BAT Nurburgring Track Day

Last weekend Linzi and I drove to the Ring. This was a bit different to all the other trips we’ve had there as this time we were going for a track day rather than just a public day.

A track day at the ‘ring is organised as any other track day is. You need to pay a substantial amount in advance to reserve your slot, there is a safety briefing, there are rules and (usually) only people with track day experience will attend.

A public day at the Ring is quite different – any one with €25 can buy a lap ticket and go round – that includes motorbikes, vans and even coaches. In previous weekends when we’ve been to the ring it has been closed for hours and hours because these people have had accidents and closed the track.

We were really looking forward to the day and were expecting to have some really nice laps with fewer people and less accidents.

Sunday 18th

We drove down on the Sunday. We left fairly early and made pretty good time arriving in Nurburg at about 4:30. When we got there we went straight to the public entrance of the Ring to see if it was open – we didn’t expect it to be but it was worth a check to see if we could get a few extra laps in.

The public entrance was closed but there were road cars going round, there was also a sign that read “Track day, €40 for 30 minutes, entrance on GP straight”. We thought that was worth a go so went round to the GP circuit.

There had been an event running inside the GP circuit and whilst it was on they were running a track day on the Nordschleife.
We decided to have a go and found the office. All we had to provide was some photo ID and our money and we were allowed to take part in this track day for 30 minutes. We did also have to sign a disclaimer that was all in German. I hope I didn’t agree to anything I didn’t mean to!

Whilst we waited for our slot on track we had a look about and saw around 22 identical white E92 M3s like ours all parked up waiting for the next lesson. It was quite a sight!
Once the “track day” started it was like no other track day I had been on. Quite apart from the fact that it only lasted 30 minutes there was no safety briefing, you didn’t need helmets and pretty much anyone seemed to turn up and go round.
We got 3 laps in so the €40 was pretty good value. We did plan just to do easy sighting laps but the car got a bit carried away and they ended up being fairly quick.

It was fantastic to be back on the Ring!

Sunday NIght

When we booked the track day we also booked 2 nights in a local hotel as part of the deal. It was really good value and we wanted to stay with the rest of people on the track day so we could chat in the bar at the end of day.
The hotel that we were all staying in was the Ringhause where we had stayed once before. We weren’t very impressed last time but we hoped it would be better this time.
It wasn’t.
It really isn’t a very bad hotel but not really what Linzi and I are after. It is supposed to cater for a bunch of lads who want to go to the ring and don’t really care about where they sleep. We prefer a bit of comfort at night.
The room was very basic and wasn’t a double despite us asking for one so we had separate beds.
We had a drink in the bar then met some friends who were also on the track day at the nearby Paddock for dinner.

We returned to the hotel and set our alarms for an early start.

Monday

Sign on started at 7:00 the next morning so we had breakfast at about 6:00 and got to the track a little earlier than 7:00. Whilst we were waiting for the registration queue to go down we got the car ready.

As this was a track day and not a public day the rules were a bit different. One change was that you were allowed securely mounted cameras in the car. This was great as we have wanted to get a video of us going round the ring for a long time.
We had hired a 3 camera system from my mate Dario at OnBoardVision.co.uk and I went about fitting it.

The safety briefing started at 8:00. Much of it was the same as every other safety briefing we had been to with a few exceptions. Obviously they did not have enough marshals to cover the whole 13 mile track but they did have around 40 to cover most of it. They also had “roving” marshals who were driving round to look for any problems. I think this system worked pretty well. All attendees were also given a card with emergency numbers on and high-vis jackets to wave as yellow flags if you came across an accident.

Someone from the Nurburgring was also at the briefing to add some comments. I think he did a very good job of making people understand that the ring is very different to any other track that people would have driven. I think this along with the track walk were both contributing factors to the low numbers of accidents that there were that day.
One person asked “are there any road works on the track at the moment” (as there are sometimes). The answer was “At the moment the track is clear. Maybe later in the day there will be some but not at the moment!”.

Just after the safety briefing we were split into 2 groups and did a track walk. We all drove round in our cars very slowly behind an instructor and stopped at 3 points on the circuit. I think this was very useful for Nurburgring Newbies. It wasn’t about how to go fastest round the track but I think was designed to give people some respect for the track. Several times we were told “this corner is very hard for light cars that tend to go through the barrier over there”. Most of the people there were in Caterhams so I heard lots of people muttering that they had brought the wrong car.
At the first place we stopped he said “this part of the track is actually very good as you can actually see what’s coming” which got a few chuckles from the people listening.

