Race a GT3 Cup at the Nurburgring in 8 weeks, car provided, reasonably priced…
05-04-2011, 02:13 AM
#19
Rennlist Member
Thread Starter
Ring reminds me of (I think) Jeremy Clarkson's quote about (I think) the Viper...."It's as stupid and wonderful as a pet elephant..."
05-04-2011, 09:48 AM
#20
Rennlist Member
The first VLN of the year
My cautionary tale about racing for the first time in the VLN, but then I don't drive flat out, either.
Thursday, 31 March. One of my great life skills is sleeping. Rarely am I not sound asleep within a few minutes of getting in bed, and I'm even pretty good at sleeping on planes. Lots of practice these past two years. Thursday night was different. It was 00:25 and no matter how I tried, I could not stop thinking. Had I bitten off more than I could chew? Had I jumped into the deep end without a parachute? You pick the mixed metaphor; I was thinking it. Finally I took half an Ambien tablet, a small half, and fell asleep.
Friday, 1 April. The alarm sounded at 05:30 and I came wide awake. Shower and off to the South Kensington Underground station with my roller bag and briefcase to catch the 06:35 Circle Line train to Paddington--the first Circle Line train of the day. Heathrow Express to Terminal 5 and then a 08:25 BA flight to Frankfurt. Slept fitfully on the plane. Landed late because of air traffic delays and found the Sixt rental desk to get my rental car. (The attendant smiled at my Greek passport and UK driving licence, was disappointed that I do not speak Greek and upgraded me to a much nicer car.) Arrived at Nürburg around 13:00 and dragged my bags to the paddock. The NexD team had Box (garage) 24, shared with three other teams.
Upon arrival at Box 24, a friend advised me to get my kit teched pronto. I dragged overalls, underwear, balaclava, gloves, boots, socks, HANS and helmet to Box 3 and joined the queue. After about 30 minutes, I was near the front of the queue when my friend walked back from the front and told me that his (new) helmet did not pass inspection. It did not have a silver FIA sticker on the back, and the Snell SA2010 sticker was not sufficient. The tech staff directed him to the Stand 21 trailer. Soon he was back with the bad news that Stand 21 would only sticker their brand of helmet. He had an Arai and I had my old SA2000 Impact helmet. I reached the front of the line and my gear was checked. My helmet failed, even though it had a 2009 MSA (UK racing) sticker. The SCCA, Riesentöter PCA and LeMons stickers were not persuasive either. In addition, my HANS (which is required in the VLN) also failed. The HANS itself had a valid FIA sticker, but the tethers did not have FIA approval printed on them. I knew that I wanted a new SAH2010 helmet that met the Snell head restraint standard so I decided to buy one at the track--more expensive than buying one in the US, but I needed one that day. As it turned out, the vendors in the paddock had lots of expensive SA2005 helmets, but no SAH2010s that I could find. Whilst I was at the Arai trailer a couple of drivers were asking why their new Arai helmets purchased in the US did not have the required FIA stickers. They worked around the issue by borrowing a new helmet from the Arai crew, just for tech. That was a good idea for them. I bought new tethers, sporting the FIA logo, for €70 and passed tech too. (I thought that price outrageous, but I later learned that the tethers are US$65 from my regular vendor, so it was not all that bad.) At least my MSA International C licence with FIA visa worked a treat.
We had practice from 16:00 to 18:00. Jürgen, one of my co-drivers with a few thousand laps on the circuit, also runs a Ring taxi at the Friday practice. Racers can pay a fee and take guests for a ride, and some teams have many guests to defray their expenses. Jügen just had three, and it was a good thing as his M3 had a problem. He used car number 447, our BMW 325i, to fulfil his obligations and then he gave me a one-lap ride to refamiliarize myself with the circuit and the car. I then had the car for four laps--almost enough time to figure out the short Grand Prix course that, together with the 26 km Nordschleife, constituted our circuit. My laps were uneventful, but worrying slow. More on that later.
Friday night was pizza with a friend and then early to bed. If I had a hard time sleeping Thursday night, Friday was much worse. I kept driving the track in my head, but not effectually.
