Monday

Our poor little C-car was standing outside too. In the past weeks it has become a storage depot for new seats for the G-car, bits of exhaust, and other mechanical bits. The idea of storing these things in the car is to try to avoid Ring Racing selling them to other customers before we get the chance to bolt them to our cars. It seems to be working so far.

Adri and I reflected that the disposal of used tyres might be a good business opportunity in the Eifel mountains.

Another damaged car parked outside was Ricky's Speedster Turbo. The left rear wheel looked a bit like Keith's Speedster after his off-track excursion: it had an impressive amount of toe-out.

Yet another broken-down car was Soren's (and Christer's, though I haven't seen him use it much lately) 318is: the exhaust was falling apart and it couldn't be welded.

With the weekend winding down people started to pack their things to head home. Passats seem to be the tow-car of choice for Caterham drivers.

Next on the agenda was our meeting with Anders. We found a free table in a corner and copied the pictures to his external drive. The drive was small and had a flashing blue light: couldn't be better.

Over the next minutes more Swedes started to trickle into the restaurant for an early lunch, and I turned my laptop around while it was running a slideshow of the pictures I'd taken earlier in the weekend. It must be the fastest way to induce total silence.

With opening time getting closer and closer, everybody started to leave to get ready for the track. In my case that meant hooking up with Matt again in the G-car. He had spotted Jeremy Clarkson again, on the point of going out in the S-type. After Karl and Ed overtaking Clarkson twice in one lap we figured it might be fun to go into stealth mode, wait for him to go to the barrier, and follow him round for a bit. The G-car had already been warmed up, and after a short wait JC obliged us by starting his car and heading for the barrier. We immediately went out too, but he'd gotten a sizeable headstart when we entered the track. At Schwedenkreuz repairs were underway to the armco.

A boiker was ahead of us, and he was just quick enough not to hold us up too much. A red 968 moved over before Kallenhard in such a way that we didn't lose any time at all. Thanks!

Matt took Bergwerk nicely, and the G-60 was making its usual vacuum-cleaner sounds while propelling us up Kesselchen. By this time we had the S-type firmly in our sights Jeremy had definitely picked up some speed during the weekend, but it was only a matter of time before we would be overtaking Mr. Clarkson. Approaching Mutkurve the gap was still pretty big, but where JC slowed down quite a bit before going round it, Matt hardly slowed at all, closing the gap almost completely. The blind right kink before Steilstrecken kurve did the rest: we were past him before we knew it.

JC then used us as a guide by trying to stick close to our rear bumper. This worked well all the way through the Karussell, but by the time we got to Hohe Acht he was nowhere in sight.

Having gotten that out of the way, we overtook a 993 before Matt did a well-deserved victory cry. At the exit Clarkson's camera crew was waiting. I couldn't resist rolling down the window to tell them that he'd be along in a minute or so now.

We hoped he would go out for another lap, but instead of getting behind the wheel he lit yet another cigarette. Matt and I decided to do another lap.

At Breidscheid Matt checked the rear door to make sure that it was closed properly, and we thought it might be a good idea to wait for a bit at Breidscheid to watch the traffic go by. And you never know, maybe Clarkson would do another lap too. As it turned out he didn't, but we had an interesting conversation while critiqueing other people's approach to Ex-Mühle.

Having completed the lap in style by executing some more overtakes, I figured I just had time for one or two more pax laps before it was time to leave again.

A lap with Ulf is always a pleasure, and this lap was no exception. On the way to Hatzenbach the Merc didn't seem to want to provide full power, which was quickly solved by switching off the ESP.

The track was nice and quiet, in stark contrast to Saturday. Not only Ulf was enjoying the clear track: several of the other Swedes were out to liven things up.

I was determined to pay particular attention to the way Ulf would take Bergwerk. Last year Ulf, Anders and Sabine had a long discussion on where to turn in for Bergwerk, and whether or not the Scuderia-painted dot was in the right position or not. Naturally a discussion of this type mandated the use of lots of scribbling on beer mats. To make getting to the beer mats easier, the beer glasses would be emptied first. This weekend I was lucky to see Ulf coming up behind me when I was going up Ex-Mühle. I slowed way down and indicated right to make sure that he would overtake me before Bergwerk. This worked very well, and I had a front-row seat to his line through Bergwerk. I couldn't quite figure out how he did it, but somehow his line seemed a lot smoother and with a wider radius than what I normally see. So, now would be my chance to have another look from inside the car. Alas, this was not to be because when we came through Lauda Links there was someone warning us to slow down. From the looks of it a boik had gone down on the approach to Bergwerk, and the left side of the track was blocked with boik, people, and a GT3.

Even though the magic line through Bergwerk had eluded me, it was still a very enjoyable lap. In the hands of Ulf the Merc shifts along at impressive speeds by setting the car up exactly right before turning in. A tip for the Mercedes engineers would be to stiffen the rebound of the shocks a bit, but otherwise it's a well-behaved car. The brakes did rumble a bit after a weekend at the Ring, but at least they didn't catch fire like last year.

As is usually the case, the track in the rearview mirror was empty when we came to the gantry.

ThoRSten was almost on his way home, but Christer L. was happy to take me for along for two laps. He's the driver of the beautiful blue 911 that Ben hitched a ride with last time out. In the pictures below the car is fresh out of winter storage. (Pictures courtesy of Christer L.)

This time he had his usual Ring-car with him, a Sternrubin 964RS with Big Reds in front. To stop getting hassled by 996-drivers about the lack of an onboard computer he'd neatly fitted a cycle tripcomputer to the center console. I wouldn't want to hazard a guess as to how many laps he's driven on the Nordschleife, but I do know it's a LOT. He makes going round at speed seem very easy. Which is a good thing, as we were talking about Porsche 964s, the line, and my short vacation in Sweden of last week which included a visit to Mantorp Park and the PCSR races.

It didn't take me very long to lose count of how many cars and boiks we passed, despite being held up by a dutch boiker from Eschbach to Schwalbenschwantz. Hat off to the guy though: he hadn't seen us come up on him, but realised he must have been holding us up when he did see us, and approached Christer in the carkpark at the end of the lap to apologise.

After thanking Christer for two great laps it was time to start saying goodbye to those who steadfastly remained, including Jon and Matt. I also had my first real-life look at the 997. In my opinion it looks nice, but is only a small step from the 996. I still like my 964 much better when it comes to looks.

From there it was back to the cars: Adri and I to go home; Jon and Matt to do another lap.

My ankle was still bugging me enough that I was glad to have Adri along to act as my personal chauffeur.

Executive summary:

• I only drove a handful of laps but had lots of fun doing it;
• I took a load of pictures that I still need to sort out;
• I went on some excellent passenger laps;
• The dinners were in the top-5 socially.
• I'll be back for more :)