Ring Fling
RING FLING
Sportbike Heaven: Hard-charging on Germany’s über road course
DON CANET
CERTAIN THINGS STICK WITH YOU FOR LIFE, LIKE Grandma’s delicious berry cobbler or the sweet smell of Castrol R premix. Of my earliest motorsports memories, one that has been etched in my mind for nearly four decades, is the photo of a Formula One race car negotiating one of the most recognizable bends in all of racing, the famed Caricciola-Karussell. Simply known as the “Carousel” to the English-speaking world, it’s a signature feature of the historic Nürburgring Nordschleife racetrack located in the Eifel Mountains south of Cologne, Germany.
This steeply banked, keyhole-shaped curve is but one of 75 corners encountered in a single 12.94-mile lap of a circuit revered by many racers as the world’s most challenging and unforgiving road course. Much of the Nordschleife (German for Northslope) has been carved out of dense forest and mountainside, with almost 1000 feet of elevation change between the road’s lowest and highest points. Gravel-trap runoffs grace only a trio of its corners, while tire walls cushion a few others. The vast majority of bends offer only a few yards of separation between road edge and unrelenting steel Armco that skirts the entire length of the track on both sides.
Built in 1927, the Ring, as it’s reverently referred to, is a near-mythical dinosaur that flies in the face of today’s homologated, safety-conscious, air-fenced short circuits. A more befitting nickname is “Green Hell,” coined by Formula One great Jackie Stewart, who claimed three Grand Prix victories at the Ring before the circuit lost its F-1 sanction for safety reasons following the 1976 German GP. Had the Flying Scot raced bikes, he might have been inclined to dub the circuit “Guardrail Hell!” The FIM followed suit four years later, and the course was forever removed from the motorcycle GP calendar, as well. Today, a 3.2-mile modern circuit residing next door to the Nordschleife hosts world championship events.
My longstanding desire to ride the Ring was recently rekindled by the appearance of the old Nürburgring in various racing video games. As an advocate of PC and console gaming as a training tool for learning real-life tracks (see sidebar), I believe the Ring offers the definitive acid test of this practice. To be honest, however, having wadded too many times to count while learning the Ring on screen, I held serious reservations about putting myself out there for real. Eve never been one to ride any circuit at a casual pace!
But as fate would have it, while attending the MasterBike 2007 test (CW, August) held in Jerez, Spain, this past spring, it became clear that my Nürburgring dream was not to be denied. Fellow moto-journalist Gerry Nordstrom, in attendance covering MasterBike for Swedish Bike, has logged more than 2000 laps of the Ring over the past 23 years.
And go figure, Gerry is partners in a Nürburgring bed-andbreakfast hotel. Would it not be rude of me to pass on his extended hospitality?
I also learned that Jürgen Fuchs, former Grand Prix competitor and MasterBike regular representing the German publication Motorrad, is a riding instructor at the magazine’s Action Team Trainings riding schools held throughout the summer months on the Nordschleife. No recourse remained once a Ducati factory representative at Jerez devilishly offered to arrange a 1098 loaner through the German press department, should I dare to test my mettle at the Green Hell.
My flights were as good as booked after convincing the boss back home there was a story in pre-running what may well be the ultimate sportbiker vacation destination.
Weather was the one thing I could not plan for as the Eifel is known for its unpredictable precipitation-even mid-summer. Making matters worse, graffiti painted on the track’s surface is a Ring trademark. Evidently, tarmac tagging has become tradition with rabid fans who camp alongside the circuit during big annual events such as the 24-Hour touring car race or the Rock am Ring music festival-in both cases, think Woodstock fueled by Jägermeister. Apparently, these party types don’t appreciate the anxiety that paint markings inflict on bikers when the road is wet!
A Maui getaway never looked better as I arrived at Cologne/Bonn International Airport on Friday, July 13 (yilces!), and drove my rental car through torrential rain during the hour transit to the quaint Blaue Ecke Hotel (lead photo) located near the circuit in downtown Adenau. An English-speaking staff, fine restaurant/bar and newly renovated rooms make Gerry’s hotel a popular lodging choice for the many bike and sports-car enthusiasts who come over from England. The hotel’s website (www.blaueecke.de) can be viewed in English, providing an excellent resource for CW readers looking to book a Ring Fling of their own. The site provides motorcycle-rental information and links to other Ring-related sites.
Although the track is booked by auto companies and the like for exclusive testing on most weekdays, it is open to “tourist” traffic for a couple of hours most evenings, along with all-day access on certain weekends. My five-day visit included tourist laps Saturday evening and from 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Sunday. I also attended a two-day Action Team session beginning on Monday morning, and rode in tourist sessions those evenings, as well.
There are also plenty of scenic day-rides throughout the region. Gerry led me on a road run to one of Germany’s wine-producing regions along the Mosel River, killing time while waiting for Saturday evening’s tourist session. The track is considered a “toll road” during tourist sessions, with tickets available from a vending machine located adjacent to the entrance gate. The cost is 19 euros ($26) for a single lap while purchasing a 4-, 8-, 16or 25-lap ticket offers as much as
a $7 savings per lap.
Despite my two decades of roadracing experience, this would be my first time on a track where bikes and cars run together. General rules of the Ring are to keep to the right when a faster vehicle closes, only overtake on the left and never stop alongside the road.
