Well I am finally home after an insane week in Germany! I went over there to see my family and take care of some personal business, and while I was there I thought why not head down to "The Ring"!
It was a crazy week with snow, rain, sleet and crappy weather, but it was still insane fun.
Last year, my wife and I did the same trip, but then we drove down from Sweden in her Audi B7 RS4. Here is a link to that thread:
http://www.svtperformance.com/forum...rope-racing-school-nuerburgring-200-pics.html
Since my wife couldn't come this year, I brought my good friend Mark Wilkins who races in the the Rolex series in a Daytona Prototype, powered by Ford!
The Scuderia Hanseat is a racing school, drivers education and is judged by 24 fixed sections across the 14 mile Nordschleife as well as the Formula 1 GP track. At the end of the week there is a "race", or "final exam" where they give you points for each section. They give points for speed, control and racing line.
We flew on a 747 to London first, it has been a while since I flew on one of these monsters but you can tell that they are getting old.
How to spend time on a 8h flight
It's so calm and beautiful at a mile high
London Heathrow, a few nice cars showcased in one of the terminals
Leaving a dark and gray London!
Almost at the final destination, Frankfurt Germany!
A nice car at Frankfurt Airport as well
Our rental, a 100hp crappy Fench p.o.s.
I LOVE the German Highways though!
Damn car wouldn't go any faster, love the free speed highways
We are discussing on how wonderful the Renault is to drive
Getting closer!!!
Turn Right onto Nürburgring, check!
Our hotel in Nürburg! We always stay in the same place
Bad ass cars in the hotel parking lot, Scuderia, 2010 GT3 RS, 997 Turbo etc.
It was F***ing cold in the morning, would be very interesting to see how the R-compounds on our cars would like this!
It may not look like it, but I am freezing my a** off...
Down at our good friends at RSR, best guys in the business! This is the place where we rented our race cars for the week.
2010 Lotus Exige S, AP racing brakes, fully adjustable suspension etc. 1500lbs and 220hp is not that bad actually! And the blower wine screaming right behind your neck is exhilarating
A quick wash before we hit the tourist driving on The Ring
they just bought a 2010 Lambo LP560-4 as well as Lotus 2-Eleven, crazy cars!
A quick fuel stop before the track. We got about 8 laps per tank of gas. 8500rpms for 14 miles straight doesn't exactly help fuel economy
Plus the fact that gas costs almost 9USD/gallon....
Main paddock at The GP Track. We had to register for the track event here before we could head out.
We also did a bit of skidpad testing and other tests with the cars. A great way to see how the car handles in wet
Farhsicherheit Zentrum 1
E30 M3 Evo is sooo nice, perfect car for this track
This one I would LOVE to have at this track
After all was done we headed out for the so called tourist driving, open track for anybody, any car. A lot of traffic, a lot of accidents and in my mind a whole lot of fun!
We actually did 17(!!!) laps that day which is actually quite amazing. That is oevr 248miles of insane speed on the race track!!!
Mark and I were driving like cat and dog the whole way around the track, insane fun
On the way to the track we met up with 3 Gumpert Apollos, one of them crashed and burned about an hour later...
Beautiful Ferrari 458 Italia, one of two in the race. The other one was delivered to the owner the second day of the race, the Ring is a great place to "break in the engine"
My buddy Niklas, lives in Japan but bought this brand new 2010 GT3 RS to keep in Sweden for track events like this. Wrapped in flat white, so nice IRL
Numbers and decals on
A very wet morning, and it was SNOWING. Real fun in a 1500lb Exige with R-compounds...
The weather hasn't been this bad in May for over 20 years, global warming my ASS
But hey, I bet there are few people who can drive an Exige in snow as well as Mark and I :beer:
Nice and cozy in this little car. It is a pure B**CH to get in and out of this car 100 times a day, and I'm only average length.
Whaddup
On our way out on the Nordschelife, the RS rear end is looks pretty big when sitting in a tiny Exige
Here is one of the many sections we studied, walked, and drove several times before we moved on to the next section.
