It’s absolutely one of the most common questions I used to face when I worked at Rent4Ring. “What do I do if some guy bumps into me and it’s not even my fault?”
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The answer I would give in those days (and the answer I’d still give right now) is simple:
“Those kinds of accidents are very rare, sir/ma’am. Most Nürburgring crashes are one car, one corner, one mistake. Drive your own car, stay right, don’t worry about the wannabe Bellofs…”
And then a video like this emerges… step inside Bart’s Starlet GT-Turbo #ringtool (which is driving PERFECTLY on the right-side of the track) for a healthy dose of “what if that happens to me” nightmares:
Now I have to admit, I’m a bit skeptical at times, and when Bart asked me in the car park, on the same day it happened, I basically said he had two choices.
- Contact Polizei straight away, make a statement, get them to interview the Ferrari driver and take his statement, then inform your insurance company and ride the paperwork train to destination unknown. Ultimately, it will come down to two German lawyers arguing in front of a German judge who may or may not know how the Nürburgring works. Maybe you win, maybe you lose.
- Shake hands with the other driver, agree that there’s no real harm done and walk away. Life sucks, etc…
Now, as sensible and stoical as option 2 might be… here’s a brain shock: legally speaking option 2 is NOT EVEN AN OPTION! For all you trackday and racing junkies, you’re a long way from Kansas, Dorothy.
Yep, because the Nordschleife operates under STVO (road traffic laws), technically speaking, every single collision and incident should be reported to the Polizei and the insurance paperwork freight train should be hauling a bumper load of claims away from every weekend.
What does this mean?
It means we can watch this video and hope VERY HARD that shit like this doesn’t happen to us. Luckily for Bart, in the video above, I’m gonna guess that his scratched ringtool Starlet suffered considerably less damage than the Black Ferrari 458.
And he got a cool video too.
UPDATE: Bart shared some photos of his Starlet (which is actually GT-Turbo, NOT a Glanza as I first wrote)
