RE: Porkers at the 'Ring
Wednesday 28th May 2003
Porkers at the 'Ring
Domster and Dazren go on a blast to the infamous Nurburgring
Discussion
That was a great write up Dom. Really makes me want to get an RS and join in the fun sharpish! Isn't it amazing how much difference driver training makes to your lap times. Very amusing to think of a TT having difficaulty with a suzuki swift, lol! Sounds like your a real regular to the ring Dom. How many times have you all driven it now?
How are 911's generally viewed as a tool for the ring, in the hands of nupties (like myself) etc?
Would it be particuarly unwise for a mere mortal to really 'push' the RS-ended one quite hard there? The lack of run off is rather intimidating. I wonder if a regular layout and more balanced car would be the ticket.....
Would it be particuarly unwise for a mere mortal to really 'push' the RS-ended one quite hard there? The lack of run off is rather intimidating. I wonder if a regular layout and more balanced car would be the ticket.....
I would say that at least 25% of the cars circulating the ring are Porsches, and half of those are RSs, CSs or GT3s.
I counted about 15 different 964RSs over the few days, with about 7 993RSs, 5 or 6 GT3s and some turbos etc. The 968 CS was also in large numbers.
Other favoured ring cars are the E30 BMW M3, modified E36 BMW M3s and VW Golf GTi Mk2s.
You could count the Mercs, Ferraris and Astons on one hand. And I didn't see many TVRs at all - just Guillotine's Griff.
It takes guts to push a 964RS to the limit, tho', and the 968CS is a friendlier drive. Ring racers don't mind the challenge it seems, as the 964RS was extremely popular.
I counted about 15 different 964RSs over the few days, with about 7 993RSs, 5 or 6 GT3s and some turbos etc. The 968 CS was also in large numbers.
Other favoured ring cars are the E30 BMW M3, modified E36 BMW M3s and VW Golf GTi Mk2s.
You could count the Mercs, Ferraris and Astons on one hand. And I didn't see many TVRs at all - just Guillotine's Griff.
It takes guts to push a 964RS to the limit, tho', and the 968CS is a friendlier drive. Ring racers don't mind the challenge it seems, as the 964RS was extremely popular.
There were a few Caterhams and a Radical SR3, but there were in a minority compared to the Porsches and BMWs.
I would suggest an airfield handling day to learn how to handle a 911 - I will do some kind of day like that myself at some point. I think Ride Drive do a day at an Essex airfield (North Weald?) for about 250 a head, two people sharing.
Don't try and go beyond the limits on track, as you may collect someone else if you spin. Tracks are for negotiating as quickly as possible, not for learning handling characteristics.
ATB
Dom
I would suggest an airfield handling day to learn how to handle a 911 - I will do some kind of day like that myself at some point. I think Ride Drive do a day at an Essex airfield (North Weald?) for about 250 a head, two people sharing.
Don't try and go beyond the limits on track, as you may collect someone else if you spin. Tracks are for negotiating as quickly as possible, not for learning handling characteristics.
ATB
Dom
:blush:
Cheers Dom for a marvellous write up, and a very complimentary note on your laps with me. Glad you enjoyed them. I've only been driving the car since April on the Ring, so I hope there's a fair bit to come yet. Just started to try the R compound tyres which should make the car stick better. The laps you did with me were on normal road tyres, so it probably was a little more slidey
Great to see you all had a super trip, and came back in one piece.
I shall post my trip report up here as well shortly.
Cheers,
E
Cheers Dom for a marvellous write up, and a very complimentary note on your laps with me. Glad you enjoyed them. I've only been driving the car since April on the Ring, so I hope there's a fair bit to come yet. Just started to try the R compound tyres which should make the car stick better. The laps you did with me were on normal road tyres, so it probably was a little more slidey

Great to see you all had a super trip, and came back in one piece.
I shall post my trip report up here as well shortly.
Cheers,
E
Dom, nice prose, sounds like you had fun. Some friends did the 'Ring recently - hired a limo from an unsuspecting German wedding company - full on white stretched American jobby - dressed up in Tuxes, the lot. The driver had no idea what was going on unitl he arrived at the circuit. They did several laps drinking his champagne and enjoying the view - the Karussel was most entertaining....!
As to airfield days - they are the best place (aside from a Tescos car park on a wet night)....but North Weald is ultra avrasive - I wrecked a set of rear tyres in my Caterham a couple of weeks ago on the circuit there - the concrete shags tyres.
Did Elvington in Yorkshire this weekend too - that wasn't much better but less gritty than North Weald - note that airfields are always gritty and this'll stonechip the front of your pride & joy.