One thing I did learn during the track walk is that some of the corners have a white dot painted at the turn in point. They are hard to spot at speed but can help you out if you do see them.

After the track walk we did a sighting lap, again behind an instructor. The idea was to try and teach people the line but with over 100 corners I’m not sure how much people would have remembered!

At 10:00 the track finally opened for proper laps. The weather was fantastic (although in an ideal world would have been a bit cooler). In total we did 15 laps – 10 for me and 5 for Linzi. Linzi got a sub 10 minute lap and I just beat my previous best time with a 8:53 lap.

Compared to public days the track was virtually empty the whole time we were going round and the quality of the driving was very high. By this I mean that there were few accidents and generally people got out of your way quickly, not that everyone was putting in very fast laps.
About the only instances of bad driving was when we got stuck behind a caterham for around a minute and a half and when we saw a Ferrari undertake a Lotus. Other than that it was fantastic.

We didn’t have too many cars coming past us on the day but one car that did go past us very fast and several times was a Ferrari which I think was from a racing team. He was absolutely flying! You can see and hear him go past us here. Watch how fast he appears in the rear view camera! On the same outing after we have completed 2 laps he goes past us again here. Looking at the time codes on the original video it only took him 19:20 to do 3 laps (assuming he didn’t pit). That’s a lap time going on for 6:30 (although not complete laps as he missed out the straight on one lap).

He was certainly trying hard and unfortunately he was one of the accidents that occurred that day. You can see the Ferrari in the side here and being winched onto the lorry here. Apparently he damaged the sump, got oil on the track and on his rear wheels and spun into the barrier. The car which was worth around £200k was pretty much written off so I am told.

The camera system worked brilliantly. We’ve got some really good videos. It turns out that the start and end points for the lap that I have been using are a little off. They do not correspond properly with the bridge and gantry locations. It is only a little off though and is the same as the points I have used previously so is valid for comparison.

My fastest lap of the day was 8:53 as I previously mentioned. It was a flying lap (meaning that I wasn’t starting form the pits) but on looking at the speed at the start of the lap on circuit tools this didn’t give me any advantage. I was actually slower than on a previous non-flying lap. The video is below. To view in HD view it on YouTube.

The bings you can hear on the video are fuel warnings. At the start of the previous lap I comment that we we might not have enough fuel for 2 laps and we only just did. When we finished the lap we only had 8 miles range left. The 2 warning normally go off around 30 miles apart. On the track they were only just over a minute apart!

Before this weekend I think that I had done 70 laps of the ring, I did 13 this weekend making a total of 83. I’m getting pretty close to the 100 laps where they say you can be fairly confident you know what is coming next. I already do feel fairly confident but it’ll be nice to get to 100. We’re going back to the ring later in the year for 2 days before a 2 day Spa track day. I am sure I’ll crack 100 laps that weekend.
Linzi brought her lap total up to 25.

You can see all the videos from the day below:

Giles

lap 1 lap 2 lap 3 lap 4 lap 5 lap 6 lap 7 lap 8 lap 9 lap 10

Linzi

lap 1 lap 2 lap 3 lap 4

All the pictures I took and the ones we bought from bookATrack.com are here.

All ready for the ‘Ring

On Monday we’ve got our first track day in a while and our first track day at the Nurburgring. All the other times we’ve been to the ring it’s been a public day open to anyone with a lap ticket. This time it is an organised track day which means that only a restricted number of people will be there. It also means that we’ll be able to do flying laps and take a camera system.

Seeing as we had canvas showing at the end of the last track day we’ve had to replace the tyres. We got a set of Toyo Proxes 888s. While we were at it we also got a set of Pagid RS19 pads.

They are all fitted to the car and ready to go. I do need to run the tyres and pads in before hammering them on the track but the drive over should be fine for that.

It was a bit tricky fitting the pads and took me a while. Now that I’ve done it once though and now that I have all the tools that I need it should be much quicker next time. It shouldn’t add too much extra time beyond changing the wheels over which we do anyway.

