Touristenfahrt
Nürburgring re-opens after repairs
- Details
- Parent Category: Nurburgring
- Created on Wednesday, 14 March 2012 13:58
- Last Updated on Tuesday, 24 April 2012 22:04
- Published on Wednesday, 14 March 2012 13:58
- Written by Dale
There were smiles all round this weekend, when the Nürburgring Nordschleife re-opened after nearly a month of repair work. Hundreds of people returning from the Geneva autoshow got to sample the circuit and its new surfaces.
Despite the changeable weather and still-muddy tarmac, only a couple of drivers ended up buying guardrail over the three-day weekend*. Personally, I had to get back in to the groove of briefing new drivers and completing paperwork at Rent4Ring. With a whole bunch of new nurburgring rental cars on the fleet, there were a lot of new customers eager to get out on track as soon as possible...
Above is Scott from the USA. I shot this as he was getting to grips with the new Rent4Ring MX5. He even posted a video to youtube here. Not surprisingly, he was able to test the removable hard-top shortly after this photo was taken. Yes, the weekend turned wet. Saturday late afternoon turned to rain. And Sunday morning was a washout. Understandably, many drivers and customers ended up chatting in the office...
... and that's how I ended up taking a spin with a Japanese fellow named Junji. It turns out that back home he has a Mazda RX-8 too, and he enjoys tracking it regularly. I couldn't resist. The office was quiet, no customers were waiting. We went for a lap in the wet...
About half of the other cars we saw out there on Sunday morning had, unfortunately, crashed. Including a silver Mustang at Hatzenbach. The tarmac wasn't just slippery from the rain, but also from the dirt dragged around by the dozens of construction vehicles over the last month. Even with all the drifing and correcting, we both spotted plenty of new patches of tarmac.
So later in the day, as the sun re-emerged and the surface dried out again, I took my first steady lap in the Rent4Ring Artega GT. Rent4Ring have taken on two of these mid-engined sportscars for this year, and it was my first chance to drive it on track. The idea was that I'd have a good scout around and check out which bumps have disappeared, which have re-appeared and find the newly surfaced sections. It's always easier to see these kinds of changes in the dry.
Take a look at the video yourself, it's shot on the Drift HD170. If you've done a few laps you should be able to get a good idea of what's been improved. The biggest single change is the resurfacing all the way from Pflanzgarten 3 to Mini-Karussell. It's unbelievably grippy compared to last year, even in the wet. The bump at Breidschied bridge has been much reduced, as well as some nice work being done to the older tarmac after the main Karussell.
On Monday there was no driving at all for me, despite the much-improved weather. Plenty of other customers got to drive though; including these two Le Mans LMP1 pilots.
Bas Leinders and Maxime Martin will be competing in this year's Nürburgring 24hr race in a factory-supplied BMW Z4 GT3. Despite their decades of experience, they had never driven the Nordschleife before. So they took Rent4Ring's brand-new Suzuki Swift Stage 2+ out for a whopping 12 laps in only a couple of hours. And how did they come back? With big smiles on their faces, of course.
*My thoughts are with the Z4 convertible pilot who accidentally got to test the roll-over strength of the front windscreen (hint: it's rubbish). I hope everything heals OK, and I'm sure everybody on BTG wishes you the same good health. At least you got a free helicopter ride!
Comments
And nice car and specs that Artega!
Regarding the Z4 driver, he´s Oli, a memeber of the 2TheRing forum, one of our best and fastest in his old Speedster. The car was just bought recently and unfortunately, he went really quick from the beginning, on 6 year old tires. Thankfully, he is quite ok and recovering, but shouldn´t be coming back any time soon, out of respect for his family.
The crash pictures were quite horrifying, but in the end, it´s mostly metal than flesh that got hurt, thankfully!
Rolling over with a cab at nearly 200 is not the best thing ever !
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