The benefit of physically walking the whole track is to really feel the elevations, the difference in tarmac (it can change from slippery to great traction in mid corner). These are great things to know when hitting the track at full attack.
The first day of rain at least 10 cars crashed and burned big time, Gumpert, GT3 RS, M3's, Carrera GT etc etc.
Es ist KALLT!!!
Here is the instructor in Pflantzgarten who works for Audi, and he was obviously driving the lastest R8 Roadster. Such a nice car :rockon:
Pflantzgarten "jump"
Yes it is SNOWING
Fog away!
New Mercedes SLS, one of 4 that were going crazy at the track. These guys are Mercedes own test drivers and actually live at the track. Goes to show how good this race school is if big manufacturers send their own guys here. This cars sounds like a big block V8
Instructors GT-R, love the striping!
This is what happens when you go out drifting and end up a little to far out on the track.
The twins
Even more fog
Getting my gloves warmed up after lying in the car all night
We had 6 journalists in our group driving the new Opel Insignia OPC, pretty bad ass car. 2.8L TT V6 with 340hp and AWD. Crazy fast in the rain!
Videos will be up later!
Ringrunners of Sweden, my second family
New TT-RS, nice little thing with turbo and AWD
Gumpert Apollo
Pfadt Race Engineerings Europe devision, this is their shop car.
A VERY unusual sight, a Porsche 959! This was the Ferrari F40 main competition in the late 80's. And the owner was driving it HARD, I love to see people driving their exotics hard!
Mosler MT900 GTR. The sound this thing made was pure sex
New Audi RS5, my wife is so in love with this car and wants to sell her RS4 for one. The interior must be one of the nicest ever made.
Very expensive brakes
Audi R8 LM, the winner won a few test laps in this car
100% original Mercedes 300SL Gullwing, sex on wheels
My eyes!!! He is "washing" the car with nothing but a wet dirty towel :dw:
Somebody hit this wall hard... About 30-40 cars went off in the week
I managed to get this little bugger up to 150mph on the long straight, the steering is extremely sensitive so if I had even moved the wheel 1/4" the car would have spun at this speed.
Opel (GM) executives invited our whole group to dinner, very nice gesture!
Balboni edition?
The best part of renting from the amazing guys at RSR was that we could roll in any time and they would swap from street tires to the R-compounds, now that is what I call service
This was the starting line for the actual test/exam/race. Such an amzing feeling hearing this crazy cars screaming and going flat out down the pit lane. This was an amazing experience that I will never forget, and hope to experience many times
Almost time for me! What got to me most at this exact moment wasn't the fact that my driving was about to be examined and scrutinized by some of the best Ring drivers in the world, but the fact that this was going to be my last lap for this trip
One last fill before we had to return the cars. We drove almost 500 miles above our limit, used up about 2000USD in gas and killed two clutches but it was so worth it.
Gala dinner and awards
6am sunday morning, getting ready to head back to airport and so sad to leave
Nice motors in the BA airplanes
England looks even more boring from the air then it does from the ground lol
That would be the Atlantic far down there
Oh yeah, I can feel the temperature getting hotter already
Florida coast
The red arrow is where we live
Miami Dade, oh how I missed you and your lovely heat
So, it was an extremely exciting and very fulfilling trip, even though the weather was crap. We got a lot of laps in which made me very happy, and the best way to learn this track is just hit the track lap after lap.
Here is one of the vids, this is just one full lap. I couldn't put in the full GP track lap since youtube only allows 10min vids, hence the cut-off in the beginning. Also in the middle I cut it because they made us stop on the back straight since I was catching up to guy in front of me and to even out the distance.
Conditions: semi wet and cold!
[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs0LC59ZcSQ&playnext_from=TL&videos=Jar-nVUkPjk&feature=sub"]YouTube- One Lap Of The Ring[/nomedia]
/Erik
EDIT:
Some new pictures I got from one of the Opel photographers! Amazing stuff!
Dale Lomas from RSR Nürburg and I are discussing the lovley weather... or something...
The Twins!
Lovely weather for some hard core racing...
YES IT IS SNOWING
Last edited:
