Vacation 2007 - Day 13

October 4

Nothing happened today, had planned to drive to the North Sea but after seeing the sun this morning decided to stick around and wait for the track to open at 5:15.

Drove around a little bit, watched the driving school cars circulate the 'ring and took a nap. It was exciting. Finally at 5:15 Nürburgring opened for Touristenfahrten. First lap was as a passenger in Porsche Cayman S unfortunately I left the GPS behind but it felt twice as fast as my laps. “Driving” the Nürburgring while playing Gran Turismo, on the TV, does not prepare one for the elevation changes, but at least I knew which turn was coming up next.

The track was only open for two hours, instead of all day. Enough time to get in five laps but five is better then none. The good news was that it was not busy, got passed about three times each lap and never got held up by a slower car/bike. The only carnage was a 911 that went nose first into the armco hard enough to cause steam to escape from the nose. Youtube lap on a busy day.

My laps do not show that I missed my calling and should have been a race car driver. The standard unit of measure during Touristenfahrten is Bridge (toward the end of the front straight) to Gantry (at the start of the front straight). My fastest time was 9:50 and lowest was 10:58. That may seem good but when one compares it to the 10:08 lap Sabine did in a Transit van (as seen on Youtube) it is merely ok. Factor in that the Transit van weighed 800-1000 lbs more, had 60 fewer horsepower, had hockeypucks for tires, worthless brakes (along with many other disadvantages) compared to my car and I will settle for not bending any sheetmetal and/or armco barriers during my five laps.

To view GPS track in Google Earth
Click This Link and Select Download
In Google Earth Open 'My Places'
Click: 'IMPORT KMZ FILE'
Click: 'Open File...'
Select Downloaded KMZ file: 20071004.kmz

The GPS got lost on part of lap five for some reason.

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