DRIVING THE NÜRBURGRING April 20-21, 2013

I ’ve been in Cologne, Germany, for a week now. The training course I’ve been teaching was scheduled in such a way that it left the weekend free. At lunch last Friday, my clients asked me what I had planned for the weekend. I said I really didn’t have anything at all planned. Then, as an afterthought I added, “But if it wasn’t so far away, I’d rent a car and go drive on the Nürburgring.” (The Formula 1 track where the German Grand

Prix is run every other year).

One of my clients said, “It’s not far away at all. Maybe a 90 minute drive.” And at that instant, a new door opened! I had thought that the Nürburgring was down in the Black Forest somewhere. That would have been a 4-5 hour drive each way. But the town of Nürburg and “the ‘Ring,” as everyone calls it, were actually in the Eifel re-gion of Germany, an area of low hills and thick forests. This was close enough to be practical!

Friday afternoon, while my clients were working on an intensive learning exercise I’d given them, I went to the Internet to find out how to do this. First I found a company, RSR Nürburg, that rented race cars to drive on the track and provided instruction. Their process and offerings were far more extensive than I’d thought they’d be, and they were very expensive. But they had one option that was realistic for me: their “One Lap Sensation.” It was one lap in a Renault Clio, gas and lap ticket included, and an instructor to sit in the seat beside me to guide me through the race course. It was going to be 125 Euros for all of that (about US$ 160).

That sounded pretty good to me. So I found a hotel for Saturday night near the track and I scheduled a track time for 2:00pm on Sunday. I rented a car and drove down to Nürburg on Saturday afternoon.

Nürburg is an otherwise sleepy little rural German town that came to represent a single industry: automobile racing. And though it still has a small-town flavor, the racing community, culture, and infrastructure dominates every aspect of life in Nürburg. BMW has a test facility there. All the component makers (shocks, tires, suspen-sions, etc.) do, too.

After checking into my hotel, which was about 200 meters from the main grandstand, I set out to explore the town. First, I located the headquarters of RSR Nürburg, a small unassuming garage behind some old farmhouses and a bed-and-breakfast inn. Besides its sign, what distinguished RSR Nürburg was the huge collection of exotic cars parked in the fenced yard beside the garage: Mercedes, BMW M3s, Lotus Exige 240s, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and a Maserati, and a collection of Renaults, just to name a few. I then returned to my hotel and walked over to the main grandstand, an obviously new building about a quarter mile long and 250 feet high.

This, I thought, would be the track that I’d be driving on Sunday. But there was a weekend-long race going on, so how were they going to get me in there?

It was then that I discovered that I was not going to be driving on the current Grand Prix track, but on the “old” one. The original Nürburgring was a 24.5 kilometer road course that wound through the German countryside, through forests and villages, with a hundred turns of varying sharpness. The new race course is around 3.5 kilometers, and it stays fairly close to the new grandstand, even if not all of that track is visible.

The history of why there is a “new” course and an “old” course is interesting. From the Nürburgring’s inception in 1927 and for 50 years thereafter, the only course was the old course—the 3.5 km of today plus the other 21 km. In 1984,

The “new” 3.5 km Nürburgring

The “old” 21 km Nordschleife

the new course, which was the southwestern part of the old one was “snipped off” of the other 21 km through the Eifel forest.

In 1960, the Scottish Formula 1 racer Jackie Stewart drove the Nür-burgring for the first time. When he finished, he pronounced it “a green hell.” In true marketing tradition (“If you can’t fix it, feature it.”), the race’s overseers translated it into German as grüne hölle, created a logo for it, and now you see it everywhere around Nürburg. In fact, the hotel where I stayed was the Hotel Lindner Grüne Hölle.

In 1975, the then-Formula one champion, Niki Lauda of Austria, complained bitterly and publicly that the course was too dangerous for the F1 cars as they had evolved over the years. He was silently (and not so silently) supported by other drivers, but the commission in charge of the Nürburgring ignored Lauda’s complaints. A year later, on the Nür-burgring, Lauda, defending his world driving championship crashed and was severely burned in the accident. Complicating the inherent danger of the course was the fact that rescue vehi-cles could not get to the crash location quickly, as they can in a shorter closed course near grandstands and garages. Lauda would have died, except that two other drivers stopped, pulled off the track, and ran to extract him from the burning car. It was another 15 minutes before the crash wagon arrived.

