Sunday

My second lap of the day was spent behind Ed (with Robin in the passenger seat) in his Clio. He promised to take it easy, but wanted to include some sideways moments for added entertainment value of the video. Unfortunately Ed was under the mistaken impression that I had a Carrera 4, so his 'slow' resulted in my having to work hard to keep up and keep it on the track. Throw in some blind traffic and you have an entertaining time. Ed made good on his 'sideways' promise by kicking the tail loose at Brünnchen II. Really loose. As in 35 degrees sideways loose, judging from my perspective. It's a pity I had to drop back a little, as I slid a bit more than intended in both the Karussell and Wippermann. The three of us still had a good time watching the replay in the drizzly car park.

A walk round the car park found me bumping into Joel and his SLK. As Joel was on my waiting list for passenger laps this weekend, I took him round to make it easier for him to associate 'Ring' with 'Porsche'. It was also interesting to compare notes on the way both cars (his 996 and my 964) handled and felt :-)

By now it was almost 10, and breakfast was long overdue. This was taken care of by a sandwich at the restaurant, sitting outside in the sun, looking at and listening to more and more Swedisch Porsches :-) I couldn't resist sending Ben a text message: "Sun is shining, track is drying, where are you???" IMO it may be wise to censor part of his reply, but he did have a good reason for being otherwise engaged. The uncensored part was a request to please keep on drying the track for him.

The plan was to take some (read: lots) of pictures from selected cars and bikes driving the Ring. I intended to do this at Wehrseifen, because that would enable a good mix of close shots and the by now classic shot onto Bergwerk. The fastest way to get there is of course by taking the Ring, exiting at Breidscheid. (OK, I really wanted to do more lapping, and this was the best excuse I could come up with.)

The climb up to Wehrseifen was hard work in the sun, loaded down with tripod, camera, bunch of lenses, and other assorted goodies. Finding the right spot proved difficult: the weeds had grown since my last visit, obscuring part of the long shot onto Bergwerk (that means that you still have the best picture, Ben). I put the camcorder on the tripod and switched it on, so anybody who came through between 10.38 hours and roughly 12.00 is on my tape. E-mail me if you would like me to hunt down some framegrabs or a VHS-copy.

As is always the case, there's luck involved when taking pictures. Paskal was unlucky: I say him once, but was changing films at the time. Ditto for Ed in the Clio. The Swedes made my life a lot easier by doing hundreds of laps, making for more photo opportunities. On the other hand, they made life really hard by driving so fast. Which carried one benefit: spotting them was easy. There were very few non-Swedish cars that blasted into Wehrseifen at such high speeds. Ben made sure I hadn't fallen asleep in the sun by sending me messages that Birgit was on the way (thanks, that always helps). Jocke passed unnoticed, because I'm notoriously bad at spotting bikers, so I was looking for his ears. Caz later told me he'd taken them off again :( The biker in the picture below had an intersting cornering technique: instead of getting his knee down, he wanted to get his heel down :) I only spotted Karl once. Stewart was trying to beat the SquealMobile in terms of sound production, and doing a good job. A Passat estate was using the inside kerb. It didn't work terribly well...

More highlights of 2.5 hours at Wehrseifen:

During a closure I secured a passenger lap with Thorsten in his 964RS. It gave me a good opportunity to feel the difference between the RS and my C2. The biggest differences: the stiffer suspension and the much better brakes on the RS. Another difference was the quality of the driver: Thorsten's really good. We were going very fast and he wasn't even pushing hard :) I'm not surprised he'll be an instructor next year, something I didn't know when I invited him for a lap in my C2. I hadn't quite shaken off the effects of the Schwedenkreuz thingy yet, so I the lap was a lot less clean than usual. Which was a good thing, because this way I got some really useful feedback on my driving after we came back. It certainly had a positive influence on the laps I did later in the weekend. Many thanks again, Thorsten!

Euan then missed a passenger lap with me, the lucky bastard: he was too polite to decline my offer =;-). On the way to the car we ran into Bren and Lenny. An ambulance was using its siren, and Lenny responded in kind but with more conviction than the ambulance. Unfortunately, by the time we made it to the barrier the track was closed.

During the closure Trish confessed that she'd been so busy arranging passenger laps for John during their last trip that she didn't have any passenger laps herself. This was of course immediately compensated for with two back to back laps in my 964. On second thoughts, not quite immediately, because we were stuck for 10 minutes in the car park across the road thanks to a recovery truck blocking the only exit while loading a broken down car. Christer was following Ben's lead. Traffic at the roundabout was a bit stuck.

Niek's sister went out with Anders, and Niek was following them in the passenger seat of Thorsten. Of course nobody could find a camera to immortalise these moments, so I volunteered to give it a shot or two.

My next "assignment" was a video lap of John Boggiano in his 964. He's been coming to the Ring since a long time ago, but hadn't done many visits recently. I didn't have to go looking for him, as he'd parked his very red car right next to mine :) I think it happened during these two laps: finally somebody took a decent picture of my car in action at the Ring :-)) Many thanks, Euan: YAVKG! There, I said it!

John had done a few refresher laps already, and as the track was dry and traffic light I switched on both the camcorder and the bulletcam and we went out for two laps. On the first lap I hung back a little, not being sure how hard/where John would brake, but there were very few surprises as he his track knowledge seemed to come back very quickly. Both laps were smooth with little traffic. Two moments on the second lap deserve mentioning: a BMW M5 cutting off John on the approach to the first of the esses at Hatzenbach. Rather nasty. The second moment was a biker trying to kill himself in (!) the entry to Adenauer Forst by means of trying to outbrake me on the outside (right side) while I had my right side indicator on trying to convey I was going to stay on the outside. Luckily I saw him in my mirror. Luckily Porsches have really good brakes. I haven't watched the footage from the bulletcam because I recorded straight onto one of John's tapes, but the DV stuff looks very good. At least John and his wife Paula seemed to like it when we watched it on the camcorder screen.

The entertainment for the evening was drinks and dinner at the Lindenhof, starting out with Euan, with Niek joining us after a little while, followed by Trish and Tom, followed by Tony, Lillan, Stephan and some more Scandinavians whose names have somehow vanished from my slightly overloaded memory. I do remember that the food was good and plentiful, that during the evening Euan, Niek, Tom and Trish left, that I intended to head for my bed at 22.00, but that I was persuaded rather easily to head over to the Fuchsröhre. Which was postponed to quarter past eleven, because we were having too much fun at the Lindenhof :-)))

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