Monday

While driving north, the conditions kept improving. The B-412 was again relatively traffic-free, allowing me to make good progress and have a little bit of fun in the process. Weather in Nürburg was a bit overcast, but dry.

Ross was there to brighten things up, with one of his now-famous T-shirts. This one said: "Fuck milk... Got beer?" Naturally he was wearing a smile to match.

Kiki had found a fitting addition for her helmet. At first sight I thought they were two bright red joysticks, but they turned out to be some devil's horns.

Bren was walking round the carpark showing off his newly rebuilt shock. It certainly looked cleaner than before.

Of course it didn't take long before a nice old 911 pulled up. For some reason they always do. Some of them on R-compounds, but this one was on regular road tyres.

To take advantage of the conditions I went to do some laps. Matt came along for the ride. We ended up doing three consecutive laps. For some reason the track had felt pretty slippery all weekend, and that hadn't changed. Not very confidence-inspiring, but I was getting used to the grip and was picking up some speed. An bright yellow Audi 80 was going round at impressive speeds. By the way the suspension handled the bumps it wasn't entirely standard. Accelerating out of Adenauer Forst we found out that the power to weight ratio of the Audi was better than that of my 964 too: at full throttle in the middle of the power band, the Audi still managed to out-accelerate us. Nice stealth-car, apart from the colour.

Another notable event happened a lap later. We went down Fuchsröhre at full tilt, followed by a short lift before the compression and powering through the compression in 5th gear. The car slides nicely towards the righthand uphill kerb, when both Matt and I spot somebody on the left side of the track waving his arms. Obviously he's warning us, and wants us to slow down. As I was kind of busy I just said "f*ck f*ck f*ck" (Niek must be responsible for that) to at least let Matt know that I'd seen the guy, and was going to do something about losing speed at the earliest possible moment. That moment definitely wasn't when you're drifting out to the edge of the track. Once the car had straightened out enough, the brakes got a good workout. Luckily no-one was in a really inconvenient spot (such as directly in front of us), but it was a bit hairy anyway.

Having done three back-to-back laps the rear tyres had had enough, and I dropped Matt off before I went for some picture-taking at Quiddelbacher Höhe again. Normally I like to go to different spots during a weekend, but due to the fogged-up long lens I had come away feeling frustrated. Time for a repeat visit.

Having run dry another battery and with my memory card completely full (all 4GB of it), I went to the Breidscheid entrance to do some more laps. Getting on at Breidscheid was a lot quicker than queueing for half of forever at the usual entrance. There was lots of fast traffic about during initially, but from Brünnchen onwards traffic was pretty decent. Quite a few fast boiks about, though. The queue to exit the track had disappeared.

I had the track to myself to start with. The tyres were squealing nicely through Hatzenbach. The jump at Quiddelbacher Höhe feels very weird an unsettling after the reconstruction. It consists of 3 smaller humps now. It was a good feeling to encounter no traffic whatsoever until Miss-hit-miss. At that point to stripped E30s went past. For some reason I didn't feel at home with Miss-it-miss this weekend. It seemed as if there was less grip there than usual.

After Bergwerk I overtook some boiks and caught up to the E30s again, but stayed behind them as they'd be quicker in the next section. A white breadvan was being recovered at the exit of Mutkurve. The section from Karussell to Hohe Acht went a bit faster than usual. I've always been very conservative in the first lefthander after the Karussell, but managed to increase speed there a bit. The rest of the lap was spent slowly but surely reeling in a 3-series BMW until I could pass him on the approach to Schwalbenschwanz.

While cooling down the car I called Ben, as he'd called me just when I went out. He wouldn't mind a passenger lap, and I said I'd swing by the carpark to pick him up in a few minutes. Naturally there was no Ben to be found when I got there. I did get a text message that stated he was out on a lap with somebody else.

Going onto the track again, the journos that were playing with the new Alfa behaved as you'd expect: stop in the no-stopping zone, block traffic that wants to leave the track, get out of the car and start talking to other journos. Despite that I managed to leave the gate behind Dave in the 944 Turbo. We were reasonably matched on accelleration. Then I made room for a Scooby which proceeded to hold me up for a bit while Dave pulled away. It wasn't until Schwedenkreuz that the Scooby overtook Dave.