Bassingbourn's meant to be OK too
As to airfield days - they are the best place (aside from a Tescos car park on a wet night)....but North Weald is ultra avrasive - I wrecked a set of rear tyres in my Caterham a couple of weeks ago on the circuit there - the concrete shags tyres.
Did Elvington in Yorkshire this weekend too - that wasn't much better but less gritty than North Weald - note that airfields are always gritty and this'll stonechip the front of your pride & joy.
Bassingbourn's meant to be OK too
And another one.....
This trip was mt mate Adrian Elkin’s fault, and he’s a cheeky bugger – more of that later. He sent me and a few other guys an e-mail back in the winter saying how’s about a combined Ring and Spa weekend in May – several of us got on the phone straightaway to book the Spa track day, as places were limited to 100 cars. The Ring is quite often quoted as the best track in the world, and Spa is often placed at number two, so you could say we were walking around for a while like cats who’d got the cream.
I invited my friend Mike O to come along, because I knew he’d love it as much as me. To save on costs, we decided to share the driving of my car over the weekend. He’s the one person I trust to drive my car on the track. Some have and would call me mad, but we’ve been doing it for several years, and nothing’s happened to make me want to change it.
We’d planned our departure time from London to ensure we were at the Ring for opening on Friday at 2.15pm. So we left before 6am to get to Dover. It was incredibly foggy, and as the weather forecast for the weekend was clouds and rain, we weren’t surprised.
Half way across the English Channel, whilst we were snoozing, we were awoken by an announcement from the captain. “Ladies and Gentleman, you may notice we have stopped moving. This is because our engines have failed. Our chief engineer is currently looking at the problem, and we hope to get going again soon. I will keep you informed of progress.” So we were stuck in the middle of the sea in the fog drifting in one the busiest shipping channels in the world – great. Half an hour later….”Ladies and Gentlemen, I have good news and bad news. We now have one of our three engines operational, but unfortunately I cannot dock the ship in the port with only one engine……” Long story short, the crossing took I think nearer 3 hours instead of the usual 1.25 hours.
Then we hit Calais where they’d decided to open only one booth at Customs meaning a long long queue to get out of the port. Then we hit a 3kms + traffic jam at the junction of the E40/E42, and was winding its way down the E42 as far as we could see. So we took a different route to avoid this – Ben’s suspension testing route which is interesting in a stiffly suspensioned car. Despite everything, we got there having missed only an hour or so of tracktime due to them opening an hour later than published.
I did the first two slow laps, and at the end Mike said that if they were slow, he didn’t want to see a fast one – he is a nervous passenger! Similarly Mike then did two laps with me in the passenger seat, and I then said that if those were slow laps, I didn’t want to be around for a fast one – I was a nervous owner! Hence for the rest of the weekend, we didn’t do any more laps together. This was because with Mike being a nervous passenger, he wouldn’t enjoy laps with me anyway, and he rarely does pax laps with other drivers, particularly after he was in a crash a few years back at the Ring with someone driving beyond their abilities. I decided not to do pax laps with him as I thought Mike could enjoy himself more if I wasn’t sitting in the pax seat. It worked out well, as we could each take a nice break whilst the other was driving.
Friday was spent driving the car on the new Goodyear Eagle F1’s I’d had fitted earlier that week. Being brand new tyres, they needed a while to settle down, and the car was a bit squirmy on Fri as I expected it to be. Nice grippy tyres though, and supposedly good in the wet. Said Hi to Daz and Domster and a few other Pistonheaders who I knew would be there – the Porsche forum on www.pistonheads.com was an excellent source of info when I was looking to buy my 968, and you guys gave me help on whether the price and spec of the car meant I should buy it, which I did. Daz had brought his 996TT with X50 upgrade which takes the power up to 450+ bhp. I was really looking forward to a ride in it. Domster owns a 964RS, but it was in for work in the UK, so he was blagging pax laps. I took him out for a couple of laps, and I think given this was his first time to the Ring, he enjoyed seeing how a 968CS goes in comparison to a 964RS – noise doesn’t compare, but I guess feel and handling aren’t that far off.
Then went out for a pax lap with Daz. What a giggle! As I was sincerely hoping, he floored it on the exit of the cones, and the initial acceleration was good but not mind blowing. Then I’m guessing around 2/3000 rpm the afterburners kicked in and captain – we took off at warp speed factor 9! Superbikes didn’t even get a look in. And all in air conditioned comfort. Got down to Hatzenbach and the car’s being chucked with abandon sideways through one bend then the next. “This driver certainly ain’t race trained” says Daz with a big grin on his face. And the lap continued in the same vein – some fabulous moments of acceleration that I only dream about, followed by hard on the brakes, then drifts and slides through the corners letting the four wheel drive and psm sort out any over exuberant moments. Great stuff, and damned impressive for someone who’d only done 30 laps at that stage. And of course a max speed run on Dottinger Hohe just to put the cherry on the cake.
