Hamza7's trip to the Nurburgring.
 

Posted a couple months back on a different forum but wanted to share here. The FT68 community has supported me a lot of the time I have been here and just wanted to say thank you!



Hello Everyone, I hope that all of you are doing great. I just wanted to share my recent experiences going to the Nurburgring, if you don't know what the Nurburgring is, it's basically a giant race track that has many changes in direction 170+ and drastic elevation change. Now I can handle the corners but nothing really prepares you for the elevation change, you will never see something like in any other track because the Nurburgring is based in the Eiffel region of Germany and realistically the roads there are some of the best I have ever seen I mean the roads even leading up to the Nurburgring are amazing...and they have signs everywhere that you shouldn't race on them.

But first I would like to thank my sponsors...you guys.


So step 1 was get a train from Denmark to Cologne, Germany the closest major city to the Nurburgring. I am in Denmark right now because I doing a global exchange program for my education.

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So at this point, I was suppose to stay in the train until 6:15 am local time but I fell asleep as it was a over night train and woke up 6:13 am as I set the alarm at that time thinking I was suppose to get off at 6:30 am...anyway my friend George who was accompanying me woke me up grabbed his stuff and jumped off a moving train just leaving the station and I was stuck on because the conductor air locked the doors(I totally could have done it).

This resulted in me getting a free trip to Dusseldorf, which isn't really a fancy city.

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I then caught a In City Express train back to Cologne to meet up with George a whole two hours after I was initially suppose to arrive.

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We had reserved the rental car for 24 hours to try to save maximum amount of money so we had some time to kill (2:30 pm pick-up) luckily Cologne entertained us with monuments and museums.

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This is a Cologne Dom, it's monolithic..words can't describe how amazing this building was..with so much detail and architectural magnificence

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Inside
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Biggest Organs I have ever seen
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Yummy...A S-line A6 Avant, why don't we get these again?
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Quite a beautiful city as you can see
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Representing Car Care everywhere.

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What's this? A chocolate museum? Let's see what goes on in here.

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I am a huge hot chocolate fan and I do my best to try some everywhere I go and by far this is the best stuff ever and the freshly made Lindt in the museum also helped as a topper. Cheese cake was good too.
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After some more touring, it was time to pick up our rental....a Chevy Aveo but the highlight was this was in a Renault showroom so we had some time to lounge around that area and of course I sat in everything in sight but the 3 cars that stood out were the Clio RS, Megan RS and this the Renault Twizzy, a two seated EV but unlike regular two seater the driver sits in the front and the passenger sits directly behind him and it had lambo style doors.

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After cruising at 180 kmh in a car with a 1.4 liter engine we arrived at the 'Ring

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but we couldn't find the actual entrance to the Nordschleife so we arrived at the F1 track instead.

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Where we found single race car's having their qualifying. Sorry for the blurry picture but a I heard a terrifying growl coming up behind me and I had to turn on the camera and shoot as fast as I could.

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There was BMW and Jaguars VIP lounge near the track so we started checking door and apparently Jag really trusts people so they left their doors unlocked so we got a great view of that and sound these cars were making was amazing.

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Aston Martin's Nurburgring Testing Facility

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Finally it the clock struck 5:30 pm and the 'ring was open for public access, part of our rental agreement was that we were not allowed to drive our vehicle on the ring so I met 3 wonderful British chaps who offered us a lift in their vehicle. I broke my ring cherry in a EK9 Type R from Japan and I'm proud of it.

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The second car I was in, was an 350z convertible.

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There were some of the other rentals available from various different companies.

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View from my balcony in the morning, just 60 meters away from the track. If you haven't been woken up from the sound of a roaring V12 then your missing out.

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Even the hotel I was staying at offering a 'ring rental

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If even remotely in the area you will not forget that your at the ring, everything around you reflects it including the decor of your room.

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After a breakfast we got to the meeting point where I found finally see what cars I would be driving and I was not disappointed.

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E46 M3 Sedan's and 2Doors, 996 GT3 RS, 997 GT3 RS, Z4M, E92 M3 Sedans....It was pretty exciting.

