Nurburgring 2007 (or how I lost my shirt in 2007)

The second week of August, myself, Daniel and Colin went on a trip to the Nurburgring  in Germany. Our plan was to participate in the 75experience, a driving course run by Ron Simons, on the Thursday, watch the Old-Timer GP on the Friday, then do laps of the ring on the Saturday.

I decided to drive there so that I could take the "Colgate Crusader" around the track too. Dan and Colin flew there - Dan wanted to try renting a race car and get in a full day of driving on the Sunday, flying back late Sunday night, and Colin had to go back Friday morning.

It took about 12 hours for me to get there including taking the 2-hour Norfolkline ferry (cheaper and ultimately more civilized than Eurostar). This was thanks largely to me using my new TomTom to navigate there - so I didn't make a single wrong turn the whole way.

From left to right: Colin, Dan, Robert, Robert's Aston:

Robert was another guy who was taking our course, as preparation for next day's "Old-Timer GP". He was a very interesting character... with his conservative RP accent, driving his Aston Martin, and with quotes like "All men need a challenge", and "Women are fundamentally 3 dimensional characters whereas men are 2 dimensional" - I rather think he would have got along terrifically with Ian Fleming, if they'd had a chance to meet ;-) He was terrifically entertaining.

Anyway, we all arrived at the track and sat down for a break in the restaurant. Jackie Stewart dubbed the Nordschleif (northern circuit of the Nurburgring) "The Green Hell", and the restaurant has the same name. But I think this must really be because it is a decidedly awful venue. It has about the same amount of atmosphere as an airport cafeteria, but the food is not as good.

Dan said, rather pointedly, "If only I had my car here, I would have gone for a lap by now..."

Me: "Well, I'm a bit knackered after the drive here - I think I might take a break first"...

So we sat there, in that awful cafeteria, and discussed the weather, the track, some of the corners... The biggest problem with the track is remembering it:  there are over 20kms of track on the "Nordschleif" (German for Northern Loop). Most of them are blind - you go over a crest and only then find out which way you need to turn.

I picked at my (frankly awful) slice of apple strudel.

"Right", I said, "I think I might like to do a lap after all"...

Dan: "We better hurry - entry to the track closes in 10 minutes. I'll ride with you if you like - I'll just need to get my crash helmet"...

Colin: "I'm coming too!"

And we were off (that green Subaru in front of the Lamborghini Gallardo is "The Colgate Crusader"):

I resolved to do the first lap slowly and carefully - the track was only partly dry... We never even saw the Gallardo - but after the van overtook me, I decided to go just a little bit faster... 

In the public sessions, people take all manner of crazy cars around the 'ring. We overtook this mobile home in our lap too:

My lap turned out to be pretty smooth, and I even received some praise from Dan on it (he's a very good driver - at least, I figure he must be because he even has the special shoes to help him double-declutch using heel-toe technique... and he owns a Porsche). I took some bends reasonably fast - but no faster than I've done going on a B-road in the UK. As well as being fast, the Subaru is an easy car to drive, because it's four-wheel-drive - even if you slide, the whole car just slides sideways - it doesn't spin, or "oversteer" very easily. So even if you hit a greasy patch on the track going around a corner (and I did hit one particularly greasy corner), you just slide across the track, let off the gas pedal, you regain traction, and continue on. Also, the Subaru has ABS braking - so you don't need to worry too much about braking too hard either.

After that lap we met with Ron Simons, who took us for a lap in one of the cars that we would be driving the next day - a specially tuned Alfa Romeo 75.

These cars, while much more maneuverable, require much more skill to drive, because they are rear-wheel drive, have no traction control, and no anti-lock brakes.

The first sharp corner that Ron took, the rear end of the car started sliding round in an aggressive oversteer and I thought "Man this isn't good" - but Ron expertly counter-steered - he was expecting the car to do exactly this, and used the oversteer to go around the corner much more quickly than normal. I clearly had a lot to learn.

That evening, he gave us a briefing of the track, and some specifics on driving, cornering and so on. It wasn't really much of an induction, but it was something.

The next day

We all woke up nervous because it was raining heavily, and had been all night. The track was going to be soaking wet. I sent my friend Mark, an experienced racing enthusiast, a concerned text:

"Have never driven rear wheel drive - my first experience of this will be driving a car with no traction control, at the Nurburgring, and it is pissing down with rain. Am bricking it".

I resolved to drive especially carefully. The most important thing for me was simply not to crash, no matter how slowly I went. I looked forward to reaching the end of the day, hopefully having a bit of experience driving rear wheel drive, and some more familiarity with the corners of the track.

