Well hello nordschleife!

Ok,

So, like I wrote in previous post, we had to go to nordschleife before dropping luggages to hotel. I was excited when we entered the area, there is a small nurburg town which the road track surrounds. After awhile we found the place where to stop our car and buy the ticket. There was some time before the track opened so I took a look of cars there. GT3 911's, basic Bmw's, from normal everyday escort's to GT track cars. The track itself has a long history in motor racing. It was builded in 1920's and ever since it has been in racing use. When F1 started in 1950, nordschleife has been in schedule with few exceptions. In 1976 Niki Lauda almost died in a serious chrash there and that was end of the F1 era there, in green hell. In any case, this around 20km long track includes about 170 turns, blind curves and whatnot, they say that its the most dangerous race track, in the world.

So, I got the ring card, it was time to put the roof on, aircon to max freeze and hit the track. I have to say that I dont exactly remember much of the lap, it was so exciting to push there but the 1/3 part of the track I drove in a pack of four cars, Audi TT, some track clio and behind me there was a older 911, from 80's. And we really drove fast there, tires were screaming and we had a good racing lines there. Audi in front wasn't fast enough but I thought it was too dangerous to overtake in that section.

After about 7km, I felt that something happened in the car, power went down and the car didn't rev anymore, max speed was around 120-130kmh. Of course, engine overheated. Not too much, but over the limit (>100c) where the engine controller decides to cool down a bit. This happened because I was driving behind others and the Benz didn't get enough of fresh air to breath. Well, after awhile engine cooled down and gave the power back. Cornering was awesome, You took the car in to the corner, tires were screaming and you felt that its under control, its not oversteering nor understeering, it went nicely through the corners to next one.

Before going the track, I thought it might be horrible car to drive there, its soft, steering is bit slow and the seats does not provide enough support when cornering. But no, it was actually pretty confortable to drive faster on track like that. I didn't use stop watch, because timing makes you push more and more and I didn't want to go over the edge because of that for example. From the car clock, the time was something like 10-11min. Which is nice time for first timer.

"It was awesome!"

The lap was totally awesome. I didn't take another one, because its very demanding for the car to drive there, or in race track in general. Its a huge stress for the engine, transmission, brakes, chassis and tires, and still I need to take the car back to Finland :) some say, that 1km on race track is equivalent of 100km of normal driving. Could be true. The green hell was worth of going. Probably I was smiling there all the time.