I've wanted to visit the Nürburgring Nordschleife ever since I first heared about it, and when my girlfriend and I went to Cologne for a week, the opportunity was finally there. On sundaymorning we set of for the 90km drive, taking us along the A61 and finally over the 'Bundesstrasse' along the beautiful scenery of the Eiffel.
I had done my homework about the viewing locations, so as we reached Adenau first I wanted to visit Adenauer Forst. We parked at the school in Adenau and set of for the very steep climb up to the track. Thanks to the unclear hand-painted map along the road we took a detour through a piece of forrest. But by following the enginesounds in the background we still made it. As we just stood on the banking along the track, a Ring Taxi came drifting by in a cloud of smoke. Needless to say this gave me goosebumps all over.
Time to get out the camera!
My g/f taking some movies (can be downloaded here:
http://rapidshare.de/files/21869847/Ring.wmv.html):
Soon we saw the first inevitable touringcar:
And lots of fast cars/bikes:
I decided to check if my panning skills were ok:
Some more pics from Adenauer Forst:
A Dutch guy in a 325i overdoing it:
Some locals along the track:
The guy with the blue jacket was just reading a magazine and would only look up if he heard tire-squeel.
2 different Ring Taxi's on the move (notice the license plates), no Sabine though:
Nearly lost it in the Elise:
English guy trying to kill the tires on his E46:
I really really wanted to capture a drifting Ring Taxi:
After that we went back to the car and got to Breidscheid to eat some 'Pommes und Currywurst" and have a look at Exmühle. A lot more spectators over here, as it is way easier to reach as Adenauer Forst. By this time there were also more vehicles out there, as the weather had cleared up:
We only stayed there for a short time, as we wanted to see more. Next stop: start/finish..... IMHO quite boring, sure there were some nice cars in the parkinglot, but 50% or so of them never saw the track. So only a few pics from here:
Regular coupe with an M3-hood:
We had a short look at the town of Nürburg, but went to Brünnchen. As we arrived there a British biker had crashed his motorcycle. He wasn't hurt, but the bike had to be towed. The track was closed, so we used the time to walk to Karussell.
We had a look at the Steilstreck, that is really really steep, with a 33% slope:
After 30 minutes or so the track opened up again. Very agressive overtaking by the red GTI:
This bone stock VW Passat was doing laps all day long, and it was going FAST!
At the Karussell I had a nice chat with one of the guys from Carfreaks.net about the Nordschleife. He was there filming all day long, as they were there with 6 cars to drive on the Ring: Lancer Evo VII, M6, Corvette C6 Convertible, 2 M3's and a 911 turbo (IIRC). They had already lost one cam as it fell of a car. They were there all week to get some nice footage:
Their photographer with a Canon EOS 20D and 100-400 f/4-5.6 L IS:
Track-prepped cars:
Overview of the inside of Karussell and panning at 10mm:
My girlfriend, waiting patiently for me to finish photographing:
It was getting later so we started walking back to Brünnchen, taking pictures:
Hohe Acht:
Towards Wipperman:
Another guy from Carfreaks.net:
Wipperman/Eschbach:
These guys had been lapping their motorcycles all day long and did a final lap in the van:
Last shots of the day were taken at Brünnchen. Our transport:
Weird old guy camping there:
And a little sun for the end of the day:
This TVR really had an awesome V8-rumble:
After that we went back to Cologne, tired but excited.
I'd love to visit the Ring more often, especially to take pictures, but it's 400km from here and not owning a car surely doesn't help. So if anybody wants some nice pics in trade for a ride I'm open to any offers.
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