels less than 2...) so we spent most of the time trying not to get collected as a new bonnet ornament by some crazed cager.
That done without incident, me, Jeff & Spike headed Hollandwards via some verrrry nice coutryside & twisties (which got clogged up with traffic as we approached the border alas) and then a zap up the Dutch superslab home.
That's my tale; no doubt the rest will be along with their slant on events.
Bottom line is we *REALLY* have to do it again next year, when there's a better chance of dry weather. Watch this space!
Things started reasonably enough, when Fizzy pitched up at my place at about 7pm on Friday evening. Things started to go downhill when there was a slight slipping CBR incident when attempting to load it onto the trailer and, as reported, the front right brake disc took the weight of the bike for a few seconds. But there was no immediately obvious damage, so we secured it aboard and Fizzy set off to Adamanda's to hitch it up to their Sube while I headed for an early night, having returned from Paris that morning after 90 mins sleep the previous night (hit the town, return to hotel at 5am, get up for flight back at 6.30am).The weather forecast is horrendous and there's roadworks on the M20, so I decide to set off at 6.15am to get to Dover by 8am to check-in for the Sea-Cat crossing. Good job I did - the drive down is horrendous. 7.45am and I'm a few miles from Dover. The mobile rings. It's Amanda telling me they're still at the top end of the M20. I say I'll whizz on ahead and try to delay the departure by either abject pleading or a strategic engine-failure whilst half-on-half-off the Sea-Cat.
8am and the sea looks rough. Very rough. My fears are confirmed when the check-in people tell me they're not sailing today. I call Amanda and say I'll check out ferry spaces. I ask Sea-Cat to refund our tickets. They refer me to the ticket desk. "We don't refund them here - you have to write in." I tell them they've cancelled the crossing we've paid for and they can bloody well give us our money back now. They tell me they haven't cancelled the crossing, it's just going to Calais instead. Back to the check-in people. "Er, yes, we are sailing, we'll take you to Calais." The good news is that the departure's delayed until 9am, giving the others time to get there.
The crossing is rough, though the video screens are showing some multi adrenaline sports thing which creates a kind of virtual reality experience. Though Amanda declines that and instead opts to spend the crossing studying the manufacturer details on the inside of the water closet.
Nothing really to add to Adam's write-up of the journey there. We unfortunately arrived too late for a lap or two on Saturday evening, but in time to consume ill-advised quantities of beer with the others, though Adam and I did make a strategic switch to Coke at some point and Amanda was a good girl and stayed sober to drive us to the hotel. Which was a long way away, but a long way away up a fabulous road. Amanda drove my MX-5 and when she was getting, um, enthusiastic up that wet windy road. I casually commented on the tail-happy nature of the Mazda in the wet. "Is that a polite way of asking me to slow down?" Damn - I never could get the hang of subtlety. It was just my nervousness after my recent ring-road excursion, though: she drove it like it was meant to be driven.
Sunday morning and it's pissing down, but we're going out to play no matter what. Someone (Keith) had discovered the secret to getting a lap-and-a-half for every paid-for lap, which was well worth doing. Most of those with only two wheels, as opposed to those of us with four or six, were very sensibly sitting in the cafe drinking coffee and awaiting passenger rides in four-wheeled vehicles.
I went out for one lap on my own, preferring not to kill anyone else in an "oh shit, the track goes that way" type incident, but a gentle bimble around identified the really nasty bits and I was then happy to offer rides. I think Fizzy had the first. He's a good passenger, ignoring the bits where I comprehensively cocked up the line and restricting his comments to "Think you can probably take that bit flat out next time".