Highlander 5

Highlander has always been one of our favourite car meets. It has a lot going for it – the beautiful scenery of Scotland, virtually empty roads and a fantastic bunch of regulars who mostly travel all the way up to Scotland to enjoy themselves.

Linzi and I have been involved in organising Highlander meets since 2006 when we did Highlander 2. Since then we have helped with Highlander 3 and Highlander 4. In 2009 there was no Highlander as the organisers were busy with other things and a lot had moved away from Scotland. The event was obviously missed though as lots of people asked if there would be one in 2010. Linzi and I decided that we would do one and with help from Carrie we got down to organising it.

To make the job a bit easier we copied the routes and stops from Highlander 2 – regarded as most as the best meet we’d managed. This picture was taken at the picnic on day 2 of the original Highlander 2. The weather was fantastic!

We hoped for similar weather this time round but unfortunately we weren’t that lucky.

Friday

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Friday was when it all started and we met at Luss as usual. After milling around a bit Linzi did a driver briefing then Group 1 - the Canny Clootie Dumplings left led by Dario. About 10 minutes later Group 2 – the Stoatin Stovies left led by Spokey. 5 minutes after that Group 3 – the Havering Haggis’ left led by me – the midges were hungry and we didn’t want to wait any longer.

The weather could best be described as grey and worse be described as raining hard! Despite this some of our group – Steve and Elaine especially - seemed determined to keep the roof down. This was fine and they stayed dry as long as we were moving fast enough!

We did come across quite a bit of traffic – including a moving mobile home that was completely impassable. Luckily our group wasn’t stuck behind it for too long.

Despite the weather and the traffic we still had fun. We always break these drives up quite a bit so have lots of stops for photos or coffee so that you can have a chat with the other people in our group. As we’ve been doing this for so long all the people in our group – and for the most part on the weekend are no longer counted as people from the forum but as friends so it’s always great to catch up.

The traffic eased up quite a bit after the last stop and we had a great final blast to Ullapool.

The evening was spent in the dining room enjoy a good meal and tackling the quiz that Carrie had put together. Our table really didn’t do very well but it was still good fun. After the meal we retired to the bar.

Saturday

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As we didn’t have as far to cover on Saturday we had a late start at around 10:00 after a fantastic breakfast. You can see our planned route above but as lunch was packed lunches from the hotel people were free to go where they wanted. 2 groups did the planned route whilst a couple of people did the Applecross pass and some others drove to Inverness.

We did the planned route. The roads were fantastic and for the most part empty (apart from one Mercedes that just would not let us past). The scenery in this part of the world is just fantastic and makes the 400 mile drive to Scotland completely worth it.

Unfortunately the weather was a bit poor again. We did have some pretty torrential rain but for the most part it was varying levels of drizzle. At lunch – when we were really hoping for good weather for the picnic – it was still wet but not too bad so we could eat our picnic out of our cars. It just wasn’t a good idea to eat it sat on the ground. Fortunately we had some picnic chairs with us – the benefits of driving a sensible car like an M3 with a big boot!

When we got back to the hotel we sat in the bar for a bit before getting ready for dinner. This time during dinner we had a raffle and a “Hide your Haggis” game to raise money to keep the forum going. Both went very well. When you hid your haggis you had to find berried treasure in the peat bog and whoever found it won a very coveted photo book charting the history of all the previous Highlanders.
After dinner we retired to the bar again for a few drinks before bed.

Sunday

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On Sunday we had to make our way back down south before we all went our separate ways. During the day people broke off at various stops to make their way home until at the end we just had a couple of small groups who made it to the finish point at Aberfoyle.

The weather was a bit better than the previous 2 days but it wasn’t really completely dry at any point. We had some more fantastic roads and didn’t have too much trouble with traffic.

We had a fantastic weekend – the driving was great, the company was great – the weather could have been better! In total there were 17 cars and 32 people and as far as I can tell everyone enjoyed themselves. The pictures I took are all here. Unfortunately there aren’t that many because my camera ran out of batteries.

Track Stickers

Ages ago at a Spa track day we saw a car with a series of track outline stickers on indicating which track days it had been on. We really liked this idea and I’ve been meaning to do something similar for a while.