Fri night was spent in the Pistenklause with Jeppe, JW, Adrian, Soren, Kim, Mike, Ray and Emma, Keith, and others up the far end of the table. As is tradition, we wandered up to Sabine’s for a nightcap after dinner, and ended up staying there a wee bit late. Adrian – jammy bastard – has a rather nice bottle of whisky that Sabine keeps for him behind the bar, so we had one of those. Oh – and I discovered a new drink – Bananeweizen – great for the stamina.
Sat am – plenty of clouds around but no rain yet. Mike and I got up early to put on the spare wheels with the R compound tyres on. I’d brought a trolley jack but couldn’t get it under the car – car is too low. So we had to use the crappy Porsche wheel jack, which just about held the car up without slipping. Took us forever and a day to change all four wheels, but we got there in the end.
Took the car out for a lap, and immediately noticeable was that the right hand rear tyre was fouling on the wheel arch through left hand bends. This was accompanied by a strong burning rubber smell. And rubber smoke according to Christer who followed me round on one lap. We kept a very close eye on it, and it was just the slightest scraping on the outside edge of the tyre, so we weren’t concerned about a blow out. We were however concerned about the front left blowing – this tyre was already heavily worn when I put it on the car, and by lunchtime is was through the canvass and into the next layer. Laps were reduced significantly for the rest of the day, mainly because of some closures. Christer and I did a convoy lap together, and predictably Christer was cruising behind me in his missile of a Corvette – I just ain’t fast enough yet. I did also have a passenger – Adrian – which gave me a further power/weight diadvantage, and on shagged tyres, I wasn’t willing to show Christer what the car is really capable of, but we had a pleasant enough lap. Came across a nasty bike accident between Kallenhard and MHM – biker motionless; several people in attendance, so we carried on. Back up to speed by Bergwerk, and I’m absolutely maxing the car on the way up Kesselchen one when I notice out of the corner of my eye Adrian getting some sort of paper out of the door pocket. I’m concentrating to be flat out through Maddock Bend, so can’t look over. After Maddock Bend, I look over to find Adrian reading Motorsport magazine with his head down, not looking where we’re going. “Boring” was what he said. I won’t tell you what I said back, but it could be summarised as cheeky
bastard in much much ruder words. But raised a good laugh – Adrian calls that the Book Test. He’s done it before, and been asked to get out of the car by some who take themselves too seriously.
I thought the R compound tyres were great, and will be sticking with them. The turn in to corners is so much sharper, the car feels much more planted, and they still slide around a bit but at higher levels which is nice. I was running them at too high pressures on Saturday which again contributed to them not performing at optimum levels – I set the pressures cold at just under 2.0 bar, left them that way all day, but this turned out to be way too high as I found out on Monday. As Johann said to me on Sunday – there’s no going back to normal street tyres once you’ve experienced the R compounds. The 18” tyres worked well on the 968 as well – I had expected them to spoil the handling of the car being too big. But they were fine, and the car does look rather nice on the proper Porsche Speedlines – almost a mini 968 Turbo S look, with the bonnet vents too.
Also did a lap with Adrian as a passenger again where we followed for an entire lap a Jaguar C Type and Jaguar D Type going round in convoy, and being driven bloody well. Some massive provoked sideways moments through many corners by the D Type. A joy to watch. Cars looked original to me, but they were in fact well used replicas – owner of the D Type was an old Jordie lad, had the car for 15 years, driven it everywhere in Europe hard, never trailered it, always drove it from the UK even in the pouring rain. I love characters like that!
I also went out with Keith in his 968CS – again brilliant. Car sounds much sportier than mine due to different exhaust. Living so close to the Ring is really starting to show, and the car is going round at a great speed now. I wouldn’t like to race Keith coz I think he’d beat me, even though my car has bigger brakes and stiffer suspension. Keith is noticeably very hard on the brakes, so just as well he’s upgrading to Pagid yellows. Funnily enough I’m now concentrating on trying to brake less, as I think I’m losing too much speed on entry to some corners through overbraking. And I’m also thinking about saving the expensive pads and disks, which is helping me to feel a bit smoother round the Ring. Swings and roundabouts…..
