MRK

Hehehehe another wicked weekend blasting around the Ring with the Scoobynet crew. Not as many folk as the June trip but a more mixed bunch this time. 6 Scooby’s, 2 x Evo 7’s, 1 x Intergra LE and 1 x BMW 330d.

We, the Frog & I arrived Friday evening about 10ish to find Matt Oz, Harj, Rsquire, Pete, Rich Askew and his lovely ladyee sitting outside at the Lindenhof bar. They had travelled down the day before.

There commenced the start of a great weekend, on and off track.

Friday night consisted of everyone on a high after a good convoy from Calais, having a laugh, meeting new faces, and watching video footage of that day of some English bikers, one who managed to film himself laying his bike down, but he was a-ok.

Saturday morning was a painful experience with a major hangover, but I dragged my butt out of bed and hit the Ring around midday. The sun was out and the sky was blue And the whole place was buzzing. The car parks were packed solid with such a variety of beautiful machinery and like minded folk from as far a field as Japan!! Porsche’s by the bucket load, but a lot of them were heavily modified, a few Ferrari’s, BMW’s, Golf’s, the famous Ring Mini, loads of bikes, a foray of Scoobs and Evo’s 6 & 7’s and more, more, more.

After a couple of re-assimilation laps and being exceedingly happy with the new handling of my car (bumpsteer mod and anti-roll bars) we headed for lunch. Harj announced there was a Mac D’s only a short 6k drive, and seeing as the Ring restaurant was crammed we hit the road. 25k of striking countryside later we still had not seen Maccy D’s, and were told by a smiley (unusual for Germans) petrol station attendant that MacDonalds was another 20k

Harj was adamant he wanted a buuuurrrrger, so he went his merry way and we headed back to a great Ring spectator point, and restaurant area called Ardenau. The Ardenau complex of corners is great, and scary You come blasting down a steep hill at around 100-115mph, a quick right kink then hard, very hard on the brakes (no run off just a brick wall, hence the scary bit, lose it here and well, you hope the airbags will work??), into third, hard left for a sweeping hairpin, tyres squealing, then up another short steep hill and right. You’re gone.

It rained hard after lunch which was perfect I love driving in the wet, and the suspension mods came into their own. The car was flat, neutral, responsive and very communicative, and the consistent rain just chilled my intercooler another couple of degrees for that extra uumph. We had 4 fast slippery sideways laps, the fastest being a 9min 39sec, not bad for a soaked Nurburgring!! And I thoroughly enjoyed them, as it was so damn thrilling. OOOPPPPPAALAAAAAAHHHH

The Frog & I were now knackered and the sky was darkening so we headed to bed to catch some rem’s before checking out the Karting at the GP circuit. 10 of us headed off to do some hairy sideways karting fun. And it was damn funny. There were many, too many crashes, smashes, and people pushing and shoving, a brilliant laugh. We had the whole circuit to ourselves, so nearly all of us had a couple of runs. Our arms were aching badly after all that hanging on for dear life in those little speed machines, so then it was off to dinner.

We ended up at a small bar/restaurant owned by a very famous and beautiful ladyee called Sabine. She’s won touring car championships and the like, plus she is one of the lucky people who are paid to drive around the Ring. She drives the Ring Taxi, an M5 with four up (her plus three extremely scared paying passengers) and with lap times at 8mins 10sec, that’s flipping quick.!!. To us lot on here she must be the perfect women droooolllll.

The so-called easy evening I had planned so I could be 100% for Sundays blapping seemingly turned into an alcoholic frenzy Harj and Rich were messing around like a couple of new found lovers, Faye and Sandy were dancing, and ohhh I mean dancing like ladyee’s on heat, doing that whole gyration of the hips routine, making every male in the place dribble. They even pulled up a couple of moustached germans, (not that there is any germans without caterpillar fur under their noses. These boys nearly had heart attacks. Poor fellows, hehehehe the locals will certainly remember us. I was nursing a cigarette burn on my forehead with a champagne bottle, thanks Harj, and I don’t mean for the shampoo.