I’ve now managed to get organised and do this. At the rear of the car we have a largish Nurburgring outline on the right and smaller outlines of Rockingham, Bedford and Spa on the left. We also have smaller versions on the side of the car under the ///M side gill:

I think of them as badges of honour or something :) I’m looking forward to adding more as we attend more track days.

We also liked the way that rally drivers have their names and nationality on the car:

So we wanted to go for something similar. The flags didn’t really work out but we got our names on the car:

It says L. Roadnight on the other side for Linzi.

If you want some similar stickers we got all these done by Geoff at creative vinyls. He’s always very helpful and can do pretty much anything you ask for.

RAF Odiham 18th April 2010

Last weekend Linzi and I had our first RMA track day at RAF Odiham. This was our first RMA event and as we had heard good things about RMA we were looking forward to it and were expecting good things. Unfortunately neither Linzi or I enjoyed the day very much and we were both disappointed.

Briefing

The day started as usual with a briefing. The briefing was entertaining and did contain some safety information such as not dropping litter (it’s bad for helicopters) and overtaking procedures. It didn’t talk about any of the other usual safety concerns such as safety in the paddock, the fact that you were supposed to wear long sleeves and trousers and a helmet, the number of passengers you are allowed in the car and strangest of all no mention of the flags that would be used was made.

Track

If I had done a bit more research before we went I would have realised what the track was going to be like. Even the RMA employed instructor who came out with me was saying how rubbish the track was.

The track consisted of a mile long straight followed by a chicane and a long right hander. The back straight had a ridiculous slalom type section followed by an incredibly narrow chicane. There was then another long right hander back onto the track.

After lunch they had actually changed the set up of the track a little to widen the very narrow chicane and to reduce the number of turns on the slalom section.

The track layout was very boring with no particularly exciting or interesting bits.

One of the supposed advantages of using an air field for a track day is the safety of not hitting anything if you get it wrong. Bedford is like that and is very safe. Odiham was not however. There was lots of equipment such as lights along side the runway and support roads. We were also warned about a severe drop at the end of the runway and 45 gallon drums filled with concrete dotted around the runway that are used for training.

The runway surface was pretty rough and had a bad affect on my tyres, the very long straight was also tough on the brakes as you slowed from around 150 MPH to around 30 MPH. The runway had lots of painted markings on, especially on the corner where you enter the straight. This caused different levels of grip as you go round the corner. I hate to think what it would have been like in the wet!

Running of the Day

As RMA had a reputation for being the best and most prestigious track day organisers we were expecting any problems to be resolved very quickly and the track to re-open very soon after any problems.

This wasn’t really the case though. There were very few marshals on the course and problems on the track were not resolved quickly.
For most of the morning there were broken bits of caterham just after the chicane on the back straight. This was not cleared up until lunch as far as I can remember.
After lunch there was also a squashed cone just after the slalom right in the racing line that was not removed for quite a while.

RMA allow you to overtake whenever and pretty much however you like. You can overtake on either side of the track. If you are being over taken your job is just to stay on the line and let others pass you off line. As far as I know all other track day organisers only allow overtaking on the left with an indication from the car being passed that they consent to being overtaken.

RMA’s rules mean that if you are a slower car you can’t move out of the way and let cars past in a safe way. It also means that cars can be passing you on both sides at the same time which is a pretty dis-concerting experience.
It is this reason more than any other that we won’t be going back to another RMA track day.

Training

I had some training as usual on the day. I have to say that I didn’t find the training as useful as I have done previous sessions. Scott’s training at Bedford for example was fantastic. Scott was constantly telling me what I should be doing and I just had to follow his instruction. This was a great way to learn the track and meant that I could enjoy the day much more.

The training at Odiham however largely consisted of the instructor telling me that I knew how to drive the car fast and how to brake ect but that I didn’t think about the track and how to get round the corners best. He also said that I had no interest in learning how to drive well, I just wanted to drive fast! I beg to differ as I make a point of getting training at each track day in the hope that I will improve.

On the other hand I am not training to become a racing driver. My instructor was saying how he can look at a track and analyse the best way to get round each and every corner. He said that that is difficult and that it would be hard for me to learn that. 75% of this session was spent sat stationary in the paddock after only about 3 laps actually driving round the track.

When we were driving round the track he on several occasions said that coming out of the chicane I would just stamp my foot down flat on the floor using full throttle. I really wasn’t – you can hear on the video the gradual increase in engine tone as I apply power coming out of the corner.