I then did my final pax lap of the weekend – with JW in his 964 Carrera 2. At one of the fastest sections of the track, on the way down to Aremburg, JW’s brakes failed in some way. Not no brakes, but severely reduced braking power. There was nowhere to go but straight into the gravel trap, except this isn’t very deep with gravel we discovered, and it didn’t help stop the car much. So then we were heading head on into the Armco on the outside of the gravel trap. At the last second, as I was bracing myself for a very ugly crash, JW managed to turn the car so that it hit the Armco side on at the rear. The damage was much less than I anticipated. I got behind the Armco whilst JW phoned the marshals to come and deal with the formalities. They were perfectly amicable, and all was dealt with quickly. One local came through the yellow flags first time slowly, saw there was no big accident and that the car was out of the way, so next time he came around, he came through at normal speed ignoring the yellow flag. The marshall was straight on the radio to the office to tell them to pull him off and also a Brit in an Audi TT with a video camera – so be warned.
Spent the evening with Sir B and Lady B in Adenau. Good fun evening – Sir B got rather opinionated (as in worse than normal!) towards the end of the evening, as tends to happen after the Xth beer. At one point, he figured I didn’t know where Sprunghugel was, so papers and pens were got out, and the track was drawn. Turns out sir B didn’t know where Sprunghugel was – I had to go to the toilet to piss myself at this point. Also discovered Sir B does a very funny and accurate impression of Christer.
Sunday took the car up to Ring Racing to ask them to see if they could help with the rubbing rear wheel – they raised the suspension by 2mms which did the trick. They also changed the wheels back to the normal wheels as the R compounds were shagged by that stage. All for a paltry sum. Saw Tom’s car up there – seen it had been in an incident because the whole right side was scraped. Apparently happened at T13 on Friday afternoon.
Going out on one lap, a yellow local GT3 and a superbike following very very closely to him bombed past at Tiergarten – they were clearly racing. Coming into Hocheichen, there was a fairly heavily just smashed yellow GT3 – except it wasn’t the same car. The crashed one had a chequered black pattern on the roof. Debris and bodywork all over the track, but no one hurt.
Did a warm up lap with Sir B – I swear he just goes out sniffing out fresh scalps. Good fun lap even though it was the first of the day.
Think I met Ross but not sure – scruffy looking bloke in leathers and glasses, taking the piss out of Daz for consuming all the beer at Brens? If I’d known who you were, I would have said hello, but didn’t at the time.
Spent a few hours at Brunchenn spectating in the evening – plenty of 24 hrs race activity in terms of camper vans staking out their territory. Finished the day at Sabines – met up with Dexter who gave me two photos of my car – really pleased with them. Retired early as we would have to leave at 6.30 am the next day to get to Spa.
Weather at Spa was wonderful once the fog had burnt away. Had two new Pirelli PZero Corsas fitted to the fronts by the tyre supporter – Silverline. They said I should be running 2.1 bar front, 2.2 bar rear hot. After two laps, came in checked the pressures, they were already way above 2.5 bar on the fronts, so reduced them down to recommended, and they worked well the rest of the day. Spa and the cars there meant that R compounds were essential. There was everything from a Rover Metro 1.4i to a full race spec 650/800 bhp Porsche 935 (I think that car is known as the Moby Dick?) to a Lola F3000 car running a Ferrari 355 engine at 420 bhp. Circuit was a real joy, and took a bit of practice to learn the line. Initially braking for the bottom of Eau Rouge in the morning, we both got to almost flat in fourth by the end of the day. A corner to savour….
The D Type and C Type we’d seen at the Ring were there too, as were many other cars we’d seen at the Ring over the weekend. As I spotted the D Type about to go out for a lap, I asked politely if I might come for a lap with him. He said no problem, so I jumped in and harnessed up. A very special view to be had looking down that sculptured bonnet; the noise was superb; and he was chucking the car around power oversteering through most bends just for the sheer fun of it. Was as good as I had hoped, and I spent the six laps we did just grinning like a Cheshire cat. Followed the C Type for about three laps, then they switched places and the D Type led. Real gentlemen racers too – giving very proper hand signals to anyone wanting to overtake, heel and toeing and double declutching on the gearshifts. That was the best pax lap I had over the weekend, just because it was that bit more special.
Spent the night at Aeaventures about 5kms from Spa – run by a Ring instructor, Neil, and his wife Ann. English speaking, so makes life easier. Very much bike focused. Hospitable in the extreme – cooked us dinner, gave us beers and wine and more special local beers, took us down for a ride round the old Spa circuit and pointed out who’d crashed where, etc. No wonder they’re almost full already for this year!