We were one of several groups of "driving schools" which had combined together to use the track for the day. This meant that it was not open to the public - so at least we wouldn't be having to overtake mobile homes and vans this time around.

Convoy driving

The first few laps we took were in a convoy. We shared two drivers per car, each driver taking two laps following Ron around the course while he annotated what to do at each corner over the radio. I shared a car with Colin. Most of the advice involved taking the corner around the outside (avoiding the apex) in the wet conditions, as the track would be much better there.

The cars handled suprisingly well in the wet. I really thought that they would be skidding all over the place, but for the most part they had excellent grip in the corners.

Ron was constantly urging caution though: "Now that the track is very wet, the cars have quite a lot of grip you'll notice. You might start to think you can take some corners quite a bit faster - but as the track starts to dry out, or if it gets really wet, it will get more slippery than you can imagine".

My initial assessment

After I had done my two laps driving, Ron came over to ask how I was. Was I tense? Was I enjoying it?

"Well, I was a bit nervous at first, but by the second lap I was enjoying it a lot more. Why? Was I that terrible a driver?" I asked, fishing for some praise... expecting something along the lines of  "no, you weren't too bad"...

"Yes, you were terrible", he unequivocally replied, "but your second lap was 10 times better than your first. For the next two laps, ride in my car and I'll explain how you need to drive. You need to take every corner smoothly - nothing hurried."

Hardly a confidence boost.

From the outset I'd let nobody have any illusions that I had any real "experience", loudly proclaiming to everyone who would listen that I was almost certainly the worst driver in the group. But I began to wonder if I had singled myself out for a bit too much special treatment. In truth, I didn't think I drove any worse than Colin (for our first laps we'd both had to get used to right hand drive gear shifts, the windshield misting up and unfamiliarity with the car, and we'd both had our fair share of choppy gear shifts).

But I wasn't going to argue with him - I duly sat in the car and concentrated for the next laps on remembering the course. For these next laps I realised why Ron wanted me in the car with him - he went quite a bit faster this time, and I wouldn't have felt comfortable trying to keep up with the convoy for these later laps. At least when we did the "single" driving later in the day I could go around the track at my own speed.

He demonstrated to me how the tail of the car could slide out in oversteer. Each time, he would counter-steer to bring the car back into line. "These cars can go very fast around this track in the wet when you drive like this- but it takes very skillful driving". He made it look very easy though.

After the convoy driving, there was a briefing, presumably about track conditions but I wouldn't know because it was all in German.

Single driving, and remembering the track

Finally, it was time for single driving. Colin and I could take turns in the car (with the other riding passenger). For extra safety, Ron appointed Ed, another instructor to sit next to me during my laps, and Colin joined us sitting in the back seat.

We took the first lap slow, and Ed pointed out to me each corner as it was coming up, when to brake, what gear to be in, and so on. I'd also finally hit on the best way for me to start remembering the track.

Everyone at Nurburgring always talks about the corners using their German names - e.g. "Bergwerk" is second sharp right hand corner after the lowest point on the track - exit speed out of this corner is crucial because it's followed by a long, steep uphill relatively straight section, which you can take on full throttle in many cars.

But I found these German names almost impossible to pronounce, let alone remember.

For non-German speakers, a far simpler method is to look at the "kilometre" markings. "Bergwerk" is right after the 9km sign. "Schwalbenschwanz" is not long after the 16km sign. This tells you where each "corner" is.

Ed was a lot more positive than Ron had been - he was quite encouraging and by the second lap he even congratulated me "That's a good line" as I correctly handled "Miss-Hit-Miss" (Dan has stated that this comes slightly after kilometre 8 right after Kallenhard - but I actually got this wrong in the first write up... In any case, I always recognized this part of the track when it came up - the key point is that even though it looks like a chicane, the correct line is to take the three bends in one smooth left to right arc down the hill, missing the first apex, hitting the second, and missing the third).

Oversteering

A couple of times, the tail slid out for me too as the car oversteered - but I corrected it by counter-steering. Things were going well, and I started to drive a little bit faster. Not that much faster  - but a little. Ed was calling out the corners, where we needed to be, when I needed to brake, what gear to be in... I started getting a little choppy, doing just a bit too much at once to be doing everything well and smoothly... but it seemed like I was taking the corners...

And you can probably guess what happened next

We were just coming up to the sharp left hand turn before Schwalbenschwanz (I think this is the corner before the mini-carousel)... the tail slid out again, a bit more this time... too far, and I realised that I wasn't going to handle this properly.... the next thing I knew, we were hurtling forwards off the track! The bonnet leaped as we went over the track gutter, and we came crashing down on the Armco protective railing, before bouncing back and spinning around back on to the track:

All I could think of while we were bouncing around off the track was: "What just happened!? I can't believe I've just crashed.... this was the one thing you didn't want to do at all costs"....