On a track day I don’t have the skill to analyse the entire track and plan the best route round myself. In the limited time that I have I would much rather be given some help with the line so I can enjoy the track.

I am sure my instructor is very talented and everything he told me was correct. His teaching style really didn’t work for me though.

This was the first track day that we’ve been on that we regretted spending the money on (over £350). We won’t be doing another RMA day and I don’t think we’ll be doing another airfield day.

It’s going to be a little while before we do another track day. We need to spend a bit of money on the car before we do another track day. We need to buy a new set of tyres (Toyo 888s) and we’ve decided to upgrade the brakes before the next track day so we don’t get as many problems with brake fade and overheating discs.

There are a few pictures from the day here and a couple of videos from the morning and afternoon.

Higgins Forest Experience Rally School

Last weekend I was lucky enough to have a place on a full day course at the Higgins Rally School. I was given the experience as a Christmas present by my wife Linzi.

I had been on a previous rally experience day before at a race track that had made it’s own rally stage along the side of the main track. This was for my stag do and it was a good laugh as I had a load of mates there but the driving was pretty disappointing. The cars were old and slow with only the vaguest sense of control over which gear they were going to go in and the stage was rubbish.

I was hoping that the Higgins school would be better – and it was, much much better. It was the sort of thing that I was hoping that I would get on my previous experience, a real rally stage through the middle of a welsh forest, really good instruction and decent amount of time behind the wheel.

I had a full day booked so we were at the school from 9 in the morning till about 5. There were 2 cars and 6 people per car. There was some waiting around for your go but it was a lovely day and there were plenty of other attendees to talk to so that wasn’t a problem.

I was lucky enough to have David Higgins, the 2002 British Group N champion as my instructor for the day. David was a fantastic instructor and a great host for the day as well.
The first 2 sessions of the day were just a familiarisation of the car and were the only 2 sessions where we did exactly the same stage. On my first outing things didn’t seem to be going that well as I ended up fishtailing down a straight! I was told to just keep my foot down and keep going, just afterwards however David said “I think you’ve got a flat in your rear left tyre” and sure enough when we stopped I did!
My second outing – without the flat - went much better. After every outing you got some feedback from your instructor telling you what you were doing wrong and how you could improve. Inside the car you were given a helmet with a headset so it was very easy to communicate in the very noisy car.

I felt that I was doing ok in the car but I wasn’t perfect. I was having problems with my braking – which is one of the most important things to get right. I had recently learnt on track days never to coast round a corner – you should always be either on the throttle or the brakes. In rallying this is not true though. I tended to go too hard on the brakes initially rather than gently using the brakes to transfer the weight before really pressing them. I was also on the throttle too quickly after finishing braking. This transferred the weight to the back of the car and caused under steer. I knew what I was doing wrong but I couldn’t seem to stop doing it.

Mid way through the morning we were introduced to hand brake turns. David did a demonstration and we then all got to have several goes so we got it right before we did another run finishing with a hand brake turn.

Up to now all the runs we had done were about 2 –3 miles long. That doesn’t sound much but it certainly doesn’t feel short when you’re driving it. After lunch though we did a 7 mile stage which really did feel long and it was difficult to keep your concentration level up for that long.

Lastly we did our timed runs – we did 2 timed stages and ended each of them with 2 hand brake turns in the area where everyone waits. The time for the 2 runs are then added together. You probably saw the picture of the trophy at the top of this blog but you might not have seen the text at the bottom that says “Winner”! I was very pleased that I managed to not only come first in my car but also get a better time than the winner in the other car – but I’ll try not to gloat too much (the trophy is now kept in a very safe place so no one can steal it!).

I had an absolutely fantastic time and I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys any sort of driving. If you do want to give rallying a go don’t try it at your local track on a stage they’ve made up. Have a go with a proper rally instructor on a proper rally course in Wales.

Have a look at the website for the school. I’ve also taken a few more pictures on the day of the lovely Welsh scenery.

Next Track Day Booked: RAF Odiham April 18th

We’ve booked our next track day. This time it’s with RMA at RAF Odiham on the 18th April. A friend of ours in a caterham will be there and I hope my friend Dario from On Board Vision will be there as well so we can get some good videos.

Can’t wait.