Tues morning – time to think about going home. Neil had recommended going to the Stavelot museum as a way of using up the hour we had spare. But I had one thing I really wanted to do – Adrian’s car had been broken on Monday, but was meant to be working on Tuesday. I wanted to give him the Book Test back. It had to be done. So I dropped Mike off a the museum, and went looking for Adrian. Found him, asked for a lap – no problem. On about lap three we overtook the D Type and C Type and were getting up to pace nicely. As we came into La Source (the sharp right hander before the downhill run to Eau Rouge) I knew Adrian would be looking to the right in a right hand drive car as we went round the corner. So I got my Le Mans leaflet out of my pocket quickly, opened it up, and started reading it as we went down towards Eau Rouge. I got the finger of course from Adrian – can’t say much in an open Caterham at speed. But I wanted to savour this moment so I continued reading with my head down all the way through Eau Rouge, up the other side, and along the Kemel straight. A punch in the balls from Adrian eventually encouraged me to put the paper away.
Satisfied my weekend was complete, I went home to London, after remembering to pick Mike up from the museum.
This trip was mt mate Adrian Elkin’s fault, and he’s a cheeky bugger – more of that later. He sent me and a few other guys an e-mail back in the winter saying how’s about a combined Ring and Spa weekend in May – several of us got on the phone straightaway to book the Spa track day, as places were limited to 100 cars. The Ring is quite often quoted as the best track in the world, and Spa is often placed at number two, so you could say we were walking around for a while like cats who’d got the cream.
I invited my friend Mike O to come along, because I knew he’d love it as much as me. To save on costs, we decided to share the driving of my car over the weekend. He’s the one person I trust to drive my car on the track. Some have and would call me mad, but we’ve been doing it for several years, and nothing’s happened to make me want to change it.
We’d planned our departure time from London to ensure we were at the Ring for opening on Friday at 2.15pm. So we left before 6am to get to Dover. It was incredibly foggy, and as the weather forecast for the weekend was clouds and rain, we weren’t surprised.
Half way across the English Channel, whilst we were snoozing, we were awoken by an announcement from the captain. “Ladies and Gentleman, you may notice we have stopped moving. This is because our engines have failed. Our chief engineer is currently looking at the problem, and we hope to get going again soon. I will keep you informed of progress.” So we were stuck in the middle of the sea in the fog drifting in one the busiest shipping channels in the world – great. Half an hour later….”Ladies and Gentlemen, I have good news and bad news. We now have one of our three engines operational, but unfortunately I cannot dock the ship in the port with only one engine……” Long story short, the crossing took I think nearer 3 hours instead of the usual 1.25 hours.
Then we hit Calais where they’d decided to open only one booth at Customs meaning a long long queue to get out of the port. Then we hit a 3kms + traffic jam at the junction of the E40/E42, and was winding its way down the E42 as far as we could see. So we took a different route to avoid this – Ben’s suspension testing route which is interesting in a stiffly suspensioned car. Despite everything, we got there having missed only an hour or so of tracktime due to them opening an hour later than published.
I did the first two slow laps, and at the end Mike said that if they were slow, he didn’t want to see a fast one – he is a nervous passenger! Similarly Mike then did two laps with me in the passenger seat, and I then said that if those were slow laps, I didn’t want to be around for a fast one – I was a nervous owner! Hence for the rest of the weekend, we didn’t do any more laps together. This was because with Mike being a nervous passenger, he wouldn’t enjoy laps with me anyway, and he rarely does pax laps with other drivers, particularly after he was in a crash a few years back at the Ring with someone driving beyond their abilities. I decided not to do pax laps with him as I thought Mike could enjoy himself more if I wasn’t sitting in the pax seat. It worked out well, as we could each take a nice break whilst the other was driving.
Friday was spent driving the car on the new Goodyear Eagle F1’s I’d had fitted earlier that week. Being brand new tyres, they needed a while to settle down, and the car was a bit squirmy on Fri as I expected it to be. Nice grippy tyres though, and supposedly good in the wet. Said Hi to Daz and Domster and a few other Pistonheaders who I knew would be there – the Porsche forum on www.pistonheads.com was an excellent source of info when I was looking to buy my 968, and you guys gave me help on whether the price and spec of the car meant I should buy it, which I did. Daz had brought his 996TT with X50 upgrade which takes the power up to 450+ bhp. I was really looking forward to a ride in it. Domster owns a 964RS, but it was in for work in the UK, so he was blagging pax laps. I took him out for a couple of laps, and I think given this was his first time to the Ring, he enjoyed seeing how a 968CS goes in comparison to a 964RS – noise doesn’t compare, but I guess feel and handling aren’t that far off.