Before Bergwerk I overtook a Corvette that was going rather slowly. I was pretty lucky with traffic: most of them were in spots where it's easy to overtake. The exception was an old Mercedes which was right at the exit of Mutkurve. At Eschbach I overtook a Maserati whose drive wanted to buy my car: he was going pretty slowly, but stuck behind me on the aproach to Eschbach. Which is OK, but I do need to brake quite hard before turning in.

The exit of Kleine Karussell was interesting too. I usuall try to stay in it all the way round. This time I carried a bit more speed and jumped out slightly early, requiring a bit of corrective action on my part.

On the next lap I had a clear run until Maddock Bend. At least I could get back to the right side of the track after overtaking a gaggle of vehicles between Maddock Bend and Mutkurve. The rest of the lap was mostly clear again, giving me the chance the celebrate the odometer having rolled over to 200.000km during this set of laps. I had considered driving a roundabout route to the track and take a picture of the 200.000, but figured that rolling over on the track was more in keeping with the spirit of a Porsche.

There was something going on at the Industriegelände: lots of people were there, including little people on little bikes who watched big people on big boiks.

Even though the carpark wasn't all that busy anymore, some people couldn't find the courage to walk more than 10 meters, necessitating them to park in some crazy places. It's bad enough when there are cars half on the road on one side of the primary access road, but when people park on the opposite side too things get very cramped.

The skies were getting darker and darker, and it wasn't all that long before the first drops of rain started to fall. Instead of just standing around getting wet, Matt kindly invited us to join him for a lap in the Megane. Jon, Nick and I jumped in right away, and off we went.

Of course several gadgets were pressed into action for an event such as this, including at least one mobile phone and a Blackberry.

The track was pretty wet, to say the least. Quattros and other 4-wheel drive cars had a definite edge. Not that they needed much of an edge when compared to an overloaded 1.6 Megane, of course.

To kill the time, Jon brought the Ringers list up to speed on our progress.

Outside the car the skies seemed to be clearing a bit. On the way down to Breidscheid Dave overtook us in his 944 Turbo.

The Megane managed an impressive 130km/h up Kesselchen. To our collective surprise we even managed to overtake somebody.

However, our Megan with the undersized engine was no match for a well-prepped Golf. Matt did very well keeping up with him from Karussell almost to Hohe Acht. On the way up to Hohe Acht one of the new Alfas hadn't made it up the hill. Johannes was there to warn traffic, and we later learned that they had managed to run out of fuel.

In Wippermann it started raining again, underscoring the ever-changing conditions at the Ring. That didn't prevent Matt from giving the diminished crowd a friendly wave.

Galgenkopf was very very wet, but Matt still managed a BTG of less than 12 minutes: not bad in the pouring rain in a car with no horsepower and 4 blokes inside.

On lap two we found that rented tyres can squeal in the wet. Conditions were even more variable than before, with the sun coming out to play for part of the lap.

Surprisingly, we managed to overtake a BMW as if it was standing still. On an uphill stretch, even.

The high point of the entire day must have been the epic dragrace with an old Opel Ascona (?) up Kesselchen. He came into view at Wehrseifen, and inch by inch we got closer, until we could read the license plate going up Ex-Mühle. The Opel obligingly moved to the right side of the track, but there was no way that our overloaded 1.6 would be able to out-accelerate a half-fit turtle up that hill, let alone a car, albeit an old one.

After gaining back some ground in the braking zone for Bergwerk, the Megane found one or two extra horsepowers (effectively doubling the power), and by the time we came to Maddock Bend we'd managed to overtake the Opel. All in all a hilarious "slow race".

The out-of-fuel Alfa was still there. At least that part of the track was more or less dry. From Eschbach on things were very wet indeed.

The last lap was again memorable: we spotted a yellow Mitsubishi Evo at the gates when we went out for the third lap.

It came out of the cones only seconds behind us. We all figured that it wouldn't be long before it would come storming past, making the most of its superior power and traction. Not that you'd need an Evo to be superior to a Megan 1.6 in the power or traction stakes, mind you.

The heroic effort of the Megane up Kesselchen must have given it some inspiration, as we weren't overtaken on the run to Tiergarten. By the time we came to Aremberg, we were still in the lead, even though the track was reasonably dry there. At Kallenhard we were still in front, but despite the extra one horsepower the Megane had found we were still certain that we'd lose the race up Kesselchen. Some die-hard spectators were still present at Bergwerk to witness the beginning of yet another uphill struggle.