Saturday, 2 April. The alarm rang at 05:30, but I was already awake. I dressed in all my kit and filled up on the traditional German breakfast of eggs, bread rolls, cold cuts, sausage, orange juice and coffee. I was not to eat again until dinner at 20:00. The drivers meeting was at 07:30. The drive from my hotel to the track was slow--lots of fog. With 165 cars and two to four drivers per car there were a lot of people in the room. I signed in and took a place at the front.
The people running the meeting did not look much like they were current drivers, but they did look much as the SCCA bigwigs. Just as the meeting started Sabine Schmitz, who would be driving a Porsche GT3R, arrived at sat a row in front of me.
She did not seem to pay much attention to the briefing. I guess she had heard it all many times before. For me, it was harder. The oral instruction was all in German, and the English on the slides was not all that easy to follow, but I got the gist of it, but for one significant point. More on that later.
Qualifying was 08:30-10:00. Each driver must complete at least one lap in the car in order to race. The track was thoroughly wet. Our first thought was to wait about 20 minutes and then go out on slicks. As the weather did not clear very quickly we decided instead to go out on wets. Each of us was to do two laps, me first. As I got into the car, the team explained that I was doing it all wrong. Usually I will get in without my helmet on , buckle in and then put on my helmet and attach the HANS. The crew chief explained that I should have all my gear on and just get in the car. two crew members would then strap me in and attach my radio gear. Unfortunately, in the US we have two styles of plugs, IMSA and Nascar. I had Nascar. They had IMSA. No adapter and therefore no radio for me. More on that later, too.
My qualifying laps were uneventful, although it was nice to be able to keep up with the fast cars in the tight bits. The track started to dry more thoroughly and we put Jürgen, our third driver, on slicks for one quicker lap. He ran P2, but some of the other cars in V4 got one more lap on slicks than we did and pushed us back to P7. We had some time to breathe before the race started at 12:00.
Our third driver was Viktor. I knew something was up when I saw photographers clustered around him. He had arranged a ride in a GT3, but when the team could not get enough drivers and cancelled, Viktor decided to drive with us. We decided that he would start, having had lots of VLN races under his belt, I would drive second and Jürgen would finish. Each of us would do eight laps. More on that, later, too.
On the grid I noticed that our car was now sporting a Rage logo along with our names. You can read about Viktor (and Rage) here: VIKTOR. Photo of Viktor before the start below.
Viktor drove laps in the 10:30 range. The winning V4's best lap was a 10:03, but Viktor brought the car home in one piece. He was accompanied by two young Japanese women. They did not have much English, but we chatted whilst Viktor drove and they patted me repeatedly on the arm and back and told me not to worry--everything would be just fine. I guess I looked nervous. I was nervous. And then I got in the car.
My laps were slow, in the 11:30 range with the best only a 11:24. The fastest lap we did was Jürgen's second lap, a 10:22 at 141 average kph. My fastest lap was at about 129 kph. For comparison, the top ten cars averaged more than 170 kph. My greatest error was to go off line to let the faster cars by--a newbie error of which I was conscious at the time, but I did not appreciate the consequences. This was the first time I had raced on slicks and, when driving off line they pick up a lot of rubber shredded off the tires of other cars. That has two consequences, it cools the tires, preventing them from getting full grip on the track, and it unbalances the wheel, creating vibration in the steering wheel. Both consequences slow the car. The cars with 400+ HP can spin the tires on the Grand Prix circuit and clear the rubber off their tires, but with just 200 HP our car could not do that. I have to learn to let the high HP cars, the GT3Rs, the M3 GTs and the other various specials, just power around me. The faster cars with less HP just have to wait for the better passing places.
My second error was more spectacular. In my seventh lap I was wide in Miss-Hit-Miss. If you watch this video (HERE) the spot is at about 2:45. I went wide to the left, put a tire on the grass and snapped into a massive spin. I saw huge clouds of tire smoke and went both feet in. The good news is that I spun right down the track and did not contact anything. As you can see on the video, there is virtually NO runoff there. I was very lucky. When I came to a stop the engine was running and I continued. I noticed a car in my mirrors back a bit, and he stayed back there for a good long time. I guess if our positions were reversed I would have given him a wide berth, too. The bad news was that the in-car video came unplugged in the spin and did not write its memory to the card, so we missed what I think would have been a YouTube favourite.