Then went out for a pax lap with Daz. What a giggle! As I was sincerely hoping, he floored it on the exit of the cones, and the initial acceleration was good but not mind blowing. Then I’m guessing around 2/3000 rpm the afterburners kicked in and captain – we took off at warp speed factor 9! Superbikes didn’t even get a look in. And all in air conditioned comfort. Got down to Hatzenbach and the car’s being chucked with abandon sideways through one bend then the next. “This driver certainly ain’t race trained” says Daz with a big grin on his face. And the lap continued in the same vein – some fabulous moments of acceleration that I only dream about, followed by hard on the brakes, then drifts and slides through the corners letting the four wheel drive and psm sort out any over exuberant moments. Great stuff, and damned impressive for someone who’d only done 30 laps at that stage. And of course a max speed run on Dottinger Hohe just to put the cherry on the cake.
Fri night was spent in the Pistenklause with Jeppe, JW, Adrian, Soren, Kim, Mike, Ray and Emma, Keith, and others up the far end of the table. As is tradition, we wandered up to Sabine’s for a nightcap after dinner, and ended up staying there a wee bit late. Adrian – jammy bastard – has a rather nice bottle of whisky that Sabine keeps for him behind the bar, so we had one of those. Oh – and I discovered a new drink – Bananeweizen – great for the stamina.
Sat am – plenty of clouds around but no rain yet. Mike and I got up early to put on the spare wheels with the R compound tyres on. I’d brought a trolley jack but couldn’t get it under the car – car is too low. So we had to use the crappy Porsche wheel jack, which just about held the car up without slipping. Took us forever and a day to change all four wheels, but we got there in the end.
Took the car out for a lap, and immediately noticeable was that the right hand rear tyre was fouling on the wheel arch through left hand bends. This was accompanied by a strong burning rubber smell. And rubber smoke according to Christer who followed me round on one lap. We kept a very close eye on it, and it was just the slightest scraping on the outside edge of the tyre, so we weren’t concerned about a blow out. We were however concerned about the front left blowing – this tyre was already heavily worn when I put it on the car, and by lunchtime is was through the canvass and into the next layer. Laps were reduced significantly for the rest of the day, mainly because of some closures. Christer and I did a convoy lap together, and predictably Christer was cruising behind me in his missile of a Corvette – I just ain’t fast enough yet. I did also have a passenger – Adrian – which gave me a further power/weight diadvantage, and on shagged tyres, I wasn’t willing to show Christer what the car is really capable of, but we had a pleasant enough lap. Came across a nasty bike accident between Kallenhard and MHM – biker motionless; several people in attendance, so we carried on. Back up to speed by Bergwerk, and I’m absolutely maxing the car on the way up Kesselchen one when I notice out of the corner of my eye Adrian getting some sort of paper out of the door pocket. I’m concentrating to be flat out through Maddock Bend, so can’t look over. After Maddock Bend, I look over to find Adrian reading Motorsport magazine with his head down, not looking where we’re going. “Boring” was what he said. I won’t tell you what I said back, but it could be summarised as cheeky

I thought the R compound tyres were great, and will be sticking with them. The turn in to corners is so much sharper, the car feels much more planted, and they still slide around a bit but at higher levels which is nice. I was running them at too high pressures on Saturday which again contributed to them not performing at optimum levels – I set the pressures cold at just under 2.0 bar, left them that way all day, but this turned out to be way too high as I found out on Monday. As Johann said to me on Sunday – there’s no going back to normal street tyres once you’ve experienced the R compounds. The 18” tyres worked well on the 968 as well – I had expected them to spoil the handling of the car being too big. But they were fine, and the car does look rather nice on the proper Porsche Speedlines – almost a mini 968 Turbo S look, with the bonnet vents too.
Also did a lap with Adrian as a passenger again where we followed for an entire lap a Jaguar C Type and Jaguar D Type going round in convoy, and being driven bloody well. Some massive provoked sideways moments through many corners by the D Type. A joy to watch. Cars looked original to me, but they were in fact well used replicas – owner of the D Type was an old Jordie lad, had the car for 15 years, driven it everywhere in Europe hard, never trailered it, always drove it from the UK even in the pouring rain. I love characters like that!