The best way I can think to describe the sensation is, it's similar to the exact moment when I realised that the keys were inside the apartment as the door shut behind me, 30 minutes before the start of my flat warming. What I wouldn't have given to be able to turn back time 4 seconds and be able to do it over again. But it was too late. Once we'd gone off the track, there was no way to control the car as it bounced and lurched. We were all just passengers on a bumpy, very scary ride.

The crash site

Once we'd stopped, Ed jumped out of the car and inspected the damage: "Wow! This really isn't too bad!" Turning to me, he asked "But what happened? Why didn't you brake? If you'd just braked, we would have slid in a straight line, and slid straight down the track - no harm done".

But he was as puzzled as I was: "I'm not really sure what happened". In what couldn't have been more than 3 seconds, I had gone from being in complete control of the car to being utterly out of control of it.  I couldn't really remember not deciding to brake... In fact, I couldn't really remember anything about what had happened between me first detecting the slide and us plunging bonnet-first into the Armco...

Colin ventured the first explanation: "You oversteered, but didn't react in time... then, I think you must have let off".

People had told me that the one thing you should never do is to let off the accelerator suddenly when the car starts to oversteer. Intellectually, I knew this. But this was not something that was "trained" into my driving reactions.

I don't remember letting off the gas, or "deciding" not to brake, because I had not made a conscious decision to do so - I had simply reacted that way, from my "experience" (such as it is) driving my Subaru. Every time I had done this in my Subaru, the car had stayed under control. But maybe this is because I'd never oversteered my Subaru.

In these conditions, without that sort of training that teaches me to just naturally, and unthinkingly, react the right way, I believe that it was only going to be a matter of time before something like this was going to happen to me.

Well... it was done now. Time to deal with the consequences. Fortunately, there was an official standing right there on the look out for accidents, and she had the yellow flag out right away. We took the yellow flag and waved it at a place further around the bend, to warn any other approaching cars to slow down. Meanwhile, while Colin took the pictures you see here, I sent Mark another text, less than 3 hours after the first one:

"Crashed already. Tail slid out and I let off the gas. Hit armco. Not my car. I'm alright."

The Alfa wouldn't start anymore - the engine turned over but, it seems, some sort of safety mechanism wouldn't actually let it start- so they had to close the track to tow it off:

My driving was done for the day - but I did sit in on one further lap that Colin drove. He got into worse situations than I had twice in that one lap I shared with him - but reacted in exactly the right way both times. The first time, he "panicked" and slammed on the clutch and brake - we just spun out down the track... The second time he countersteered violently and brought the car back under control. Colin wasn't an amazingly good driver either - but he had been to a course where they teach you to powerslide on a skid-pan, and he also owned a rear wheel drive car... so he knew what to do, and reacted instinctively the correct way, turning what for me was a major accident into merely a "scary moment".

But that lap was still scary enough for me- I didn't sit in on any more laps after that (also, the conditions were getting worse and worse).

I went to find an internet cafe and check my mail - by the time I came back, another, very experienced professional driver in our group had aqua-planed his car off the track and totalled it.

In fact, we saw a lot of quite expensive cars totalled that day. I saw both a BMW M5, and Ferrari with the entire side sheared off. Probably 10 cars crashed that day alone.

Conclusions

That night, we had dinner and I thought more about what had happened. The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I felt.

The only damage I'll suffer is a rather hefty bill for the damages to the track, car, and the fee for the tow truck.

But it could have been so much worse. If another car had come speeding around the corner right after I crashed, we could have been "T-boned" and seriously hurt. Maybe even killed.

What scared me most was that I had honestly believed that I was driving too cautiously, and too slowly, to crash...  I started to think about how I've driven in the past - how sure was I that I hadn't actually just been "rolling the dice" and getting lucky?

I came to realise that I had been driving in the same way that I used to ski. Back when I wasn't such a good skier, all I ever tended to do was just go fast down the easy "green" runs...maybe not always in complete control, so I'd take a few tumbles.

After a while, I realised that this was boring: I wanted to become a good skiier and being a good skiier isn't about going fast, it is about having good technique. Being able to handle any terrain safely and correctly. Once you have good technique, then you can go fast, if you want to. But it was actually more fun to go down some difficult terrain slowly but concentrating on good technique.

I need to start learning to drive this way. So, over the next year, I'll do more track days, and more "advanced driving" training (skid pans, etc.), under safer conditions, and learn to be a better driver first before I attempt another trip to the 'ring.