Tuesday, 03 August 2010 21:06 | Written by Dale | |
It's a story of a race. A 6-hour race. On the Nürburgring Nordschleife. It was also my first wheel-to-wheel, fighting for position race... In the interests of brevity I've restricted my observations to bullet-points and short videos!
PRE-RACE
Woke at 5.50am after about 4.5 hours sleep. Thanks to the new kid, this is now classed as a great night's sleep!
Arrive at 'ring, park in Lindner Congress car park (not enough passes per team for every driver to park in the pits).
Big fried breakfast.
Walk over to pits carrying the world on my back (kit bag, water crate, helmet bag, cool bag, camera bag, laptop bag)
Fit Video Vbox (this is now essential kit for any race or track car in my eyes)
Watch owner/driver Hoja Muller leave for the first qualifying session in our car. At driver swap I also swap video card and try to understand what makes the pot-bellied German so god-damned fast! He's got a pole-setting 9m34!
The two 'fast' drivers get 2 qualifying laps each, but Steve and me (rookies) get only 1 lap as a practice. I'd done a 10m04s in practice with a passenger, so I wanted a sub-10m lap.
I got a 10m01s. Argh!
Steve has a 'mare of a lap, with yellows and traffic.
Jules breaks into the '30s at last (he started in the '50s, did '40s last meeting) with a 9m37s.
When swapping the qualifying tyres and fitting fresh pads, the mechanics spot a collapsing track-rod end! This is changed with literally 30 seconds before the pit closed!
RACE
We start in the third and last rolling 'grid' purely because of our class, not because of our speed.
Hoja times his rolling start perfectly and out-drags the pole car. Or he flagrently jump-starts. This depends on your view point!
We share the last grid with other classes which include 'historics'... by the time the pack is half-way around the GP circuit, only a BMW M1, an SP E90 car and an E30 M3 are still in front of Hoja! GO GO GERMAN MENTALIST!
Tuesday, 03 August 2010 06:24 | Written by Dale | |
This weekend I was driver #4 in the Manheller/GreenHellRacing E36 M3. It was my first VLN race and a bit of an eye opener... I'll be putting some more photos and videos together soon, but for now enjoy this small piece of action...
Sunday, 01 August 2010 21:00 | Written by Dale | |
This video is a collection of footage from this year's ADAC Eifelrennen at the Nurburgring Nordschleife. It includes both onboard footage and trackside action on this wet meeting... and if there's one thing you learn when racing on 'historic' tyres, it's how to cope with a car going sideways!
This is a beautiful piece of cinematography with the Nürburgring and the Honda NSX as the main ingredients. If you've got the bandwidth you should check out the HD version on Vimeo. Either way, turn it up loud!
Articles
Tuesday, 03 August 2010 21:06 | 
Written by Dale | 
