EK9 / Other: The disappointment of the Nürburgring Nordschleife

It’s Kind of a Pilgrimage for every swiss Motorsport Enthusiast to once in life take a ride on the green Hell aka the Nürburgring nordschleife. But somehow this track must hate me. The first time me and my friend Danny planned to go there several years ago it immediately started to snow (in late spring, after snowy-season!) and we got stuck with our summer-tires and had to cancel everything even before we left our City!

I was quite happy when Danny gave me a birthday gift containing a Voucher for a Caterham drift Training in the Nürburgring area 2 years ago. We finally had a reason to try it again. After two years we found a date, settled everything and last saturday we took our beloved RHD cars and drove there. (I may mention that a superloud, hard EK9 with a track-spec gear Ratio is not the optimum for driving 5.20 hours on the unrestricted german Autobahn, but i knew that before already, hence the ear protectors in the pics :D).

Our plan was to arrive in the late afternoon on saturday and then go for a birthday-dinner of my friends wive and have a couple of Drinks. On sunday take a look at the Grandprix-track and Paddock-area and the whole show-area. then in the afternoon have a look at the Norschleife touristenfahrten Action from famous viewpoints, take a litte detour and have a look at the Nürburg Castle and some nice forest roads and in the evening go for a ride around the track in our own cars when People are going homewards and there is less  traffic. On monday i’d have my Caterham Training in the morning and then we’d drive home in the afternoon. That was the Plan. And now reality:

We arrived a bit late due the the fact the Germans like to have Roadwork going on every 10km’s for at least 3kms. It’s obvous that there are traffic jams everywhere. We calculated in that already so no Problem for us.

We arrived at the Hotel dorint and as we had our wives with us it was fairly disapointint that the complete SPA-area including Sauna was closed due to reconstruction. Great…
The Hotel and the Service is excellent and the trackview phenomenal (GP-track). From the balcony you’re actually having a direct veiew to the track a few meters in front of you.

But the Underground parking lot is quite expensive (26 EUR per night and car, even if you stay in the Hotel!).

Unfortunately there was some kind of Amateur scooter-racing going on on the GP-track. not exactly the cool racing machinery we hoped to see…

The Hotel bar didn’t really have any Cocktails for the Girls, and because we wanted to celebrate birthday we went to the nearby nice and small City of Nürburg. We first headed to the famous Pistenklause Restaurant but it was so crowded we would have needed to wait about 20minutes to get in. Not what you want when you’re super hungry and tired of a 6h ride. At least we saw a lot of cool cars parked around…

We went to the Restaurant next to our Hotel and this was the worst ever. Drunk english dudes almost vomiting on the table. Service was superbad and the waitress seemed to ignore us the complete evening. And then i wonder how the hell an italian Restaurant can mess up something simple as a salami-Pizza and spaghetti. Seriously. Never again!

we went back to the Hotel bar and had the Famous Eifel-Geist Spirit (which is served with a White glove because the drink is really chilled), which is fun but actually will not become my favourite. We had a few Bitburger beers afterwards. The Hotelbar is supernice with a lot of memorabilia from old and new racers and races at the ‘Ring and a lot of racers sat nearby chatting about their days on the track.

We went sleep and were awake by 8 o’clock when some super-noisy bike-race started in front of the Hotel. no problem.

Had a great breakfast at the hotel buffet on sunday and went for the Nürburgring-attractions. Well at least somehow. The descriptions were super bad and it was hard to find anything we were looking for. Most of the Shops had closed gates because there was nothing Special going on and they didn’t expect a lot of People. Found this nice Toyota LMP1 car behind closed gates in one of the Shops:

The ringwerk was the most fun but its mor of a Family theme park than something seriously car or racing related in my opinion. At least they had some nice race cars like the Zakspeed Opel Calibra DTM concepts, a zakspeed Volvo or a nice now-defunct BMW Formula one collection.

The “eifeldorf grüne hölle” seems only to be open when there is some great race at the track. We wandered around a bit and then decided to go for some Nordschleife views. The weather was supernice so the forrest-accessroads around the track were super crowded by motorcyclists and all the dudes showing off their cars and carbon cycles and stuff. We finally managed to find a parking lot at the famous “Breidscheid” spotting Point and had a great view of the touristenfahrten at track (the Picture does not Show how steep this part of the track is – it’s crazy!)

Unfortunately the track Action stopped maybe 5min after arriving due to a bad accident. after no Action for almost 45min and more and more emergency-cars driving by on the track we decided to move to another Location and were hoping for Action to return when we arrived there. We somehow got a bit lost and ended up at “Hohe acht” which in my opinion was a part of the track. but after Walking through the forrest for 1hour we ended up on a Tower on top of the hill with now track-view at all.

We went back the the cars and headed towards the track-entrance, driving by some other viewpoints we could see there is no action going on at the Moment. strange. We finally arrived at the track entrance which was supercrouded. We figured out that due to the nice weather thousands of People came to enter the track and a lot of accidents happened during the day. So while we were waiting at the entrance for 2hours the track got closed for 30min’s three times!!  and all of these accidents seemed to be quit heavy! At least we saw some nice machinery at the entrance like this radical 🙂

I heard about totally 7 big accidents during the day and that the track was more closed than open. Check out YouTube touristenfahrten for second of August 2015 and you can see some of the accidents:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=touristenfahrten+02.08.2015

however we decided to wait and hope that People would leave towards the evening and when we finally decided to buy our ticket 1 hour before track closed (still hundreds of People waiting in front). After we bought our tickets the track got closed once again immediately due to another accident and after a while People got informed that  the track will not reopen again this day. great. We finally went to the famous ring and where not even able to drive it once. Just perfect!

Also the famous Nürburg Castle was undergoing some maintenance work so half of it was covered in Cloth. great!

We ate at the hotel-Restaurant which was great. had a couple of beers and eifelgeists at the Hotel bar and then went for sleep.

Next morning me and my Girl went for the caterham-drift-Training which was on the event-area behind the Paddocks in the Center of the GP-track.

Was quite fun and interresting but if you really want to bring it to some smooth drifts you definitly Need more practice. However for me this was the Highlight and really superfun. I even managed to end up in 6th place out of 20 :-).

At this time some Amateur time-attack Action started on the surrounding GP-track which was the first time we actually saw som CARS on the GP-track and some race-cars in General. Monday the nordschleife was closed due to some motorcycle race going on there.

This TODA powered AE86 was another favourite sight of mine:

After the Training we watched the time-attack racing going on for a while and then drove back.

Let’s say i’ve learned a lot. the Name “green hell” sure has ist reasons. but somehow i was really dissapointed. Too crowded and not much to do. But somehow i definitly want to go back and drive on this track. we still have a valid ticket to say 🙂 And honestly everything around the track is full with great racing cars. you will see everything. from  your GT3 Aston Martin to an average Renault Clio. And the vibe around that area is just Magic. well at least if you like cars 🙂

Oh and one Highlight for me was definitly this pair of Norwegian cars we found in the parking lot near to the nordschleife track entrance. Nice Z, Nice MR-S (i’ve always liked this “unloved” car somehow and this was nicely executed)