The following year, the Nürburgring commission grudgingly agreed that Lauda was right, that the old 1927 course was probably too dangerous. They resolved to cut off the southwestern-most 3.5 km segment, and limit the original course, now reduced to 21 km, to lesser races and public opportunities to drive on the famed Ring. So now there are two parts to the Nürburgring—the 3.5 km contemporary racing course, and the other 21 km, now desig-nated Nordschleife (German for northern loop). Picture in your mind a twisting go-kart track with mostly blind curves. Then scale it up so that it’s about three lanes wide and consumes square miles of countryside with its 21 kilometers of paved track. Then, instead of go-karts, put Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens, BMWs and Lotuses on the track, each trying to outdo the other at speeds ranging from 40 miles per hour in the curves to over 100 miles per hour on the (infrequent) short straightaways.

It is this northern loop around which a cottage industry grew up, charging amateurs for the opportunity to drive the famous Nürburgring. Now there are half a dozen such companies. The Nürburgring commission is still responsible for managing the Nordschleife course, they maintain it, provide marshals and other personnel to con-trol access, an make money from it. But it is very well and very tightly controlled. So, when you go to “drive the Ring,” as I did on Sunday, April 21, you’re driving the old grüne hölle course that the legends of F1, such as Stir-ling Moss, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jimmy Clark, Graham Hill, Phil Hill, Jackie Stewart, Lauda and Mario Andretti all drove. It’s a little humbling to think about that.

This particular weekend there was a three-day series of races scheduled. Mostly amateurs or low-level profes-sionals competed in Gran Turismo (GT) cars on the new Ring. After returning to the hotel from RSR Nürburg, I walked over to the new grandstand and through a huge indoor arcade that had both vendor tables and more elabo-rate store fronts, as well as a VIP lounge. There was also a 20’ by 40’ flat screen television playing a loop of the same videos about current and future races, including a truck race (tractor-trailer type) on the new Ring.

On Sunday morning, as I ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant, I saw a video looping on a big flat-screen TV on the wall. It was clip after clip of amateurs (people like me) coming around specific curves in the Nordschleife, losing control, and either running off the track into the bushes, hitting a barrier and trashing their car (and the barrier), and flipping the car over on the track, sometimes rolling more than once. The most significant thing about this video was that all of these cars were privately-owned vehicles. Yes, you can drive your privately owned vehicle on the Nürburgring, and many people do. But if your car isn’t race-modified (racing sus-pension, proper tires, racing transmission, etc.), you’re taking your life in your hands. It was a sobering video, considering I was about to try something similar. Fortunately, the car I would be driving was race-modified. RSR Nürburg

I arrived at RSR Nürburg at around 12:30 pm for a 2:00pm entry onto the track. The guy in charge was a young man, late 20s or early 30s, named Jonathan Chan—from New Zealand. Spoke like a kiwi, didn’t look oriental, and was as friendly as you could ever want. He gave me a guided tour of the whole facility, including their outdoor parking lot and their indoor storage area (where they kept some of the priciest cars). He encouraged me to take pictures anywhere I wanted to, which I did.

Then he showed me the car I would be driving that day: A front-wheel drive white Renault Clio, a small unassuming two-door coupe. Unassuming , that is, until you see all the sponsor stickers in different places and find out how it’s been modified: racing tires and suspension, powerful transmission, and a 200-horsepower engine in a car that weighed about 900 kilograms (1,980 pounds)...a vicious combination. It doesn’t seem impres-sive until you learn that on a wet track the Ferraris and Lambor-ghinis can’t stay with it, or its sister car the Renault Mégane. These cars can’t match the Ferrari’s speed and power on the straightaways. But the Nordschleife is mostly continuous turns anyway.