I also went out with Keith in his 968CS – again brilliant. Car sounds much sportier than mine due to different exhaust. Living so close to the Ring is really starting to show, and the car is going round at a great speed now. I wouldn’t like to race Keith coz I think he’d beat me, even though my car has bigger brakes and stiffer suspension. Keith is noticeably very hard on the brakes, so just as well he’s upgrading to Pagid yellows. Funnily enough I’m now concentrating on trying to brake less, as I think I’m losing too much speed on entry to some corners through overbraking. And I’m also thinking about saving the expensive pads and disks, which is helping me to feel a bit smoother round the Ring. Swings and roundabouts…..
I then did my final pax lap of the weekend – with JW in his 964 Carrera 2. At one of the fastest sections of the track, on the way down to Aremburg, JW’s brakes failed in some way. Not no brakes, but severely reduced braking power. There was nowhere to go but straight into the gravel trap, except this isn’t very deep with gravel we discovered, and it didn’t help stop the car much. So then we were heading head on into the Armco on the outside of the gravel trap. At the last second, as I was bracing myself for a very ugly crash, JW managed to turn the car so that it hit the Armco side on at the rear. The damage was much less than I anticipated. I got behind the Armco whilst JW phoned the marshals to come and deal with the formalities. They were perfectly amicable, and all was dealt with quickly. One local came through the yellow flags first time slowly, saw there was no big accident and that the car was out of the way, so next time he came around, he came through at normal speed ignoring the yellow flag. The marshall was straight on the radio to the office to tell them to pull him off and also a Brit in an Audi TT with a video camera – so be warned.
Spent the evening with Sir B and Lady B in Adenau. Good fun evening – Sir B got rather opinionated (as in worse than normal!) towards the end of the evening, as tends to happen after the Xth beer. At one point, he figured I didn’t know where Sprunghugel was, so papers and pens were got out, and the track was drawn. Turns out sir B didn’t know where Sprunghugel was – I had to go to the toilet to piss myself at this point. Also discovered Sir B does a very funny and accurate impression of Christer.
Sunday took the car up to Ring Racing to ask them to see if they could help with the rubbing rear wheel – they raised the suspension by 2mms which did the trick. They also changed the wheels back to the normal wheels as the R compounds were shagged by that stage. All for a paltry sum. Saw Tom’s car up there – seen it had been in an incident because the whole right side was scraped. Apparently happened at T13 on Friday afternoon.
Going out on one lap, a yellow local GT3 and a superbike following very very closely to him bombed past at Tiergarten – they were clearly racing. Coming into Hocheichen, there was a fairly heavily just smashed yellow GT3 – except it wasn’t the same car. The crashed one had a chequered black pattern on the roof. Debris and bodywork all over the track, but no one hurt.
Did a warm up lap with Sir B – I swear he just goes out sniffing out fresh scalps. Good fun lap even though it was the first of the day.
Think I met Ross but not sure – scruffy looking bloke in leathers and glasses, taking the piss out of Daz for consuming all the beer at Brens? If I’d known who you were, I would have said hello, but didn’t at the time.
Spent a few hours at Brunchenn spectating in the evening – plenty of 24 hrs race activity in terms of camper vans staking out their territory. Finished the day at Sabines – met up with Dexter who gave me two photos of my car – really pleased with them. Retired early as we would have to leave at 6.30 am the next day to get to Spa.
Weather at Spa was wonderful once the fog had burnt away. Had two new Pirelli PZero Corsas fitted to the fronts by the tyre supporter – Silverline. They said I should be running 2.1 bar front, 2.2 bar rear hot. After two laps, came in checked the pressures, they were already way above 2.5 bar on the fronts, so reduced them down to recommended, and they worked well the rest of the day. Spa and the cars there meant that R compounds were essential. There was everything from a Rover Metro 1.4i to a full race spec 650/800 bhp Porsche 935 (I think that car is known as the Moby Dick?) to a Lola F3000 car running a Ferrari 355 engine at 420 bhp. Circuit was a real joy, and took a bit of practice to learn the line. Initially braking for the bottom of Eau Rouge in the morning, we both got to almost flat in fourth by the end of the day. A corner to savour….
The D Type and C Type we’d seen at the Ring were there too, as were many other cars we’d seen at the Ring over the weekend. As I spotted the D Type about to go out for a lap, I asked politely if I might come for a lap with him. He said no problem, so I jumped in and harnessed up. A very special view to be had looking down that sculptured bonnet; the noise was superb; and he was chucking the car around power oversteering through most bends just for the sheer fun of it. Was as good as I had hoped, and I spent the six laps we did just grinning like a Cheshire cat. Followed the C Type for about three laps, then they switched places and the D Type led. Real gentlemen racers too – giving very proper hand signals to anyone wanting to overtake, heel and toeing and double declutching on the gearshifts. That was the best pax lap I had over the weekend, just because it was that bit more special.
