Sunday: Nürburgring Bound
Somehow – and I’m still not sure how – I managed to convince my wonderful girlfriend to join me at the Nürburgring for some endurance racing madness, though I’ll admit a 6.40am wake-up dented her enthusiasm ever so slightly.
Unfortunately despite the generous staring time, a swift drive down the highway was required to make our 8.20am train through the Eurotunnel. Fortunately we arrived just in time – I’ll let you fill in the details of our drive – and we were swiftly loaded onto the train.
This would be my first time driving on the Continent and I had no idea what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised. Certainly European roads were a welcome break from the potholed UK roads since we had been forced to take my Renault Cliosport 200. With its Cup-spec suspension, the ride can be – shall we say – ‘compromised’. The roads through France, Belgium and Germany rather surprisingly proved a revelation, and the car turned uncharacteristically into a cruiser, give or take a few unexpected detours through Brussels and Liege.
A quick pit stop and a couple of Red Bulls later, we arrived at the Nürburgring shortly after the race start. After collecting my media pass from a local hotel, we decided to head to a section of the circuit called Pflanzgarten where the cars often get some air over a small rise in the circuit.
This is about a five-kilometre drive from where the media passes needed to be collected, a drive that took about an hour. The main road running up to Pflanzgarten was lined with cars parked on any available space for about three kilometres either side. The general approach to parking seemed to be find a space in a ditch and abandon your car there. Unfortunately the Clio isn’t really capable of that kind of parking, and we eventually had to settle on a parking space the best part of two clicks from the circuit. After a long walk to The Jump, we arrived just after the sun had set. I managed to grab a few quick shots, but it wasn’t too long before the rain arrived, and boy did it arrive! The darkness prevented any head-on shots at the jump. Lesson learnt: traffic just after the race start is crazy.
Through the rain, we headed back through the campsites to the Clio. Temporary they may be, these campsites are something else. The fans construct their weekend homes from home, from platforms made of scaffolding to caravans and pop-up tents. Despite the rain, the frivolity was in full flow and everyone was having an awesome time. Say what you will about the Nürburgring’s financial situation, I doubt the enthusiasm of the fans will even run out.
We headed off to the GP part of the circuit, and after some interesting mime work to help break the language barrier with one of the marshalls, we managed to locate the competitor’s campsite (where media reps can camp too) and pitched our tent. I decided at this point to grab 30 minutes of sleep, anticipating that I would spend most of the evening shooting in the pitlane and trekking around the Nordschleife. Some 40 minutes later, the rain was still driving down hard and the circuit stood almost deathly silent. After a quick chat with a friend over the phone I found out the race had been red flagged and all cars were in the pits. So much for night shots. So I grabbed some more sleep, expecting the race to be restarted in a few hours. As it turns out, action would not start again until 8am the following morning.
STORY CONTINUES ON PAGE 3 – FULL GALLERY OF THE DTM BRANDS HATCH AVAILABLE HERE, FULL NURBURGRING 24 HOURS GALLERY HERE – Shots courtesy of Nick Dungan
