Sorry for all the words but here a little write up from a trip I have just done. I haven’t checked or formatted properly yet sorry.
Even after getting up when the alarm rang, I was already falling behind. Time was slipping away, and my departure time came and went. This was the long-anticipated day I was waiting for and I was nervous and excited in equal measure. This was the trip to the ring. We were after good times not lap times, but something has definitely been stirred inside me.
Anyway, at this point I was on the road to pick my brother up, I had not even got 3 miles before I realised I had left a couple of things I needed at home. Buggggeerr. Anyway, I grabbed my brother and headed back via mine enroute to the motorway.
Now there were 4 cars that were partaking in this trip, mine and my brother’s car is the slightly shabby looking SLK that was recently listed on here. I had bought a coupe but when the SLK surfaced I couldn’t say no. I have been dailying the Merc for around a month trying to find any small issues that may arise and have fallen in love with it. She needed a little bit of a check and love before we departed but nothing drastic at all. There were 8 people on the trip and the other cars were an 850 D5 estate, 225 Quattro TT and a LS430. I should note the Merc was the cheapest by far.
We cruised on down to Folkstone and were easily on time even after our late departure. Unfortunately, as everyone had travelled from different areas of the UK peoples arrivals into the Eurotunnel had meant that they had just selected the earliest crossing that was available to them. That meant 4 cars on 3 different trains with us on the last one (I should note we were still 2hr 30min early for our planned train).
The trip was 4 days and we had 2 hotels pre booked (I know keen right with 4 unknown car). The first night was Bruges so we all agreed to just meet at the hotel and go from there.
I won’t go into the non-motoring stuff too much but just know Bruges is a beautiful place and I may have had a bit too much to drink the first night as I was not feeling too fresh at 8 the next morning. The plan wasn’t to leave until midday though, so we had a nice little walk around to soak in the sights and sounds. I let my brother drive as soon as I picked him up in the UK as he hadn’t driven the car at all. As he was slightly more reserved on the Friday night he ended up driving to the our next stop which was the ring. This was about a 240mile stint taking in a couple of sections of the Autobahn.
Our trip to the ring was event free apart from all 4 cars going different ways there. We ended up out the back of the convoy and arriving first, work that out? We got fuel about 15 miles outside Bruges and didn’t stop once after that. The little merc covers miles effortlessly. The Autobahn was great and everything I had hoped, once we worked out what the signage was, we had a good couple of sections where we got to about 115, it was a little busy though, so it was hard to safely push past that. I mean you get the odd tosser on there but overall the system works great. With the roof down it was great hearing cars tear through the air at over 100mph next to you.
I had heard how nice the area surrounding the ring was and it didn’t disappoint. You go from a relatively flat landscape all the way though France, Belgium and the Netherlands but as soon as you leave the Motorway in Germany you start to enter the forests and the hills start to roll into the distance. You can really feel a change straight away. We arrive at the ring and first thing I do is get the photo that you must get. From here we venture into the car park opposite the main buildings and wait for the others to get here. We have a browse around the shops and take the atmosphere in. I watch loads of videos of the ring and live it vicariously though others but finally been here was pretty special for me.
I was just amazed to be somewhere where there are just casually so many amazing cars surrounding you all the time, it’s a destination venue and they are here for one thing.
The others arrive and we check into the hotel. Now the hotel in Bruges was very very nice don’t get me wrong (Acacia was the name if you are looking at stopping in the area) but it was just missing one thing. Ah yes, a balcony overlooking the GP circuit and the first set of bends of the Nordschleife. We were stopping at the Dorint AM Nurburg. Just the underground car park was breath-taking before you even get to your room.
This is a motorsport themed hotel obviously and it does it really well, I was especially impressed by the carpets. We enter the hotel room and walk straight to the balcony to be hit with a wall of sound of the cars racing around the ring. Now I really have arrived.
We did think about doing an evening lap but we had already had a long day and the fog was coming down so we decided against.
We had a look around ate some nice food, I’m only a social drinker so I don’t drink that much anyway but I refused to have anything that night as I didn’t want it to spoil the following day.
We were down for the Green Hell weekend were the track opens for Touristenfahrten 4 days straight which is not a very common thing. Due to this they get a massive influx of people that visit from all over. We wake up early Sunday morning to be greeted by blue skies and head down to entrance. We get here about 8:15 and the track was due to open at 8. We can’t see anyone heading in so we park up and have a walk over to find out the track won’t open up until 9:30 due to low fog in a couple of areas. At this point cars are piling in and we are witnessing some of the greatest traffic jams I have ever seen in my life. The tailbacks are getting out of hand now, but it was an amazing sight to behold.
Me and my brother agree that we will probably do 2 laps each during the day. I won’t lie I was a little bit nervous. I would say that I am an ok driver (I mean we all think that of ourselves, don’t we?) but I don’t have any track experience, I haven’t really pushed this car that hard yet and while I have watched videos of the track, I don’t know it at all from memory.
