172 ph1
We had originally planned to go for all 3 days of this long weekend, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and took the Tuesday free to go to Phantasialand theme park, but we went for bowling and barbecue with a bunch of friends on Saturday so we left Brussels Sunday afternoon. Turned out to be a good decision because the track was crazy crowded this weekend and Monday was actually the best day.
The bushings on the car had been changed quite recently, and I went for an alignment on Friday. I thought the car was totally ready, and then the exhaust silencer fell off just before we set off! The car was painfully/embarrassingly loud as a result, and I had to be careful each time I passed the ticket barriers, because car which are too loud are not allowed on track. Luckily I was never noise tested on either day.
On the way there we briefly joined a convoy of Mustangs, lead by a C6 ZR1, Viper GTS, and a few Shelby GT500. We would come across them later on the track, mostly going slowly.
some other cool cars that I saw:
After we arrived in Adenau, we checked in to our hotel, and got to the track entrance at 16:30. It seemed we arrived at the end of an extremely long track closure. We were later told that it was due to a particularly bad accident, and a biker had died on track. We had a large ice cream until the track opened again, and managed just 1 lap before there was another track closure.
At that point we decided to call it a day and went to meet Dirk Schoysman, test driver for Hankook, Nissan, Jaguar, Aston Martin... cousin of my mom's best friend. He wanted to take us for a lap but it was hopeless considering the traffic, so we decided to go for dinner in the village he lives in, Barweiler. As he went to greet a few friends in the restaurant, I realised one of them was Sabine Schmitz - turns out she lives in that village of 500 inhabitants too.
It was funny when I saw him in the chopped version of this picture on OT. He's the only European test driver in the GTR testing team, the other 3 are Japanes.:
I asked him about the 24 hour race from the weekend before (he finished 11th with a 350Z out of the 200 odd cars), and he told me that finding your way round in the dark isn't as difficult as I imagined, that the only really difficult corner is Schwedenkreuz (where the Ferrari Scuderia went off, possibly with Schumi driving at the time), as it is taken at 210~220km/h in the race car, and there's very little light there (the track also drops away from you as well). We later had a drink at his house with one of his colleagues/friends, who instructed for Porsche club Finland that day but only managed 16 laps in total, despite being on the track all day.
Monday 1/6/2009 will probably remain the best day of 2009. In the morning, we each had a lap with Dirk in his 350Z before he had to leave for work, which was a real eye opener - it was obvious that he was driving very much below his limits, very gentle in his driving inputs and extremely smooth, so much so that there was little "sensation" even though it was obvious that he was lapping very quickly. I managed 9 laps during the day, during which I saw some crazy accidents. A really large accident happened in the afternoon when a shower came down, a few cars were involved and they spilt grass/dirt all over the track.
Some pictures of the Clio in action:
We had dinner in Adenau that evening at Italian restaurant Pinnochio, and I found another ClioSport.net member's car. Unfortunately I didn't find the owner.
After dinner we went for a walk.
On our way back to the hotel, we somehow found the entrance to the spectator spots for Flugplatz. We even managed to find an opening in the fence, so we walked on the track a while. Before heading back, we did what any young couple would have done. We did it like they do on the discovery channel, left a wet spot right where the Corvette's landing :clown:
Tuesday at the theme park was an anticlimax in comparison
The bushings on the car had been changed quite recently, and I went for an alignment on Friday. I thought the car was totally ready, and then the exhaust silencer fell off just before we set off! The car was painfully/embarrassingly loud as a result, and I had to be careful each time I passed the ticket barriers, because car which are too loud are not allowed on track. Luckily I was never noise tested on either day.
On the way there we briefly joined a convoy of Mustangs, lead by a C6 ZR1, Viper GTS, and a few Shelby GT500. We would come across them later on the track, mostly going slowly.
some other cool cars that I saw:
After we arrived in Adenau, we checked in to our hotel, and got to the track entrance at 16:30. It seemed we arrived at the end of an extremely long track closure. We were later told that it was due to a particularly bad accident, and a biker had died on track. We had a large ice cream until the track opened again, and managed just 1 lap before there was another track closure.
At that point we decided to call it a day and went to meet Dirk Schoysman, test driver for Hankook, Nissan, Jaguar, Aston Martin... cousin of my mom's best friend. He wanted to take us for a lap but it was hopeless considering the traffic, so we decided to go for dinner in the village he lives in, Barweiler. As he went to greet a few friends in the restaurant, I realised one of them was Sabine Schmitz - turns out she lives in that village of 500 inhabitants too.
It was funny when I saw him in the chopped version of this picture on OT. He's the only European test driver in the GTR testing team, the other 3 are Japanes.:
I asked him about the 24 hour race from the weekend before (he finished 11th with a 350Z out of the 200 odd cars), and he told me that finding your way round in the dark isn't as difficult as I imagined, that the only really difficult corner is Schwedenkreuz (where the Ferrari Scuderia went off, possibly with Schumi driving at the time), as it is taken at 210~220km/h in the race car, and there's very little light there (the track also drops away from you as well). We later had a drink at his house with one of his colleagues/friends, who instructed for Porsche club Finland that day but only managed 16 laps in total, despite being on the track all day.
Monday 1/6/2009 will probably remain the best day of 2009. In the morning, we each had a lap with Dirk in his 350Z before he had to leave for work, which was a real eye opener - it was obvious that he was driving very much below his limits, very gentle in his driving inputs and extremely smooth, so much so that there was little "sensation" even though it was obvious that he was lapping very quickly. I managed 9 laps during the day, during which I saw some crazy accidents. A really large accident happened in the afternoon when a shower came down, a few cars were involved and they spilt grass/dirt all over the track.
Some pictures of the Clio in action:
We had dinner in Adenau that evening at Italian restaurant Pinnochio, and I found another ClioSport.net member's car. Unfortunately I didn't find the owner.
After dinner we went for a walk.
On our way back to the hotel, we somehow found the entrance to the spectator spots for Flugplatz. We even managed to find an opening in the fence, so we walked on the track a while. Before heading back, we did what any young couple would have done. We did it like they do on the discovery channel, left a wet spot right where the Corvette's landing :clown:
Tuesday at the theme park was an anticlimax in comparison
