Now, which way does this turn go? Oh, I think I remember. This looks like that diabolical hairpin right before the Karussell, the one that always catches me by surprise. Or maybe it’s that mischievous little kink left before that sharp right over the hill — the one that I almost looped last time. S—! S—! S—! It’s that damned jump! Brakes, don’t fail me now.
Welcome to the Nürburgring, where success — indeed, mere survival — is predicated not just on judicious steering of wheel and pedalling of brake but on one’s ability to memorize, or at least visualize, where this tarmac serpent is heading.
If you’re an automotive enthusiast, you’ve no doubt heard of the Nürburgring. It used to host Formula One races, still holds endurance races and is now considered the yardstick for production car performance. Virtually every automobile manufacturer with even a pretense to sportiness has a test facility here; a fast lap round the ’Ring is a guarantee of instant sports car bona fides.
What is seldom discussed is how difficult it is to circumnavigate the ’Ring. Most race tracks are between three and five kilometres long; the Nürburgring’s North Loop measures 20.6 kilometres (or 20.8, depending on what you’re considering the starting line). Typical modern race tracks have between 10 and 20 corners; the ’Ring has 127.
And while individual portions of the track definitely have distinctly different recognizable patterns, memorization of every portion of the layout is absolutely essential to a quick lap. As a chronic ADD sufferer with little ability to visualize the abstract, trying to remember where all 127 bends go and visualize all their blind jukes and feints seems impossible; hell, I couldn’t even memorize my Grade 1 poems and they were only four lines long. Just remembering where the pits are strains my synapses.
I suspect it takes years to gain the encyclopedic track knowledge necessary for a fast lap around the ’Ring. Indeed, the best driving I see all day is by the cleanup crew, the driver sliding his Sprinter van (complete with trailer!!!) through every corner in his quest to empty the track of crashed motorcycles as quickly as possible. Quite how endurance racers do this in the dark of night is beyond me. I continually screwed up the Kleines, the second of the Karussell turns (yes, there are two!). Did I mention there’s a jump?
And what you can’t see on television or xBox is that the Nürburgring is as slippery as a snake. Originally built in 1927, the track is continually repaved in approximately 10-year cycles. That means that, while one portion of the track is granular and grippy, other portions have been worn glassy smooth by the thousands upon thousands of laps trod by supercar and diesel-powered subcompact alike.
Adding to the mayhem is that the weather in the Eifel mountains is the very definition of fickle. Fog, rain and blinding sunshine are all part of a single day, often a single lap, on the North Loop. The weather round the ’Ring is so diverse and the laps so long that it’s possible to have the Hatzenbach section absolutely drenched one lap and bone-dry the next. Terror, at least the automotive kind, is blitzing into a blind corner only to find a sheet of rain awaiting you at the apex.
Adding just that extra degree of difficulty is that the German fans — often fuelled by the tasty local hops — find the need to express their enthusiasm by “tagging” the track surface. And what said remembrances may lack in imagination (I can’t read German, but the essential message seems to be “Kilroy was here”) they more than make up for in slipperiness. As anyone who’s ever done the slip-slidey thing over wet white lines on the side of a highway knows, paint and water do not for traction make. Again, though only certain portions of the piste have succumbed to Teutonic graffiti, it’s just another part of the capriciousness that makes track knowledge absolutely essential.
More problematic, however, than nailing the exit from the Karussell is that the Nürburgring’s very existence is under threat. The entire complex is unique in the world in that any schmo, piloting anything from a 1.2-litre Golf to the latest 197-horsepower BMW superbike, can just drive up to the gates, pony up a few Euros and have at it. Yes, the ’Ring is the ultimate rent-a-track. Factory supercars often share the track with minivans packed with tourists, each flailing their poor tires to the limits of adhesion, albeit at wildly divergent speeds.
Unfortunately, greedy American mortgage brokers aren’t the only people to get seduced by the Great Depression’s low interest rates. Between 2007 and 2009, the track underwent a transformation into a Disney-like theme park complete with — I kid you not — a roller coaster and a giant shopping mall. Now, the roller coaster lies broken and unused while the mall is a virtual ghost town. Management is trying to service the resultant debt (reportedly $350-million) by raising the price of “tourist laps” by as much as 26% and, according to savethering.org, charging automakers five times as much to rent the facilities. Virtually every business in the neighbouring villages has a “save the ring” banner, the organization trying to convince the German government to separate the popular track facilities and the beleaguered “NüroDisney” theme park.
As daunting as it might be, a lap at the Nürburgring is unquestionably the ultimate automotive fantasy come true. You can do your part at http://www.facebook.com/SaveTheRing.