Jonathan introduced me to Eric, my instructor for the One-Lap Sensation. Eric is an aeronautical engineer from Tromso, Norway. He works at his engineering job three weeks a month, then comes down to Nürburg for the other week and instructs high performance driving. His job would be to keep me from killing myself, or, more importantly destroying RSR’s car! You heard that right—the cost of the car seems to take priority. You can buy vehicle insurance there. For 200 more euros (almost twice the cost of the One-Lap Sensation), I could get my liabil-ity for damage to the car reduced from € 8,000 down to € 3,000. And that’s all the insurance covered. No coverage on damage to me, and if I hit a rail segment, that’s another € 2,000 per segment— and there are three rails per segment (a total of € 6,000). And that doesn’t even cover liability for hitting another car and injuring the driver or destroying the other car. It was beginning to look like this was a risky undertaking (for my bank account, not so much for my safety). But Jonathan reas-sured me: Eric was a pro, very good at his job, and he would keep me from getting into any trouble.

Eric gave me a briefing in their briefing room. I’d hoped for a step-by-step discussion of each turn, etc. But there are about a hundred turns on the Nordschleife...and 90 percent of them are completely blind. If something is in the road on the rollout, it could be tough to avoid. Eric said that he’d cue me on gear shifts early on until I got the hang of it. He said he’d tell me when to brake and when to take the line through each curve. On some of them, especially the big curves, you can’t start cutting the turn back into the inside until much farther into the turn than you might be inclined to. And if you come back in too early, the result on the back side is a spinout... and who knows where that’s going to end up. Since Eric was intimately familiar with every curve on the 21 km course, I decided I’m pretty good at taking directions, especially with visions of euros sashaying out of my bank account dancing in my head.

Renault Clio

The Nordschleife “eats” the inattentive...

One other thing: Eric said you can identify the dangerous curves before you get into them. They’re where the crowds are congregated. The onlookers come to see stupid amateurs crash, and they know from experience which turns are most likely to produce crashes. So, they congregate there. I got excellent warning about those curves that way, and I was much more conservative on those turns as a result.

I told Eric that I’d flown for the US Air Force, and we had a saying: “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.” I said I was an old pilot, and I had every intention of becoming an old ‘Ring driver. He got the message. I said that, if anything, he might be bored with this ride, because I’d be going so slow. His reply: “First, there is no such thing as a boring ride on the Nordschleife, ever. And second, you don’t want to be too slow, or you’ll get us killed.” He then followed up by saying that if, in his judgment, I couldn’t hack it, he’d direct me off the side of the track at the first opportunity, and we’d switch places for the rest of the ride. Well, that was a challenge, if ever I’d heard one.

Eric helped me choose an appropriately sized crash helmet, and we went out to the car. He said we’d drive out and around Nürburg so that I could get used to the transmission. With the six-speed gearbox, my biggest worry was coming out of sixth and getting third instead of fifth. Or out of fifth and getting second instead of fourth. And I did that once while driving around Nürburg. He gave me some hints on how to hold the shifter to keep that from happening, an easy fix, as it was the same technique for managing the flight controls of a B-52 during air refueling: use fingertips, rather than gripping the shifter in my fist. But this was a very sensitive transmission. As I’d let the clutch out in first gear to get started, I’d barely touch the accelerator, and the RPM would scream up to 3,500. The low gear speed ranges were very narrow, but 3rd and 4th had very wide ranges.

When we got back from the test drive, we headed for the entry point onto the track. And when we got to the ingress, there was a barrier across the road. They were not letting anybody in. Apparently, there had been a crash that had to be cleaned up from the track by the recovery crews. A sobering thought...some tyro, probably like me, thought he was Michael Schumacher and got himself into trouble. So, we drove back to the RSR building and waited. Jonathan kept watching his Blackberry for updates, but he said the way we’d know if the track was open was if we heard engines roaring past behind the tree line about 300 yards downhill from us. Eventually, that hap-pened, and Eric and I got back in the Clio, heading for the entry point.

The marshals direct each car every step of the way, including which starting lane to get into. As I moved into the directed lane, I noticed a flatbed truck with a late-model red Ford Mustang on it in the lane next to us. All around the queuing lanes sand was spread out. Besides the crash, this Mustang had blown out something and thrown oil all over the queuing area, and they didn’t want anyone going out on the track with oil on their tires. So, that had to be cleaned up before they’d let anybody go.