My third error was a variant of the first. Headed down into Fuchsruhe on a later lap (about 1:39 on the video above), I let a car by and it chopped me--contact between its right rear fender and my front let fender. No real damage, but it could have been bad.
My fourth error was not keeping proper count of my eight laps. I wound up doing nine laps instead of the eight I was supposed to do. No radio, and it's hard to see the pit board at 240 kph, at least if you're not looking for it.
My fifth error was not understanding (or asking?) that the pit in procedure during the race is different from that during qualifying. In qualifying one may only come into the pit lane from off the Grand Prix circuit at the Coca-Cola turn. In the race one enters the pits directly from the front straight. Wish I'd known that, as it would have save about two minutes! After my stint, though, I was alive and in one piece.
The largest crown in pit late was around a Ferrari P4/5. You can read about it here: P4/5. Rumour is that it's a US$50 million effort to win the ADAC 24 Hour race at the end of June. I did see the car as it came around me, but it only lasted 77 minutes. We beat it! As they say, in order to finish first you first have to finish. The BMWs placed one and two, but the cars that made the greatest impression on me when I saw them in my mirrors were the Ferrari and the Mercedes-Benz SLS. Just MONSTER cars. The top two finishers were M3 GTs (first driven by Jörg Müller, Augusto Farfus and Uwe Alzen). The Black Falcon SLS AMGs came third and fourth and Sabine Schmitz, Niclas Kentenich and Marc Basseng came fifth in their GT3R.
I'm glad I did the VLN, but I think my next track experience there will be an RCN (time trial). It should be easier to pick up my pace.
Sunday, 3 April. After a good night's sleep and another massive German breakfast, I drove back to Frankfurt and a 14:30 flight to Heathrow. A quick tube ride home and I relaxed.
For those of you who have not driven the Nordschleife, you really do need to do it! It's amazing.
Chris
Thursday, 31 March. One of my great life skills is sleeping. Rarely am I not sound asleep within a few minutes of getting in bed, and I'm even pretty good at sleeping on planes. Lots of practice these past two years. Thursday night was different. It was 00:25 and no matter how I tried, I could not stop thinking. Had I bitten off more than I could chew? Had I jumped into the deep end without a parachute? You pick the mixed metaphor; I was thinking it. Finally I took half an Ambien tablet, a small half, and fell asleep.
Friday, 1 April. The alarm sounded at 05:30 and I came wide awake. Shower and off to the South Kensington Underground station with my roller bag and briefcase to catch the 06:35 Circle Line train to Paddington--the first Circle Line train of the day. Heathrow Express to Terminal 5 and then a 08:25 BA flight to Frankfurt. Slept fitfully on the plane. Landed late because of air traffic delays and found the Sixt rental desk to get my rental car. (The attendant smiled at my Greek passport and UK driving licence, was disappointed that I do not speak Greek and upgraded me to a much nicer car.) Arrived at Nürburg around 13:00 and dragged my bags to the paddock. The NexD team had Box (garage) 24, shared with three other teams.
Upon arrival at Box 24, a friend advised me to get my kit teched pronto. I dragged overalls, underwear, balaclava, gloves, boots, socks, HANS and helmet to Box 3 and joined the queue. After about 30 minutes, I was near the front of the queue when my friend walked back from the front and told me that his (new) helmet did not pass inspection. It did not have a silver FIA sticker on the back, and the Snell SA2010 sticker was not sufficient. The tech staff directed him to the Stand 21 trailer. Soon he was back with the bad news that Stand 21 would only sticker their brand of helmet. He had an Arai and I had my old SA2000 Impact helmet. I reached the front of the line and my gear was checked. My helmet failed, even though it had a 2009 MSA (UK racing) sticker. The SCCA, Riesentöter PCA and LeMons stickers were not persuasive either. In addition, my HANS (which is required in the VLN) also failed. The HANS itself had a valid FIA sticker, but the tethers did not have FIA approval printed on them. I knew that I wanted a new SAH2010 helmet that met the Snell head restraint standard so I decided to buy one at the track--more expensive than buying one in the US, but I needed one that day. As it turned out, the vendors in the paddock had lots of expensive SA2005 helmets, but no SAH2010s that I could find. Whilst I was at the Arai trailer a couple of drivers were asking why their new Arai helmets purchased in the US did not have the required FIA stickers. They worked around the issue by borrowing a new helmet from the Arai crew, just for tech. That was a good idea for them. I bought new tethers, sporting the FIA logo, for €70 and passed tech too. (I thought that price outrageous, but I later learned that the tethers are US$65 from my regular vendor, so it was not all that bad.) At least my MSA International C licence with FIA visa worked a treat.
