My first lap round the Nurburgring in my Seat Toledo:
We paid to be taken round in a BMW M5 driven by Sabine Schmitz and it was a completely crazy lap with her incredible ability and a big car like that just didn't feel like it should be physically possible to drive it like she did especially when it was sliding sideways round a corner facing the barrier, overtaking another car all while she was grinning and laughing:
One of the oddities of the track is that anything goes on it, buses, trucks, old military vehicles and this possibly non-genuine ring taxi:
When we organised to go back I decided not to take my own car because the Scotland to continental Europe had stopped, it was a long drive on my own and I'd bought a new car which I wasn't so keen to thrash round the track since the Seat had never quite been right since its time on the track with some more creaks in panels and a leak at the rear of the car. Instead I flew down, met my friend in London and we drove across in his car and hired a car for the track:
We didn't want anything too fast because the track is genuinely dangerous and the insurance costs are horrific so we settled on a Renault Clio RS200 with a two litre 200bhp engine. I struggled with it initially because its high revving non turbocharged engine had a very narrow power band at the top of the rev range and it was the opposite of my low revving turbodiesel plus it had a terrible gear shift. Once you were familiar with it though it was an amazing little track with fantastic balance on the corners unlike the very nose heavy diesel I was used to, we were able to overtake a fair number of other cars this time.
We had a long gap while my friend had kids and wasn't allowed to go risking his life round the Ring but a couple of years ago we went back. I have a Mazda6 now which I think has pretty nice handling but again didn't want to wreck it on the track and since I don't drive much, I decided this time I'd pay to be driven round but wouldn't drive myself and paid for a lap in a Jaguar F-type SVR:
Sadly it was a bit wet but still a fantastic lap. Of course I couldn't leave without doing a lap myself so paid to hire a little Suzuki Swift for a couple of laps. This was only 140bhp and didn't have much speed in the straights but whereas the Clio was pretty much just the road going car, the Swift's had been converted to track cars so the inside had been gutted out, race seats and roll cage fitted, lowered suspension, sports exhaust, sticky tyres etc. I wasn't confident enough to get the speed in the corners but still of course fun, mine was the 'Iron Man' car with the red/gold colours and IM in the number plate (same one Guy Martin drives in his documentary):
A few of the other cars on the track:
The mighty Mercedes AMG GT:
Oops, a common sight:
A Rover Metro/100, a 'classic' British car and one of these was my first car. It went to the scrap dealer because the rust was so bad it could no longer be saved and it had blown the head gasket, all entirely typical for this type of car. How this one is still running I've no idea:
Not the sportiest of cars:
Some tourers:
This next one is particularly fun:
I was speaking to a different friend about how slow my Seat felt on the track despite being reasonably quick in legal limits, I wasn't getting much over 120mph and some of the really fast cars are just belting past you like you're sitting still. My friend laughed at this and told me how he'd done the Mongol rally the same as the Yaris above, they'd chosen an early 90's Nissan Micra because they were known for their reliability and simplicity. As they were passing through Germany they decided they would do a lap of the Ring, the plan was they would park up, drop off all the excess stuff (they had lots of spares, tents, luggage etc.) and then do the lap. They couldn't get parked though so swiped through the barrier to go into the overflow carpark but realised they'd made a horrible mistake and had driven onto the main track in a 20 year old, one litre Nissan laden to the hilt. They couldn't even get up to 60mph in the straights so pointed out my car wasn't anywhere near as bad as it was for them.
The track is dangerous particularly for motorcyclists since there's little in the way of runoffs so if you come off it's often going to be bad yet there's plenty of bikes on the same time as the cars:
