Monday: Nürburgring 24 Hours (minus nine hours)
Daylight broke, and after a few rather soggy hours in our temporary canvas home, we squelched across the very sodden ground to the pitlane. Usually at this point in a 24-hour endurance race, you would expect to see cars held together with sticky tape and mechanics falling asleep across their laptops and toolboxes. How tradition can differ. Despite a few battle-scarred entries up and down pitroad, most of the GT cars were still quite fresh. The pace on-track – with the red flag finally lifted – showed that the 2013 Nürburgring 24 Hours still had plenty of life left in it.
After a few hours in the pits, it was time to head back to Pflanzgarten to take advantage of its myriad of cheeky photogenic angles. This time the drive took just 20 minutes and the parking was easy. The masses of campers that were there the previous day had either grown tired of waiting for the rain to stop and the race to restart, or were busy rubbing their eyes after a night of excess. What was left looked more like a war zone. With 45 minutes left of the race we headed back to the circuit, choosing to shoot the finish from the spectator area, since most other photographers at the track chose to shoot from circuit level. Maxime Martin in the Marc VDS BMW Z4 GT3 made sure the race went down to the wire – nearly – and after a very unorthodox 24 hours at the Nürburgring, Team Black Falcon took the chequered flag to secure Mercedes’ first event victory.
And so marked the end of my first Nürburgring 24 Hours. In many respects it was an anti-climax, since I didn’t manage to cover anything like the amount of the Nordschleife that I had hoped: the lack of night racing images due to the red flag was particularly disappointing. However I learnt some key lessons, and if the race runs again in 2014 I will most definitely return. Hopefully the weather will play ball then.
– FULL GALLERY OF THE DTM BRANDS HATCH AVAILABLE HERE, FULL NURBURGRING 24 HOURS GALLERY HERE – Shots courtesy of Nick Dungan
