Day 8, 13 May – Nurburgring

Would you look at that! Blue sky with high cirrus clouds. Maybe our weather worm is finally turning? I’ve felt this way a couple times on the trip already, though, so I’m not going to get my hopes up just yet.

Today was our big Nurburgring day; really the only reason we’re not still in France somewhere. I had purchased our BMW Ring Taxi ticket last December, and booked our ride back in late Februrary. I got some bad news in April that the export plates that are used for the various European Delivery programs are no longer allowed on the Ring, so that put a huge potential damper on the day; since I was really hoping to be able to take my 3er around a few times. I was hopeful about getting at least one other lap as a passenger in another car, but even that wasn’t a guarantee.

We got up and got ready. You should have seen me trying to take a bath/shower. It would have made a great “funniest home videos” sketch. No shower curtain, and the hose/shower head was positioned very low, by the main faucet. Additionally, there were very few electrical outlets, so I had to jury rig an extension cord so Angela could use her hair dryer in front of a mirror.

The ‘Ring isn’t but 20km or so our hotel, and it was a very easy and fun drive to get there. When we got there, it was pretty much what I had envisioned in my mind’s eye. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as I would have thought, given that it’s a weekend day and the weather is so nice. While Angela sat in the car reading, I made a quick lap of the car park, taking note of the sign by the ticket machine and office explicitly forbidding cars with export plates from driving on the track. Damn! I thought to myself that maybe if it got crowded enough, I could slide through in relative obscurity assuming that the marshal wouldn’t want to break the line just to get me out of it. Unfortunately, the track never really got busy enough to even attempt my plan. The thing of it is, I think I could have gotten out, since I saw several cars driving with plates that I thought were “verboten.”

Anyway, back to the Taxi ride. Since it was just Angela and me, I offered to allow the Ring Taxi operators to try to line up a third passenger. It turns out that a guy from San Francisco was there and wanted a ride in the Taxi. He introduced himself as Jeff, and we settled on a price of 50 euros and a passenger lap around in his 325d rental. I was a little disappointed that our Taxi Driver wasn’t the famous Sabine, or Hans Stuck, but her name was Claudia Hurtgen, and she has quite the pedigree in sports car racing. The lap itself was pretty much over as soon as it started. I was able to instantly recognize most all of the corner complexes from driving the track on my Xbox. The couple of things I noticed were that the track surface itself is very bumpy; there is not nearly as much runoff room on the real thing as on the Xbox; the turn complexes are much more compact than on the Xbox; and no video game will ever give you the same sense of elevation changes as the real thing will. Anyway, Claudia flung the M5 taxi around like she knew what she was doing, and before I really got into it, she was slowing down on the Dottinger Hoehe straight and exiting the track.

My pax lap with Jeff, while not nearly as fast, was just as enjoyable. He was much more conservative and more accommodating of other traffic on the track, but my lap with him was his 8th of the day, so he had a decent grasp of the track surface and where the traffic would get bunched up.

Since it was obvious that I wasn’t going to get to drive the circuit, I decided to find some of the more famous spectating spots and try to get some action shots of the Taxi. I found the spots at Brunnchen and Flanzgarten and was able to get some decent shots of various cars going around; including the Taxi.

After a quick lunch at the trackside café, the Grunne Holle, I set out to find a place to watch the Spanish F1 Grand Prix. I found one in the bar of the Dorint hotel, right on the grounds of the F1 GP track. I was very surprised at the total lack of interest in the race among the folks at the track. I fully expected the various places showing the race to be packed with motorsports enthusiasts taking a break from driving the Ring. Not so; the bar was practically empty. I watched most of the race, and went back to Angela who was waiting in the car. We drove around a little; walked up to the ruins of the Schloss Nurburg, and headed back to the hotel around 5 or so.

Another good dinner in the hotel restaurant (Lamb pot pie for me and cheese spaetzle for Angela), and we are all settled in to watch a couple more episodes of Heroes.

Tomorrow, we are going to drive the Mosel valley from Burg Eltz, past Cochem and Beilstein, and down to Buernkastle-Kues and then back to the hotel. It’s supposed to be a marvelous drive, so we’re looking forward to it. Maybe if we finish up early enough, I might try my plan on the ‘Ring tomorrow evening.