Spent the night at Aeaventures about 5kms from Spa – run by a Ring instructor, Neil, and his wife Ann. English speaking, so makes life easier. Very much bike focused. Hospitable in the extreme – cooked us dinner, gave us beers and wine and more special local beers, took us down for a ride round the old Spa circuit and pointed out who’d crashed where, etc. No wonder they’re almost full already for this year!
Tues morning – time to think about going home. Neil had recommended going to the Stavelot museum as a way of using up the hour we had spare. But I had one thing I really wanted to do – Adrian’s car had been broken on Monday, but was meant to be working on Tuesday. I wanted to give him the Book Test back. It had to be done. So I dropped Mike off a the museum, and went looking for Adrian. Found him, asked for a lap – no problem. On about lap three we overtook the D Type and C Type and were getting up to pace nicely. As we came into La Source (the sharp right hander before the downhill run to Eau Rouge) I knew Adrian would be looking to the right in a right hand drive car as we went round the corner. So I got my Le Mans leaflet out of my pocket quickly, opened it up, and started reading it as we went down towards Eau Rouge. I got the finger of course from Adrian – can’t say much in an open Caterham at speed. But I wanted to savour this moment so I continued reading with my head down all the way through Eau Rouge, up the other side, and along the Kemel straight. A punch in the balls from Adrian eventually encouraged me to put the paper away.
Satisfied my weekend was complete, I went home to London, after remembering to pick Mike up from the museum.
dom
how quick was the gt3 mk2? and what did it sound like.... i saw them at monza 2 weeks ago but the owners wernt exactly going for it!
iam thinking about getting one or a 996 t thats why. i want the gt3 but the roads in milano might have the front splitter off quicker than my italian friends here eat the canoli!
cheers
how quick was the gt3 mk2? and what did it sound like.... i saw them at monza 2 weeks ago but the owners wernt exactly going for it!
iam thinking about getting one or a 996 t thats why. i want the gt3 but the roads in milano might have the front splitter off quicker than my italian friends here eat the canoli!
cheers
rubystone said:Some friends did the 'Ring recently - hired a limo from an unsuspecting German wedding company - full on white stretched American jobby - dressed up in Tuxes, the lot. The driver had no idea what was going on unitl he arrived at the circuit. They did several laps drinking his champagne and enjoying the view - the Karussel was most entertaining....!
Sounds familiar:
www.nurburgring.org/trip_reports/trip25/index.html
Crikey SFV, you've been busy at the keyboard.
I saw JW and he showed me the damage to his car on saturday evening. Good reflexes and car control had clearly averted a possible injuries and expensive repairs. Unexpected mechanical failure is perhaps something we should all look out for and deter us from trying to run at nine or ten tenths of our ability on a public day in road cars without harnesses, roll cages etc..
Yes that was Ross you met in the carpark sunday morning, an hilarious opinionated scots/south african comedian who was at the Ring on an R1 bike. I would like to take the credit for clearing Sliders out of beer two nights running, however I was ably assisted by my fellow guests into the early hours of both mornings.
DAZ
Edited to say sorry to hear about the Yellow GT3, he was driving very sensibly on saturday, moving to the right as Gary (American GT3 driver) and myself went past him in convoy between Eisekurve and Pflanzgarten 1. Apparrently another GT3 had an off at the weekend, but he was the same guy who kept everyone queueing whilst checking his tyre pressures, washing windscreen etc whilst blocking the petrol pump he had previously used, To$$er.
>> Edited by dazren (moderator) on Wednesday 28th May 16:03
I saw JW and he showed me the damage to his car on saturday evening. Good reflexes and car control had clearly averted a possible injuries and expensive repairs. Unexpected mechanical failure is perhaps something we should all look out for and deter us from trying to run at nine or ten tenths of our ability on a public day in road cars without harnesses, roll cages etc..
Yes that was Ross you met in the carpark sunday morning, an hilarious opinionated scots/south african comedian who was at the Ring on an R1 bike. I would like to take the credit for clearing Sliders out of beer two nights running, however I was ably assisted by my fellow guests into the early hours of both mornings.
DAZ
Edited to say sorry to hear about the Yellow GT3, he was driving very sensibly on saturday, moving to the right as Gary (American GT3 driver) and myself went past him in convoy between Eisekurve and Pflanzgarten 1. Apparrently another GT3 had an off at the weekend, but he was the same guy who kept everyone queueing whilst checking his tyre pressures, washing windscreen etc whilst blocking the petrol pump he had previously used, To$$er.
>> Edited by dazren (moderator) on Wednesday 28th May 16:03
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