TL;DR: Went to the Nurburgring, had a blast driving an awesome car. Check the pics and Video
Hey Everyone,
Recently took a trip around Europe, and of course, as a car guy...I had to stop at the Nurburgring.
For months before my visit, I toiled over which company I would rent from at the nurburgring. There are plenty of options, and they are all pretty reasonably priced, but the companies are all quite different. What's great about the nurburgring is that companies charge you on a per-lap basis, this works out great because the Nurburgring is quite a long track, so you get good bang for your buck.
As you may see from my tag, I drive a Cayman S already at home, so to my surprise...I found a company that offers a Cayman S Race Car for rent for the nurburgring. There was no doubt in my mind that I had to book this company.
Ring Garage http://www.r-garage.de/
I went through one of their sales reps, Misha Misha@r-garage.de
I decided to stay at the Ring garage for my entire trip to Nurburg, it just made things convenient. The Ring Garage has built some brand new condos just behind their garage for guests to stay in. It turns out that the condos have JUST recently been built, so when I stayed there everything was literally brand new, and not quite finished yet. I think with several more months of development, they will have a seriously awesome set up for car guys go have a couple days of racing.
Arriving in nurburg I spent my first day just exploring the area and going to the museum, I was saddened to discover that it had been raining for the past 36 hours, and that I had only 24 hours until I was going to drive. The LAST thing i wanted to do was make the journey all the way to the nurburgring and have to deal with a wet track. Coming from the Desert, I have spent thousands of laps on race tracks in the dry, but I don't have lots of experience in the wet, I didn't want to do any learning this trip...I just wanted to enjoy the Green Hell and go fast.
Take note that booking an instructor for your stay at the nurburgring is SEPARATE, and it's not cheap either. I decided to book an instructor for my couple of laps because...I'm a racing instructor at home, and I save people from crashing all the time...I wanted to make sure that If I messed up one of the many corners of the Nurburgring, he would be able to help me make my way out of disaster.
THE CAR
A 2014 Cayman S Race Car The Ring garage really did a great job of having a proper race car, full safety equipment, stiff and low suspension, no insulation. I drive race cars for a living, so for me, it was really awesome that they offered a proper race car. The guys at Ring garage actually Race this cayman in an endurance racing series at the Nurburgring, so you know you're driving something special.
You can see that it has a full roll cage, 5 point harnesses, the whole 9 yards, for sure an awesome little race car. Full slicks aren't allowed on Touristenfahrten days at the nurburgring, but they equipped the car with Pilot Sport Cup 2s the day I drove, still an awesome tire.
THE TRACK
When It came time to drive, THANK GOD it was dry. The whole track was bone dry, and wow was it a blessing!
The biggest difference between watching Nurburgring Videos and driving the track yourself...is feeling the massive bumps and elevation changes. Many of the tracks I am used to driving are smooth with minimal elevation changes, it was really cool to go on a track that is completely different than what I'm used to; I gladly accepted the challenge of getting used to all the bumps and rattles.
As you can see from the video, I was coasting a lot, and really trying to aire on the side of caution...No need to throw someone els's car into a wall and empty my bank account. You'll see that at every blind corner I was hesitant to go full in, I hadn't had time to really memorize the whole track. With probably 60 more laps around the track, and more time to trust the car over all the bumps, I think I could have improved my time by easily a minute, I was really slow in the fast corners...I don't have enough money to buy a whole new race car if i crashed this one, So i just wanted to enjoy the track and be safe.
My favorite section was the part in between carousel 1 and carousel 2.
My best time was a 9 minute 21 second lap, but with practice and no traffic, 8 minute 30 would have been easy.
Enjoy the video! I recorded it using a Go-Pro hero 3 Silver edition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKSZLs29wIc
- 1 lap in a BMW 135
- 3 laps in cayman S race car
- 1 instructor
- 2 nights stay
all for around $1450
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