Caballus
Well-Known Member
No problem. It was definitely a blast. Most of all, it was a good learning experience. It's also addictive. I can hear the sucking sound in my wallet...
Thanks and absolutely. The name is NĂĽrburgring Driving Academy. They are actually owned by the NĂĽrburgring. Website is http://www.nuerburgring.de/en/drives-fun/drives/sports-driver-trainings.html. English language toggle is in the upper right corner.
When you go to the site, you’ll see that they offer other training as well: Drift, Grand Prix, Offroad, Formula, etc. If you don’t speak German, it’s important to email them and get the details before signing up for anything, because many of the courses are in German only and once you pay, you cannot get a refund: possible exception = credit card insurance. An example would be their 2 day Safety and Fun driver training. By all accounts it is awesome and at 209€ pretty cheap. However, the English version is 600€ for 4 hours.
Also, it’s worth checking out other companies as well. In addition to the Ring, some also do Spa-Francorchamps, Hockenheim, Zolder and others, for example. Another variation is that some use the first hour for lead-follow and then let you loose by 9am, unless you want more instruction. If you go to the calendar, it’ll tell you all the track days and what companies are running them. http://www.nuerburgring.de/en/drives-fun/info/driving-experiences-dates.html. From there, you can dive in to see the various packages.
I purposely avoided that topic, but speaking as objectively as possible, it was a constant distraction and negatively impacted the experience. The good thing about the Nordschleife is the track is so long and has so many high speed sections that you can stay in third and forth for the majority of the track and hit fifth a bit as well. I would equate it to a combination of Autobahn and good B-roads (like driving through the Schwarzwald), if B-roads were also unrestricted. The disadvantage to this technique is that as the group starts to speed up, short shifting will cause you to become separated from the group, which means either you hold them back or you lose the benefit of lead-follow instruction. I kept the digital gauge on trans temp (would have rather had it on kph) and each time it would get close (and it got very close) I would back off. Only once did I do more than one lap without stopping in between. So, bottomline, on that track, you have to really try to throw it into limp mode on the first lap or two. After that, you have to work hard to keep it out of limp mode. Cooler parts are on the way and I am as bitter about it as ever. C’est la vie. By the way, there was a 5.0 and a Hellcat out there loving life… Anyway, I fought through it and stayed positive.
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