We had practice from 16:00 to 18:00. Jürgen, one of my co-drivers with a few thousand laps on the circuit, also runs a Ring taxi at the Friday practice. Racers can pay a fee and take guests for a ride, and some teams have many guests to defray their expenses. Jügen just had three, and it was a good thing as his M3 had a problem. He used car number 447, our BMW 325i, to fulfil his obligations and then he gave me a one-lap ride to refamiliarize myself with the circuit and the car. I then had the car for four laps--almost enough time to figure out the short Grand Prix course that, together with the 26 km Nordschleife, constituted our circuit. My laps were uneventful, but worrying slow. More on that later.
Friday night was pizza with a friend and then early to bed. If I had a hard time sleeping Thursday night, Friday was much worse. I kept driving the track in my head, but not effectually.
Saturday, 2 April. The alarm rang at 05:30, but I was already awake. I dressed in all my kit and filled up on the traditional German breakfast of eggs, bread rolls, cold cuts, sausage, orange juice and coffee. I was not to eat again until dinner at 20:00. The drivers meeting was at 07:30. The drive from my hotel to the track was slow--lots of fog. With 165 cars and two to four drivers per car there were a lot of people in the room. I signed in and took a place at the front.
The people running the meeting did not look much like they were current drivers, but they did look much as the SCCA bigwigs. Just as the meeting started Sabine Schmitz, who would be driving a Porsche GT3R, arrived at sat a row in front of me.
She did not seem to pay much attention to the briefing. I guess she had heard it all many times before. For me, it was harder. The oral instruction was all in German, and the English on the slides was not all that easy to follow, but I got the gist of it, but for one significant point. More on that later.
Qualifying was 08:30-10:00. Each driver must complete at least one lap in the car in order to race. The track was thoroughly wet. Our first thought was to wait about 20 minutes and then go out on slicks. As the weather did not clear very quickly we decided instead to go out on wets. Each of us was to do two laps, me first. As I got into the car, the team explained that I was doing it all wrong. Usually I will get in without my helmet on , buckle in and then put on my helmet and attach the HANS. The crew chief explained that I should have all my gear on and just get in the car. two crew members would then strap me in and attach my radio gear. Unfortunately, in the US we have two styles of plugs, IMSA and Nascar. I had Nascar. They had IMSA. No adapter and therefore no radio for me. More on that later, too.
My qualifying laps were uneventful, although it was nice to be able to keep up with the fast cars in the tight bits. The track started to dry more thoroughly and we put Jürgen, our third driver, on slicks for one quicker lap. He ran P2, but some of the other cars in V4 got one more lap on slicks than we did and pushed us back to P7. We had some time to breathe before the race started at 12:00.
Our third driver was Viktor. I knew something was up when I saw photographers clustered around him. He had arranged a ride in a GT3, but when the team could not get enough drivers and cancelled, Viktor decided to drive with us. We decided that he would start, having had lots of VLN races under his belt, I would drive second and Jürgen would finish. Each of us would do eight laps. More on that, later, too.
On the grid I noticed that our car was now sporting a Rage logo along with our names. You can read about Viktor (and Rage) here: VIKTOR. Photo of Viktor before the start below.
Viktor drove laps in the 10:30 range. The winning V4's best lap was a 10:03, but Viktor brought the car home in one piece. He was accompanied by two young Japanese women. They did not have much English, but we chatted whilst Viktor drove and they patted me repeatedly on the arm and back and told me not to worry--everything would be just fine. I guess I looked nervous. I was nervous. And then I got in the car.