On the way to Maddock Bend we were indeed overtaken. Not by the Evo, mind you, but by the RingMini.

Shorty afterwards (the Evo still somewhere behind us) it started raining again. Bad news for the journos in the stopped Alfa, but good news for us in the Megane.

At Eiskurve the rain was pouring down in earnest, enough that we were now catching up to a PSM-equipped Porsche.

Somehow Matt had managed to do a sub-10minute BTG. Quite impressive under the circumstances.

This gave us time to park the car, have a little chat, and then wait for the Evo to exit.

Despite the rather wet track, Stelvio couldn't resist doing a lap, asking us to come look for him if he took more than half an hour. Luckily he made it round without any problems.

Meanwhile, some other Italians had managed to get grass all over their car, including the roof.

The Evo driver was congratulated on her lap after parking next to the MC-Car.

Naturally, the pause between laps was filled with gadgets. Flip-up phones seem to be en vogue nowadays. Enough so that some people need to hold two whenever possible.

The Alfa came off the track on the back of the recovery truck. An expensive way to refuel your car, if you ask me. Then again, nobody asked me.

The gadget-theme was continued by reading Keith's reply to Jon's post to the Ringers list, and framing a suitable reply.

The next object of attention was the Megane. First Nick demonstrated that the bodywork was mostly plastic.

Then he started looking for the bonnet release, to check that there really was an engine in there somewhere.

Meanwhile the mystery of the engine was solved. A badge on the side of the car indicated that it had a 16 Volt engine. Of course the car battery was only 12V, which explained the lack of power.

When examining the Megane started to bore us (which wasn't all that long), we went for another lap. Johannes had come back from assisting the broken-down journos, and we divided the party of 5 over the two cars. To continue the Evo tradition, we out-dragged a 911 up Döttinger Höhe to start the lap.

In a blur we then shot past Johannes who was waiting for us after the cones.

In the back seat I had a good view of Johannes tailing us. After Matt switched on the rear windscreen wiper, that is.

Traffic on the track was almost non-existent now, allowing us to go round in convoy quite easily. Mattzgesfeld to Breidscheid was reasonably dry now.

The 911 was still somewhere behind us, but we did get overtaken by a red Golf-V.

Johannes was behind us all the way.

The cornering forces were so heavy that Jon had to hang for dear life in some corners. This might also have something to do with the total lack of sideways support of the seats, come to think of it.

The line through Schwalbenschwanz was a bit confusing but very entertaining. The dragrace from Schwalbenschwanz to Döttinger Höhe dragrace from Schwalbenschwanz to Döttinger Höhe to finish the lap was even better.

Another phone demo followed in the carpark.

It looked like it might dry up, but then it started raining again. After a group photo of the afternoon's cars I called it a day and started to head for home.

For some reason I had three little races on the way home. Usually nobody wants to race me in the 964: maybe it was something in the air?

On the A-1 to Euskirchen two boikers wanted to see if they were faster than my 14-year old waterless tin box. As it turned out one of them wasn't, and the other only managed to pull away ever so slightly. The acceleration from 220 to 260 isn't too bad in my car :) At the end of the A-1 I gave them a thumbs-up, and got some friendly waves in return.

On the A-61 a 3-series BMW (no type designation on the trunk) speeded up when I approached him while doing a relaxed cruising speed of about 200km/h. As I didn't feel like playing, I floored it. He kept trying until we were doing about 230, but 260 was obviously out of his reach.

Then in the Netherlands a Scooby wanted to play too. He was overtaking some slowcoach, dropped his speed to stay next to the slowcoach, let me get close, and then nailed it. As I was in relax-mode (and value my driver's license) I hadn't bothered to downshift, so he pulled away easily. Only to drop back again, forcing me to overtake him. A bit of slow traffic and the situation was reversed: this time I was in front, and decided to see how quick he really was. The result: not much in it until ahhh, let's say, rather fast, with me inch by inch pulling way when going faster than rather fast. A few kilometers later he exited, and in contrast to the friendly bikers he didn't bother to acknowledge my presence. Which struck me as a little strange if you so obviously want to play.

Anyway, this time I made it home without hitting any birds, filled up with fuel, and put the 964 in the garage. The next trip with the 964 is probably in September (the Swedish weekend). Before then a quick trip to Rennsport is in order to change the brake fluid, but other than that the car is running very nicely indeed.

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