Old man Obermeier explaining the F1 circuit in....German of course

As I checked in with reception, I knew I had come to the right place. They provided us with race suits, shoes, gloves and helmets.

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You know you've come to the right place when you have a view like this

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Dat A$$....

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Now racing or even lapping in a regular car is way different in a race car, I mean these car's just looked modded from the outside but you have to be inside and driving to notice the "real" differences

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I mean check out this M3, this was actually the fastest car here but the mods on it were crazy...

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and getting out of it was quite complicated.

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I had to get into the instructors car before I could go out on my own so here's me trying to fold myself in this car.

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It was a pretty exhilarating ride

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As the day progressed and it got warmed the vehicle got some more fuel and we switched to R-comps.

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I had some time to kill so I started documenting paint defects in the cars

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Finally we were allowed to go out again

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Getting a accurate rating on your speed is important, OEM gauges suck

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I don't think I could ever own a real beater race car, I would have to do botch repair jobs like this.

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Settling in my GT3

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Trying to get out of the car without needing to saw my legs off was hard

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and that was the end of that.

I also saw Nurburg castle

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and of course the beautiful hilly roads around Nurburg

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Here is a VLN SLS making a very nice noises.

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M3 performance driving school

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Monster Z4M

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Someone's GT3

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Also found a ZR1 around the streets of Cologne

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http://i1093.photobucket.com/albums/...psb5e4151c.jpg This gentlemen was very proud of his car and had the decal "647HP" across the back and side of his car to make sure people knew the specs were.

and that is the end of my trip, hope you enjoyed

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Oh you're on here too! (Tm3)

and it was a good re-read, very jealous

That looks awesome! Thanks for sharing. I'll be there in March, could you PM me the details of the place you stayed near the Ring?

Hey, I stayed at

http://www.tripadvisor.ca/Hotel_Revi...alatinate.html

There's definitely cheaper places to stay but this place is the closest to the 'ring and they have some fast cars to rent as well.

Was there this past summer also on our official honeymoon trip. We stayed at the Hotel Blaue Ecke Nürburgring so not much of a drive to get to the Nurburgring, it's a little more expensive. Town gets pretty quiet after all the businesses close.

We rented a little Renault Sport Clio from RSRNurburg, so it was something a lot slower than what Hamza7 rented :) Great group of guys from RSRNurburg, recommend those guys any day as a friend recommended them to us also, and also got one of their instructors to ride along with us for a few laps each (highly recommend it if you haven't been at the ring before, regardless if you played the game or not).

The elevation change, gotta be there to experience it. Online videos, photos, etc., doesn't even come close to showing the elevation change there.

A coworker from Brussels met up with us that day also, rented a BRZ from rent4ring. They gave him the usual warning about turning off traction control, everybody that did, ended up going off and doing some sort of damage to the car. Did take a ride in the BRZ for a lap. I was impressed with the handling of the car. Subaru/Toyota really got it right with this car. The BRZ had Toyo tires, Ohlin suspension and a Milltek exhaust. It was pretty quick in the first half of the ring partly because the elevation drops throughout the first half, but the later half, it was all uphill and the BRZ struggled a bit in some places but overall, I probably wouldn't have come close to the speeds he was doing anyways. Would have wanted to rent the BRZ but it was a fair bit more $$$ compared to the Renault which was pretty basic (no roll cage) but it was more than enough we could handle anyways.

Driving the track, it was on the bucket list for both of us. We definitely want to go back and do more than just five laps for each of us. Ah Germany... the highways, the unlimited parts of the highway, the drivers there that knows the rules of the roads. Coming back to Toronto and the drivers around here on the 400 highways, I keep on cursing at the lack of common sense or understanding of the left lane.

That's awesome Hamza! Looks like you had a real blast, it's a dream of mine to one day race on the ring as well. :-)

Great pics. Is there a write up of what your time on track was actually like somewhere?

Umm.... I don't really want to disclose that. I'm sorry man, it's just I'm not confident in my driving abilities...