Then suddenly as if by magic it was 4am time for bed, mmmm now which way was home

Needless to say Sunday morning was not a pleasurable experience.

I did however have two great laps on track, firstly with Harj then with Matt. Both these guys now the track well, and I managed to improve my lines & times greatly. The lap with Matt ended up with us chasing Sabine in the Ring Taxi for half a lap, it was wicked, until a green Porsche got in the way. Then she was gone, that M5 looked on its ragged edge with four people in it, amazing car control. I still made an 8min30sec lap. My best yet

Unfortunately the Ring was closed all Sunday afternoon due to a very nasty accident, at Flugpatz, which is a very fast flat out sweeping corner, after a short straight.

That evening we all needed to get some action in so we headed back to the karting track. This was more fun than the previous nights. Everybody was going quicker, having fantastic battles for position and having spectacular smashes. One being Sandy the Frog, spun going into a flat out corner entering the pit straight, and laying broadside across the track she sat there desperately trying to get her kart moving.
2 seconds had past when Harj motored round suddenly seeing Sandy and quickly tried to steer around her, but only managing to send his kart sideways smashing into Sandy’s stricken machine.
Harj nearly got thrown out of his kart, his whole body leaping from the seat, only to be restrained by the steering column ouch!!
Theres more

The track was now completely blocked, but to make things worse for the Frog and a shocked Harj a long silent second passed before a german came flying around, and ploughed into both of the original smashee’s. The fur face being substantially lighter than Harj was travelling faster and his kart leapt onto two wheels with the force of unexpectedly being stopped dead.
Everybody gasped with horror as we thought he and his kart would be thrown rolling into the air and come smashing down onto one of the others laps. phewww thankfully that was not the case. But that shunt swung the Frogs kart around and she was off leaving the other two broadside and jammed across the track. The Frog didn’t even so much as look back as the marshals righted the other two.

We won’t say who recorded the quickest lap, hehehhehe


The rest of the evening was chilled. Good food and great company from a very mixed crowd.


Check out some of the photo’s below taken from inside the car on the Ring

100mph into a wet scary valley and NOT braking for that corner. I exit at 110mph


Following DocJock on a wet, wet lap




Chasing MattOz and Rich in his gorgeous new Evo7


Hey its actually dry. With Matt Oz blasting into the Foxhole, see if you can see where the speedo needle is.

Yep that’s right reading over 120mph!!

MattOz and I chasing the Ring Taxi


Bl66dy Merc pushing me off onto the grass at 110mph


Overtaking Elise going into dip before Flugpatz

Going into Flugpatz


Until the next Ring trip in May.

Bye


M

James_Harvey

Good read mate

Whets the appetite for may!

How was yer Skiing? Meeting on the Snow Train.... Wierd! Nice hair though

James.

DocJock

You bastid !!!

Got me all excited and there's still a month to go !

DJ

johnfelstead

Nice one Mark. Some great photos there.

Funny this, i was having a "discusion" with someone on another BBS about the ring so i checked the speeds for various places round the track. Acording to the speedo on Joerunds R1 we were doing 153MPH at the bottom of the foxhole. No wonder that bit of the track scares the hell out of me. LOL

Looking forward to the next one!

MRK

Hey James nice bumping into you on the Snowtrain wearing my afro wig, hope you enjoyed the party. Snowboarding was wicked. It just snowed all week, absolutely sublime. How was yours?

Jeeezzuss 153mph through the Foxhole, its scary enough at 120mph+ especially the way the car rocks on its suspension in the dip. You think its enough to chuck you off into the Armco. But it doesn’t wicked.!!.


Roll on May 03rd.


M

James_Harvey

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Hey James nice bumping into you on the Snowtrain wearing my afro wig, hope you enjoyed the party. Snowboarding was wicked. It just snowed all week, absolutely sublime. How was yours?

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Top Notch.... Similar to You for the first week snow, snow snow!
Second week Sunshine and Pow! Fantastic.
Started to go a bit slushy by the end, but talk about timing!

And now the summer approches, we turn our attention toward a certain piece of Tarmac in the eiffel mountains.... Cant Wait