The web server holding my earliest postings into an uncaring universe quietly expired a while ago. Rather than replacing it, I'm posting the content so it will live on forever in the cloud, polluting my little corner of it. Enjoy.
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| ALL the rules and nothing more |
Several days later saw us reunited with the rest of the American group in the town of Nurburg. Now this was going to be a little bit different from your usual Drivers Education event. With 200 participants, finding that many instructors might prove a bit hard. Plus having knowledgable instructors narrows the odds even further. Since there is only 1 or 2 sand traps and most of the turns are
blind and off camber, the consequences of blowing a turn at speed are pretty dire. Either you hit the guard-rail or if you're extremely unlucky, sail off into the trees.
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| Instructor Reed Davis |
We were divided into groups of about 12 cars, each with 2 drivers. There were 3 American groups. We were in Group 3. The track was divided into 12 sections, each a couple of miles long. Each group would continuously work a section for 90 minutes, and then move on to the next section. For the first 2 days, we were on the track from 8am to 8pm. A lead/follow format was used.
Our instructor, Reed Davis from Utah, would lead, showing us the line. The next six cars would then follow, about a car-length off each's bumper, trying to duplicate exactly the line. To prevent errors from magnifying, the "Coach", George Phemister from Canada, would lead the next group of six cars. At the end of the section, all the cars would reverse back to the begining and switch drivers. Also the first car behind the leader would go to the back, thus rotating every car up to follow behind the leaders.
At the end of the second day, we were given a chance to put it all together with 90 minutes of open lapping. The 3rd day we got 2 hours of open lapping in the morning. The afternoon was devoted to the graded laps. Instructors were positioned at 14 positions around the track. Each driver was sent off at 30 second intervals and graded on one lap of the circuit. Each instructor could see several turns, and you were graded on your accuracy of hitting the turn-in, apex and track-out; smoothness and rhythm; and finally speed. A perfect score through a section was a 1; just visiting got you a 10. Your worst section was dropped and all the rest added up. A perfect score therefore was a 13, the worst 130 - but if you wrecked the car they added a bonus 10 points.
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| hey guys - smaller numbers toward the front! |
That was how it was all supposed to work. It seemed that Chris & I didn't have quite the Teutonic approach to the school. By the end of the school we were known as "those Porsche guys" or "Team PCA", followed by a shaking of the head. It all started in the parking lot of our hotel. The other school drivers were carefully putting on their numbers, making sure they were straight and without bubbles. Team PCA on the other hand, succeeded in placing our numbers on backwards, and even one upside down. Hey, we were there to race, not for a concours event!
Next morning we were dismayed to find out that we wouldn't really do anything on the track until after lunch. First up was an autocross slalom setup on the main straight. Now I don't know about you, but I didn't come to Europe, to the greatest racetrack in the world to do some cone-banging. So maybe we had a small attitude adjustment to make here. A cone-mowing we went. There might have been one cone that survived between the two of us. It might have been ugly, but we did what we had to do. In style, of course: Z3 top down, traction control off, squealing wheels, CD playing and lots of giggles from the cockpit.
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| Think we were crazy with our top down Z3? How about doing the Ring in a Sidecar? |
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Next bit of silliness was what we called the dumpster race. After they tired of picking up all the dead cones, we moved up to where the old pits were, across from the Grand Prix track. Here they laid out another autoX course. The difference was we didn't get to use our vehicle. They had some small sedan (a Seat 1.3L 4 cylinder). The trick part was the rear wheels of the vehicle were removed and replaced with hard swivel wheels just like you find on a dumpster.
We were told the point of this "safety" exercise was to simulate car handling on ice. I think something got lost in the translation from German. What it actually simulated was driving a car with studded snow tires on the front and bald race tires on the rear in the snow. Actually it was quite fun if totally useless. The best part was the sweeping decreasing radius turn at the end where the camber goes away in the middle of the turn. Many more cones met their maker that day.
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