A Day at the
Nürburgring Nordschleife
written in July 1999
On Saturday 10th July, I went to the Nürburgring motor racing circuit, to watch a small-time 4 hour car race.  I was fortunate to have the company of John Ticic and Ralf Zantopp – both MVS System Programmers at Gerling (an insurance company in Köln).  I met John through the internet last December – we're both subscribed to the IBM-MAIN group, (as is Ralf).  They showed me around the race circuit area.  John often drives a Mazda RX7 around the Nordschleife.  The picture on the right is a scan of the mousepad he gave me, showing his Mazda in action several months ago:

First, a brief overview of this very unusual setup (refer to the map below) :   There's the town of Nürburg, which (as the name suggests) is built around a castle (Burg – pronounced "borg") on a hill (Berg).  It costs DM 4 to go into what seems to be a museum inside the remains of the old castle.  I didn't have time to go in, so I just took pictures of the outside.
In about 1928, the government built a long motor racing circuit around that town and some others.  The circuit was used for international Grand Prix racing until the end of 1976, when it was declared unsafe for that category.  Its main problem was its length – over 20 km.  Rescuing someone can be a serious time-wasting problem.  You can't go cross country, because it's mostly through forest country.  Niki Lauda nearly burnt to death in a crash fire there in the 1976 German Grand Prix.  He was terrified of the place, and didn't want to race.  His fear became reality.  Being such a long track, it takes a long time to learn.  Some non-local drivers would arrive at a bend, thinking that they were at another one, because the approach scenery looked the same.  That could be disastrous.
Therefore, the circuit was divided into 2 sections :
  1. The modern Grand Prix circuit of 4.556 km.  It's not on the attached map, but its position is indicated in the bottom left corner (on the outskirts of Nürburg).
  2. The Nordschleife (northern loop) of 20.832 km.  One of its thousands of afficionados has an excellent website at http://home.sol.no/~espenm3/nordschleife.html (deleted since I wrote the story, so try these instead) –
    http://www.nordschleife.no/
    http://mitglied.lycos.de/bastianteiwes/html/nordschleife.html
    http://member.rivernet.com.au/btaylor/BMWText/entertainment/NurburgringRouteTo.html
    http://adac.24h-rennen.de/index.asp?sprache=eng&content=
The 2 loops are often used together, although each one can be a circuit in its own right.

The Nordschleife racetrack is marked in red; main public roads in light grey; towns in dark grey.
We started watching at km 8, in the town of Breidscheid (near the top of the map, in the green area, where the track goes on a bridge over the public road).  Later, we moved to km 16 – an excellent viewing area, with a 200 x 200 metre car park.  (This is all open to the public, at no charge).

Peter Zakowski won the race; he's in a wealthy family, and is the only competitor who can afford a Chrysler Viper GTS (powered by an 8 litre V10 engine).  Apparently, the fast Porsches are much cheaper, but are at least 17 seconds per lap too slow.  In the lesser classes, there were lots of BMW M3 cars, both old and new.  That seemed to be the most numerous single model of car.
We saw 2 "racing incidents" during the event, both at km 16 –
1.  A BMW M3 came into our view too quickly (around the bend), and went sideways into the concrete wall.  The driver recovered his mental composure, and drove away without completely stopping.  You can just see the car at the left side of this picture (partly obscured by a bush).
The descent in this picture is about 20 metres.

The bend in the foreground here is the one in the background of the pictures below.

2.  A red Porsche 911 and a Mercedes came down the steep dipper, with an overtaking manoeuvre just about to happen.  The Merc, just in front, began to spin as the front brakes locked briefly.  The driver rescued it before anything more serious happened, but did some off-road rallying.
(All of this was at about 130 km/h).

There was no contact between the 2 cars.  However, the Porsche driver, expecting a collision, over-reacted with his brakes, and sent his car spinning (as you see here in the middle of the track) ...

... into the triple-height Armco barrier with a loud thud.  The car rebounded back onto the track, where it quickly came to a halt (a half-spin after this picture was taken), but the driver didn't move.  After 2 or 3 minutes, the flag marshall decided to run down and help.  Fortunately, the driver only needed someone to help open his heavily modified door, and he was quickly away from danger.  There was general applause as the small crowd started to breathe freely again.  The Merc drove away unscathed, but didn't do another lap.
The white sign at top of picture says "KM 16."

If you're keen to try your racing ability, you can do so on the Nordschleife – they have general open times.  One lap costs DM 25 for a car, or DM 27 for a motorcycle.  However, you need to join a long queue, and the other traffic isn't necessarily what you expect.  John tells me that one day, he overtook the same bus twice, on successive laps. (yes – a bus!)   Another day, he was sent out onto the grass at 260 km/h while trying to overtake an inattentive BMW driver near the end of the 3 km long straight.
They have one rule on the track – wear a helmet.  As for legal liability – everybody pays for damage to their own vehicle (like in racing).  Don't expect to win any compensation or punitive damages from the circuit owner – this isn't the USA.  On race day, we noticed an 80 km/h speed limit sign on the circuit at km 8, but it's never enforced, and almost everybody's out there to improve their personal best time.  In a typical year, 3 people die on the circuit – almost invariably motorcyclists.  Before you start frowning too much, consider that those are the guys who would kill themselves on the roads, if the track weren't there.

Your vehicle isn't covered by any form of insurance while doing this, so it might be wise to take the Ring Taxi.  Last year's model was a BMW 540i, shown here (picture copied from a web site).  It's driven by a local expert racing driver.

From the bit I saw, the circuit is very similar in nature to the Mt. Panorama circuit at Bathurst.  There are steep mountainous sections, and long flat sections.  It's more than 3 times as long – (20.832 km against 6.213 km).  John tells me that it's not all smooth like the bit in this picture.  However, like the Mt. Panorama circuit, this one has been progressively upgraded over the years.

At the racetrack, I received my first sunburn in the northern hemisphere.  I had some sunscreen lotion at home, but never thought about bringing it.

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