My laps were slow, in the 11:30 range with the best only a 11:24. The fastest lap we did was Jürgen's second lap, a 10:22 at 141 average kph. My fastest lap was at about 129 kph. For comparison, the top ten cars averaged more than 170 kph. My greatest error was to go off line to let the faster cars by--a newbie error of which I was conscious at the time, but I did not appreciate the consequences. This was the first time I had raced on slicks and, when driving off line they pick up a lot of rubber shredded off the tires of other cars. That has two consequences, it cools the tires, preventing them from getting full grip on the track, and it unbalances the wheel, creating vibration in the steering wheel. Both consequences slow the car. The cars with 400+ HP can spin the tires on the Grand Prix circuit and clear the rubber off their tires, but with just 200 HP our car could not do that. I have to learn to let the high HP cars, the GT3Rs, the M3 GTs and the other various specials, just power around me. The faster cars with less HP just have to wait for the better passing places.
My second error was more spectacular. In my seventh lap I was wide in Miss-Hit-Miss. If you watch this video (HERE) the spot is at about 2:45. I went wide to the left, put a tire on the grass and snapped into a massive spin. I saw huge clouds of tire smoke and went both feet in. The good news is that I spun right down the track and did not contact anything. As you can see on the video, there is virtually NO runoff there. I was very lucky. When I came to a stop the engine was running and I continued. I noticed a car in my mirrors back a bit, and he stayed back there for a good long time. I guess if our positions were reversed I would have given him a wide berth, too. The bad news was that the in-car video came unplugged in the spin and did not write its memory to the card, so we missed what I think would have been a YouTube favourite.
My third error was a variant of the first. Headed down into Fuchsruhe on a later lap (about 1:39 on the video above), I let a car by and it chopped me--contact between its right rear fender and my front let fender. No real damage, but it could have been bad.
My fourth error was not keeping proper count of my eight laps. I wound up doing nine laps instead of the eight I was supposed to do. No radio, and it's hard to see the pit board at 240 kph, at least if you're not looking for it.
My fifth error was not understanding (or asking?) that the pit in procedure during the race is different from that during qualifying. In qualifying one may only come into the pit lane from off the Grand Prix circuit at the Coca-Cola turn. In the race one enters the pits directly from the front straight. Wish I'd known that, as it would have save about two minutes! After my stint, though, I was alive and in one piece.
The largest crown in pit late was around a Ferrari P4/5. You can read about it here: P4/5. Rumour is that it's a US$50 million effort to win the ADAC 24 Hour race at the end of June. I did see the car as it came around me, but it only lasted 77 minutes. We beat it! As they say, in order to finish first you first have to finish. The BMWs placed one and two, but the cars that made the greatest impression on me when I saw them in my mirrors were the Ferrari and the Mercedes-Benz SLS. Just MONSTER cars. The top two finishers were M3 GTs (first driven by Jörg Müller, Augusto Farfus and Uwe Alzen). The Black Falcon SLS AMGs came third and fourth and Sabine Schmitz, Niclas Kentenich and Marc Basseng came fifth in their GT3R.
I'm glad I did the VLN, but I think my next track experience there will be an RCN (time trial). It should be easier to pick up my pace.
Sunday, 3 April. After a good night's sleep and another massive German breakfast, I drove back to Frankfurt and a 14:30 flight to Heathrow. A quick tube ride home and I relaxed.
For those of you who have not driven the Nordschleife, you really do need to do it! It's amazing.
Chris
05-06-2011, 12:50 AM
#21
Rennlist Member
Thread Starter
Chris,
Fantastic writeup, manditory reading for anyone thinking about racing at the 'Ring. Were the practice laps your first view of the GP course? You could easily spend a day working to get that right, never mind the other 90% of a lap.... WOW!
Fantastic writeup, manditory reading for anyone thinking about racing at the 'Ring. Were the practice laps your first view of the GP course? You could easily spend a day working to get that right, never mind the other 90% of a lap.... WOW!
05-06-2011, 04:07 AM
#22
Rennlist Member
Yes, it's the short GP course for the VLN and I had not seen that configuration before. It hardly merits a mention in comparison with the Nordschleife, though. I've tentatively planned a trip from the US back to Europe at the end of August--either the 6 hour VLN or the 24 hour 2CV race at Snetterton on the new 200 circuit. Next year the ADAC 24 hour at the ring?