Finally, we were “number one for departure.” Eric said accelerate into third as quickly as possible, then wind up the tachometer and “keep it between third and fourth...I’ll tell you when to go to fifth.” So, no sixth, no second. The departure straight is about a quarter mile long. It crests a hill and just on the other side immediately turns (blind) into a fairly abrupt right turn. Eric said the inexpe-rienced hit the top too fast, the car floats over it, and they don’t have enough traction to start the turn.

I made the turn without incident, because there were no other cars around me at the time. I crowded the left side the cut back in along the line when Eric said to, and en-joyed the adrenaline rush of the first successful high speed turn.

The Carousel: Miss this one and you find the trees

Waiting for the crashes...

From there on, it was continual twists and turns, one called “the carousel” that was more than 180 degrees. And very tight. In some of these turns the G-forces were so high that the weight of the helmet pulled my head off to one side (usually left). It can be challenging to hold the pressure on the wheel for a right turn when your head is forced to the left, the outside of the turn.

The Nordschleife has kilometer markers from the start point. It seemed in no time we were passing 3km. The other cars, most of them privately owned BMWs, Audis, Porsches, and Volkswagens, regularly closed on me at much higher speeds from behind. Each time we approached a turn or a curve with cars behind us, I’d slow down and hug the inside of the turn, while the speed demons passed me in the turn on the left. Eric estimated that there were about a hundred other cars out on the circuit with us, but in 21 km, you can spread a hundred out pretty well. It certainly didn’t seem like than many.

After the first turn, the Nordschleife plunges about a thousand feet downhill over the first third of the course. Then in the second third, it gains it all back again. The final third is more or less level. The only times I felt any real stress were when other cars passed me in the curves, then cut back, trying to regain their line, clearing my front bumper by no more than ten feet— a little close for comfort at 40-50 mph.

The kilometers signs were flashing by: 3km, 7km, 12km, 18 km, and then 21 km and we coasted in to the finish. It seemed like the fastest 21 km, time wise, that I had ever driven, and by the last 7km, I was hitting the lines accelerat-ing in the straights to get enough lead over the “scrum” be-hind me so that I could follow the line through the turn, rather than having to slow down on the inside so they could pass me by.

I learned a couple of important lessons from this experience. First, I have a new-found respect for the profes-sional F1 drivers who do this for a living, and at speeds much higher than any of us were going. Niki Lauda still holds the record for the Nordschleife: 13 miles (21 km) in eight minutes. Think about that... a mile a minute is 60 miles per hour. And he’s averaging nearly twice that speed on the grüne hölle.

Second, at my stage of skill, driving the Nordschleife is sensory overload. I can watch the track, manage the transmission shifts, and (mostly) keep track of the cars closing on me from behind. But because I didn’t know the track, I really needed Eric to tell me when to start braking for a turn and how long to hold the left (or right) sides before following the line through the turn. By the last 6km, I was better at noticing the line as we came up on it, and I could follow it myself more easily. Nevertheless, if I get to do this again, I want an instructor in the seat be-side me for at least two more times before I try it alone. And then I want their driving school before I do it.

In summary, I can safely say this: doing aerobatics in a high-performance aircraft with afterburners is the most fun you can have in the whole world...well, with your clothes on, at any rate. But damn! Driving the Nürburgring in a high-performance car is a really close second!

Postscript: My drive down to Nürburg on the German autobahn was pretty much like every other time I’ve driven the autobahn. I was a little tense, maneuvering to pass other cars at 110 mph, while there were Audis, BMWs and Mercedes closing on me from behind at 130 mph. It was always a little stressful. But a funny thing happened on my way back to Cologne: I found myself keeping up with the high-end German cars, and I was totally relaxed. After driving the ‘Ring, the autobahn was a piece of cake! I guess it’s all a matter of perspective...

One of the infrequent straightaways

Down 1,000 feet, then up again...

I highly recommend that anybody with any interest in road racing, much less a passion for it, put driving the Nürburgring on their “bucket list.” It’s a fantastic adrenaline rush.

The “new” Ring

Testosterone run amok...

“Joe Cool” conquers the ‘Ring

RSR Nürburg’s Ferrari 458 Italia