My initial lap, trailing Gerry on his 2007 Yamaha YZF-R1, verified that all 75 bends I’d committed to memory through
virtual training checked out. They truly did. A second round behind the Swedish ringmeister at a swifter pace and I was beginning to find the rhythm of the road.
“I have never seen anyone learn the track quicker,” Gerry said, confirming the value of screen time for track acclimation. “Your third lap, with me trailing, was amazing. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes! It was clear that you already knew the track.”
Clear sky and temperatures well into the 90s attracted droves of riders and drivers on Sunday. Like a couple skiers seeking fresh powder, Gerry and I awoke early to be among the first on the track when it opened. In fact, the whole Ring scene struck me as being very reminiscent of a ski hill. By mid-morning, the parking lot was crammed with vehicles and the cafeteria sundeck was filled with people enjoying a break and beverage between runs. The lift line-if you will-stretched out the parking lot onto the roadway leading in, with cars lined up for a quarter-mile waiting to get on track. Poor bastards. Thanks to a pair of dedicated motorcycle entrance gates, there were seldom more than a few bikes waiting in the queue. We were heavily outnumbered on-track, however, by what appeared to be about a 10:1 ratio of cars to bikes.
Four laps in, Gerry returned to the hotel to get some work done, leaving me to the masses and with one very good piece of advice. “Once the low-fuel light comes on,” he warned, “don’t try for another lap.” If the Ring marshals have to recover your machine on course, you’re slapped with a $250 fee for the roadside service. Figuring they don’t accept AAA,
I visited a nearby petrol station for a $30 fill-up after every fifth lap.
I burned through four tanks of fuel before calling it a day, having ridden until my palms were blistered from working 1500 corners at speed. It felt as though I’d just experienced a year’s worth of excitement in a single day. I’ve never held a throttle pinned open for as long a period while negotiating a series of 150-mph-plus blind curves as encountered during the long ascent out of Bergwerk toward the Carousel. Slinging around that famous concrete berm was a jaw-jarring exercise, with the Due’s near-fully compressed suspension getting a workout from the slab joints. A small wheelie out of the bowl and onto the short straight that follows provided a brief moment of relief before tackling the track’s most technically challenging section spanning the next four miles.
While this stretch proved most difficult to master in video games, it soon became my very favorite on the real-life Ring, as the rhythm and flow required is the very definition of poetry in motion. I’ve always enjoyed crested corners at tracks such as Sears Point and Mid-Ohio, and here was a supersize serving requiring precise timing of full-lean, side-to-side transitions to nail the next blind apex. Thanks to its broad spread of torque, my Ducati required few shifts through this run.
The 1098’s superb chassis stability also filled me with a great deal of confidence on the fastest parts of a lap, and the bike maintained composure when the front tire floated over fourthand fifth-gear rises. Not to suggest I was in full-on race mode, but the 1098 had the measure of every vehicle I came upon. I must admit, putting the pass on several Porsche 911 GT3s, Dodge Viper SRT-10s and fancy Ferraris was pretty gratifying.
There truly was a wide variety of vehicles, too, ranging from Ring-rat rigs like a VW Golf equipped with a roll cage and gumball radiais to the rare and exotic (see above). Bikes ran the gamut, as well, although I don’t recall seeing a single cruiser in the lot. On one lap, I even encountered a busload of tourists being tailed by a pilot car with flashing lights.
If you’re inclined to ride shotgun, there’s a better option. I witnessed this having smelled burnt rubber for a mile or two before catching up on the source. It was a 500-hp BMW M5 “Ring Taxi,” its passengers getting a thrill ride as the driver performed a Tokyo drift through the track’s tighter turns. Good show!
There was a number of crashes during the day, some even calling for a temporary course closure to clear the carnage.
I watched a cherry-red sports car just ahead of me lose the rear and spin out of control into the trackside barrier! Even with the Ring’s inherent danger, there’s comfort in not having to worry about oncoming traffic. There also are course marshals circulating on motorcycles monitoring track conditions; they stop to display caution or debris flags when a situation warrants.
If experiencing the Ring in the raw sounds too risky, then Action Team Training offers a much more controlled environment for motorcyclists seeking to learn the line. There were 150 students attending the school, with an instructor assigned to groups of eight riders each. I joined a group for English-speaking students and participated in Monday morning’s section training. Our instructor began with a very comprehensive safety briefing covering procedure in the event of a fall. We walked a section of track discussing the proper line before mounting up and riding it forward and backward several times, then repeated the process through two more sections before breaking for lunch. Throughout the afternoon, students rode complete laps following behind their instructor at a pace any competent rider should be able to handle. I was impressed by the amount of track time students received and would strongly urge first-time Ring riders to take this course. While the www.actionteam.de site is only offered
in German, emailing actionteam@motorpresse.de will reach English-speaking personnel who can provide further information.
For me, the real treat of the trip came during the school’s noon break, when Fuchs and I put in a handful of memorable quick laps on a clear track. It was not only pure sportbike bliss, but the realization of a lifelong dream and one more checked item on my “Things to Do” list.
My mid-life Ring fling has now developed into a fullblown love affair that beckons a return to the Eifel for another round. I could use a tire sponsor... □