I buy my 2 laps 35 euro each for anyone interested (we thought about getting the 4 but wanted to make sure all was well with it during my 2) and we watch the cars start rolling into the filter lane at 9:30. We watch the cars coming in for about 20 min then decide that we had better head out. I checked the car in the car park at the hotel and all was still perfect with it. Then we join the line, I have my brother in the car with me and we agree that he will help me with keeping a look out for anything that is coming, rule of the ring is only overtake on the left so slower cars stay right. Now let’s get into this point. The SLK is great little car, this one is the SLK200 supercharged. I everyday life at the traffic lights there aren’t many things that will easily pull away from you in terms of pace, it’s a top 30% car I would say. It really does go very well. At the ring with relation to lap times this car is the bottom 5 percentile, this even captures the TT we were with as well. We get on track and it’s amazing fun, amazing. I am cautious of not hurting the car as we are less than half way round our trip with regards to milage. My main concern was cooking the brakes which I could feel fading fast around half way round, I also had a couple of moments where the 195-65s were rolling onto the sidewall and getting very squirmy on the high speed corners. Also there are a lot of off camber corners that you are putting tremendous pressure the car to perform perfectly and it’s not worth crashing there due to the associated fees, so inevitably you drive more reserved. It’s super busy but we do get clear sections. The problem is you do end up running on the non-optimum line a lot of the time as you have all manner of BMW’s and Porches racing past you. The stuff on there is soooooo fast even I’m doing over 110 in places and people are flying past me. Having track knowledge is key, you hit some of the crests not knowing what will be over the other side, even doing 4 laps throughout the day the I have way more knowledge of the track now.
We come down the start finish start and line up for my second lap. You can’t do a full straight on tourist laps due to having to pull off the track or line up again. It takes about 10 minutes to get to the booth on the track for start my second lap which was ideal to let the brakes cool a little. Now there was a caution on my first lap for a car that had gone off but it had managed to carry on. We wanted to get an idea of lap times. I had no idea what to expect, I remember Sabine doing a 10min lap in a transit and she was a complete legend, so I estimated a 14-15 minute lap maybe with no other research on the subject. My second lap was good, I felt good but I got stuck behind a Focus ST, my problem was getting past with creating a huge road block for a much faster car coming up behind me at 2 times the pace. I did manage to get past soon enough but I ended up having to go through another area of caution where an ND MX5 had gone of track. Anyway, lap complete and I did a Bridge to Gantry of 11:50 which I was chuffed with. Honestly, without the holdup, the caution and braking just before the gantry to avoid traffic I don’t think a mid to high 10 would have been completely out of touch?
We pulled in after this to let the car cool down and to purchase another 2 tickets. At this point there was a big crash on track and it was due to be closed until 1 so we had 2 hours to kill where we headed back to the entertainment and shops. 1 was coming around so we headed back we parked with the TT on the verge and waited for the track to reopen. Once the track opened back up we headed down and my brother got his chance to do his two laps which were also great but nerve wracking as a passenger. He also ran into cautions on the way round and still managed a 11:44, the main thing was we had the best time and the car was still perfect.
The track action was frantic and I estimated that they had 15 decent accidents they had to sort throughout the day. The air ambulance and the track ambulance were working for sure. They do such a good job running the place. One guy with us said there was about 400 cars on the circuit at any time in the busy spots!!! Work that out and they are taking nearly 500,000 euro on a day like that.
The volvo never managed a lap as it had a nasty front end vibration they didn’t want to chance, it had a lot of work before the trip but it just wasn’t tested enough. The LS430 cooked it brakes bad in 2 laps but that was surprisingly good, and on the trip home any issues with the brakes had now gone. The TT did its 4 laps with the owners then got lent out to the others to do a lap totalling 7 in total but that did result in in coming home with a slipping clutch but fair play to it. It was quick as well. While the other were lapping the TT me and my brother went to watch at Brennen (the famous Youtube corner) I have watched so many videos from here that I had to see it. We couldn’t park in the car park so we drove up the road and trekked back through the forest to the corner. As soon as we got there an E46 did a big 180 and managed to avoid all the barriers then after about 10 minutes another E46 came round the corner on its roof which was also a sight to see. Luckily no one was hurt they cleared the mess, and the track was running again. We got some videos of the TT doing that corner which was cool and some if the other guys went in the I30 ring taxis as a passenger which they said is well worth doing if you go. Those I30s do 25 laps a day. They go through 2 sets of tyres, 5 tanks of fuel and they do the brake pads on them every night. We stayed and watched a fair while here.
We left Brennen and headed to Luxembourg for the night. We cruised over with the TT and I can tell you it didn’t take long when you are cruising between 100-130mph. Lovely big empty road, he SLK does this stuff so well, it’s supposed to top out at 139 but I am pretty sure it will go well past that.
Luxembourg was great we had a great night, we found a really great little grotty club in a side street that was the best time. then we left on the Monday morning at around 10 and I drove the 460 miles home in one go just stopping at the tunnel and for food. Even managed the earlier train this time.
So all in all it was a brilliant trip and Honestly I can’t recommend it enough.
A few things I have learnt from the trip were,
Power is such a low priority in a car if you want to go fast. Start with suspension, brakes and tyres. We saw a Corsa C overtake a Porsche to put that into context.
BMWs are just great. Seeing them racing around the ring all types of models really shows they are a great platform to start with.
You can still have fun there pushing a cheap car to the limit but I really really want an out and out track car.
Just take your mates and get out there and do it.
The SLK came home and it is still perfect. Didn’t use a drop of oil or water. The Mrs has taken her mom shopping in it today, what a frigging great little car but inevitably I bought it for the trip and now the trip is over it will be for sale soon.