Then it was Jeff's turn. Again, no rude comments even when I set up for a right-hander when the road in fact went left, and the track was starting to dry off a little. It was, I think, on Jeff's lap that we encountered the red Audi. Everyone warns you that at the Ring you have to expect everything: coaches, camper vans, little old ladies doing 25mph, the works. Well, we found all that plus one new one: a car coming the wrong way round the Ring! Exited a left-hander (Breidscheid), came across to the left for the right-hander (Ex-Muhle) and found myself facing the front-end of a red car later identified, we think, as the same red Audi that knocked a biker off when exiting the Ring. If I hadn't captured it on the carcam (which needs a bit of work), I don't think anyone would have believed us ...
Then the lap that was asking for trouble. Take a man who causes crashes and add a man who has them, and put them in the same car. I took Robin Mayhem out for a lap. Predictably, we found a ZX-7 rider who'd just binned it at the same place as Robin (and was now smoking a cigarette with some enthusiasm), and some kind of estate car that was now about the length of a saloon car. I couldn't quite work out how he'd managed to lose it at that spot, but the mystery was revealed later: as I speeded up, I found that a fish-tail which starts about three bends back can easily still be in progress there. Robin and I got back to the start to be greeted with looks of utter amazement that we had returned in one piece.
I don't recall the order after that, but quite a few others came out for rides in the passenger-seat. And I blagged rides in Adamanda's Subaru and someone else's BMW. The Subee is quite something - excellent performance and fantastic road-holding. I could quite fancy a convertible version ...
We didn't know what the weather had in mind, so I bought a 6-lap ticket for the car, thinking that I might get out on the bike later. In the event, it stayed wet all day Sunday and I would have been going too slowly on the bike to enjoy myself: Keith's description of the friction as like polished marble was not much of an exaggeration. In the event, though, the six-lap ticket lasted 8 laps - it appears they haven't quite got their machines working properly. I was most put out when I only got 6 laps out of the next one. Three of my passengers also used their tickets when out with me (thanks chaps and chapesses), so I did 15 laps in all, and I reckon that's about right for a day and a bit - it's very tiring and the tyres and brakes get red hot, so both driver and vehicle could do with a rest between laps.
Disappointment of the year was when I discovered the damaged disc on my bike, so the only riding I got to do on it at the Ring was round the car-park while investigating the rubbing noise. :-( :-(
How would I rate it? Take the fun you had at Cadwell, and triple it. It's hard to describe without doing an MCN and using the 'awesome' word; it really is that good. I can't wait to get back there on a dry sunny day and take the bike out.
At 13 miles and 187 bends, if I've remembered that right, there's no way you can learn the circuit in the way that you learn Cadwell. But it's amazing how just a lap or two is enough to remember the really dodgy bits in time to slow down for them, and by the end of my 15 driven laps and 2-3 passenger laps I could at least remember the general configuration of most of the circuit. Not like I could run you through it, but such that I would see the next bit and think 'oh yes, next we have the RH hairpin then the straight-line S-bends then the extended left-hander'. By the end of it, there were only a couple of bends that kept taking me by surprise.
Doing it by car first was definitely comforting, but so long as you take it easy on the first few laps, and then only gradually work your speed up, I don't think it would be too intimidating starting on a bike - Fizzy?
The locals do come hooning past you at unfeasible speeds, including a Ferrari which simplified the Ring greatly by doing a constant 130mph round it - straights or bends. I don't think I ever saw the guy reduce speed. It could do right-angled bends by doing a cartoon-style instantaneous change of direction. Amazing. But almost everyone on the circuit was well-behaved, waiting for you to indicate your readiness to be overtaken (move to the right and indicate right) and being equally courteous when being overtaken. I only had about three exceptions to that - one car and one bike that squeezed past on the outsides of tight bends when I was planning on running to the outside and when the back end could have let go at any second, and one car which deliberately blocked my overtakes for about half a mile.
There's a plan forming called go back there over the Easter weekend. Watch this space for details. And there's another vague planette called replacing Ixion@Cadwell.1999 with Ixion@Nürburgring.1999. I think we should do it. :-)
August '98 |
Nürburgring |
Easter '99 |
