Hello Scottish Scoobies,
Still smiling from our trip through the twisty roads around Edinburgh, and here with this report from the Nurburgring. The first part is from a general email I sent to family and friends, and the second part is more car specific I sent to my car buddies. I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the lovely Autumn. Molly and I are currently in Paris and will soon be in Leon to visit her relatives! You all have GOT to go to the Ring with your gorgeous subbies, you'll have the time of your lives! Without further ado:
Part 1:
Basically a Mecca for people who love motorsport, it is a 12 mile race track nestled in the absolutely stunningly beautiful Eiffel Mountains in the heart of the Rhineland. To give you a bit of perspective, 12 miles is the Bay Bridge to the Pacific Ocean and almost back again. It
is where Chevrolet, Jaguar, BMW, Nissan, Porsche, Ferrari, Audi,
Cadillac, and Honda test their sports cars before releasing them. While
the Nurbürgring (or simply “The Ring”) still hosts some of the world’s
most premier autosport events (no, not NASCAR), it has also become a
place where tire, asphalt and the common man become one. Yes,
for a scant 16 Euros, you can do a flying lap of one of the fastest,
most technical and undoubtedly most challenging race tracks on Earth. With a rented Audi A3 Diesel, a heavy left foot and girlfriend beside me, I took to the track. Well, that is…..after I stalled it in front of all the fast cars in the paddock area. It was the clutch, I swear…..
Audi A3 - weaker than Espresso, but fun anyway
We pulled onto the main straight, with sun setting directly in front of us. The torquey 2 litre engine pulling us forward roared with rental car fury. Having
prepared for this moment countless times with Mikey V. on the
Playstation could still not dilute the sheer awe this track brings. The undulation alone will infest your stomach with butterflies. The banked turns will peel the fat in your cheeks back. This
is the track that the famous F1 driver Jackie Stewart dubbed “The Green
Hell” and only ten seconds into the first lap I could see why. It is absolutely without mercy and completely relentless. The
narrow twists and turns give way to amazing long straights that will
put you well into the triple digits, all while the most beautiful
scenery you can imagine screams past you. But screaming
even faster past you are the gorgeous Porsches, BMWs, Lotuses, and
Ferraris that were built with this very track in mind. Heaven.
I love this track. I love it the way I loved my Ernie doll when I was three years old. I love it the way I love dry socks after a rainy day. It is a blind, dumb love. It is a simple, instinctual love, and the knowledge that this is my Mecca. This was my pilgrimage. It was the moment when I knew that nothing could be more perfect than this car, in this gear, on this road.
Part 2:
As you may remember, I originally decided to rent a 3 series. Well, I
started to get jitters about not being super experienced with RWD and
driving such a crazy track (though having now driven it, I don't think
it would have mattered much). But I decided to switch my reservation
when one of the folks we were staying with, who was an American expat
living in Britain (friend of Molly's mom) told me that he rented an
Audi A3 3.0 Quattro and it was a hell of a car. "Well..." I thought "I
used to have a WRX so I'm used to all wheel drive and I do love Audis",
so I switched my reservation. Little did I think about the fact that
I'd be getting a 2.0 TurboDiesel Front Wheel Drive version. Well, in
retrospect, I really wish I had stuck with the 3 series, but there was
joy to be had in the little Audi......although I really wish I hadn't
had a diesel because the redline was ****ing low (5K).
So we rented the car and promptly got lost on the Autobahn
(sadly not a "no speed limit" one) immeadiately. After some clever
navigation, we got going the right direction. As you approach the
Nurburgring from Koblenz (the city where we were staying), you start on
a major autobahn, but eventually you get off the onto this smaller
freeway that I would compare to Highway 9, but way less twisty. Just a
nice two lane freeway that is quick and through some of the most
beautiful scenery.
As soon as you get on this road, you start to see signs for
the Nurburgring. My heart started to pump a little harder and my lips
curled into a little smile. More and more BMWs and Porsches were on
the road. I knew we were going deeper into the belly of the beast.
Eventually, you enter the actual town of Nurburg, which, from what I
could tell, consisted of two hotels and a pizza parlour. All of a
sudden, I saw the M Sport Tecknica BMW building with former
championship cars in the windows. We pull into the parking lot and see
a new 997 Porsche 911 Turbo, an RS4, a new M5, a Lotus Exige and an M3
CSL. Oh yes, now we're getting somewhere. Since the Nordschliefe
track didn't open until 4 p.m. and it was only 11, we grabbed some food
at a nearby town, went shopping in the giftshop, oggled the cars in the
parking lot some more.....but it was still only like 12:30. By then I
realized that there was racing going on on the F1 track. Thinking that
it would probably very expensive, I didn't even bother asking at first,
but realized we had some serious time to burn and obviously somebody
was having fun in there. So we inquired as to the price, and it was
only 15 euros, which for 3 hours of entertainment before the ride of my
life seemed pretty reasonable.
It turned out to be a very mixed set of races. We came in to
see super duper old school MGs, Minis, Trebants and other late 50s,
early 60s stuff going around the track. Not impressed by this, we
wandered into the paddock area which was open and completely full of
cool cars. The next group to go out was the historic Alfa Romeo group,
with everything from the 60s to the latest hot hatches. My favorite of
the bunch were some (I don't really know my Alfas) touring car style
Alfas with huge wings and looked straight out of the eighties. The
race went on to have a race with GTis, Lancias, BMW 2002s and 1600s
(mostly stuff out of the late 70s and early 80s), a 80s race with the
wonderful BMW M1 race car, many E30 M3s, 911s, etc. and the "junior
open wheel cup" which featured tykes in their 40 HP open wheel cars
that was kind of interesting but too slow to be thrilling. All in all,
a very cool line up and worth 15 euros. But apparantly not many other
people thought so because I'd guess there weren't even over 100
spectators.
However, I wasn't there to watch, I was there to drive. As
it got closer to the magic hour, we made our way over to the main
straight, which is where you pull onto the track on public days. We
ended up waiting over 2 hours with the rest of the cars because they
took sooooooo long cleaning the track up after a cup car practice that
was held out there. I ended up taking a ton of pictures of this, and
it was also a really mixed bag: 911 Cup cars, BMWs of all vintages
(all 3 series), Audis, Honda Civic Type R's, Opels, VW Golfs.....very
cool. There is NOTHING like having a Porsche doing 180 MPH drive past
you 15 feet away.
There were dozens and dozens and dozens of cars waiting to
have the gates open....and from memory here are some of the ones I
remember:
04 STi, Evo VII, Evo IX, 06 WRX Wagon, Ferrari 355
GTS, Lotus Exige, Nissan Skyline R33, FD3S RX-7 (super modified),
Escort Cosworth (Mk1), a couple Renault Clio cup cars, TVR Segaris, an
E30 M3 that was completely stripped (one of my favorites of the day),
and just about every kind of 911 you can imagine (cup cars, GT3s,
Turbos, old RS models, just everything).
Well, that's all for now folks. I'll have the pictures I took ready for you in December when Molly and I get back to the states. Again, I hope everyone is doing well and do a powerslide for me!
-Jake
