theiceman

I heard Phil Downe took out a significant amount of Armco at the Nordschleife a little while ago

Can anyone confirm and if he did, did he come out of it okay ?

I remember Ronan telling us how expensive that was to do .. yikes ..

Ronan

Confirmed

theiceman

Oh good. Oh wait. You crashed Ronan ?? You okay ? Was this recent ?

Ronan

2006. New BMW M6.

Badly crushed car and ego

theiceman

Well you certainly did live in to fight another day !

Ronan

Returned there with three more cars since and got through without damage will do a new one in 2018. Still a place that scares me a bit. Addictive though like no other track I have ever been on.

rideau

Phil White of PCA UCR wrote about crashing a rental car at the Ring in a recent issue of Provinz. Not only was the guardrail expensive but the tow and the rental repair costs were quite outstanding. I have not been to the Ring but if I am ever fortunate enough to go, I will rent the track car with the least amount of horsepower available.

MaxLTV

Guardrail is not that expensive. Scratching a single-height rail without track closure and tow should be just few hundred all in. A big wipeout taking 2 multiple-height sections and requiring a tow and track closure for extraction and repairs would run about 3K euro (very recent and reliable info, unfortunately). Steep, but compared to the price of repairs of any car, it's not that much. People probably complain because they get insurance to pay for the car but cannot get it to pay for the guardrail and tow.

Ronan

This is a very sensible way to do it. As you move up the rental stack the deductible gets to effectively zero. I know of a Dutch guy who wrote off a new rental RS and the bill including track damage was EUR 170k

The track is tricky and you can have plenty of fun in a Suzuki Swift which will be properly equipped with a roll cage.