Glad you are OK.

An expensive way to find your limit though.

Are the barriers made of gold?

How did you end up getting the car home & did that end up costing you more?

£2k? Thats sod all really. You couldn't set up the traffic management for the repair in the UK for that!! If it was a section of M25 barrier you'd be looking at £20k.

that just means its overpriced in the UK Tom.

Glad you are OK.

An expensive way to find your limit though.

Are the barriers made of gold?

How did you end up getting the car home & did that end up costing you more?

I think the barriers are way overpriced too. The car had to be removed from the circuit on a wagon which cost another 205 euros as it was leaking fuel due to a petrol hose being damaged over the curbs. The garage it went to were very helpfull as i explaned i needed to drive the car home the following morning. They repaired the hose, straightened a steering rod, put the spare wheel on and inspected it for safety for another 50 euros. all i had to do then was make a numberplate with a sheet of A4 paper and stick it inside the windscreen. Looking at the state of the intercooler and the kinked pipes i'm amazed how well it drove back. The wheel bearing was also extreamly noisey but they are a very tough and well built car. Myself and others who saw the crash said it was a big one and I was very lucky to do minor damage.

I guess you were lucky the airbags did not deploy. I have seen a few accidents in all my trips to the ring, and its one of the reasons why I no longer do laps of the circuit, in the past I have done 100 or so laps. I do still go to the ring regularly, but now only spectate.

Where abouts did you loose it then?

I'm going to guess and say it happened because you braked to early going into Aremberg coming out of Schwedenkreuz or you steamed into Schwedenkreuz too quickly and let off to shed speed and lost the back end of it.

Crashing at these 2 corners is so common, I span a E320 on a wet day trying to show off around Aremberg and looked like an idiot, tried it again at Adenauer Forst and nailed it. Looked very cool!

Never mind about the £2k bill that's nothing, you could have done a lot worse and invited a couple of bikers to join you in the armco. The Octavia will be fine, the armco there is maybe out of paper maché and I doubt you've done any chassis damage.

Nice lap time though.

Well I've just had some good news and i feel the 2 companies involved deserve a mention. Yesterday I called Jabbasport regarding my front mounted intercooler, they sell theses as kits and i wanted a price for the cooler only without pipework ect. They were very helpfull and got in touch with Pro Alloy who manufacture the kits on my behalf. An hour later i received a call from Wayne at Pro Alloy who was very helpfull and asked me to send him some pictures of the damaged cooler. He believes it can be repaired with sections replaced at a cost of £125 plus VAT. Now you don't get that with an e-bay FMIC

Both companies could have pushed the sale of a new unit but instead have offered a great deal of help and support. Good service from these companies deserve a mention.

Where abouts did you loose it then?

I'm going to guess and say it happened because you braked to early going into Aremberg coming out of Schwedenkreuz or you steamed into Schwedenkreuz too quickly and let off to shed speed and lost the back end of it.

Crashing at these 2 corners is so common, I span a E320 on a wet day trying to show off around Aremberg and looked like an idiot, tried it again at Adenauer Forst and nailed it. Looked very cool!

Never mind about the £2k bill that's nothing, you could have done a lot worse and invited a couple of bikers to join you in the armco. The Octavia will be fine, the armco there is maybe out of paper maché and I doubt you've done any chassis damage.

Nice lap time though.

Thanks, it was Schwedenkreuz I think. I had gone down the fast section into a crested left hander which always makes the car go light. I had just overtaken another vehicle which put me off line and resulted in a tighter turn in than I normally required. I kept a constant throttle pressure but this was not enough to keep the back end in line. BUGGER! The barriers are unbelievably soft.

A guy at work stacked his Elise in the second half of the lap last year. Split both clams (£6k) snapped one lower front wishbone and did various other bits as well as the barrier. It cost him £1k in recovery fees alone! It was held together with duct tape until about 3 months ago!

Needless to say though, it's a risk you take if you go there. There are plenty of precautions you can take though. It's worth joining ADAC since they will apparently recover you from the ring for free if you're a member, and track day insurance is well worth it. You wouldn't be liable for damage to anyone else's car if you hit them, but obviously if you take out 20m of barrier and destroy your car you'll be stuck with a broken car and 1000 miles to get the car home.

This by the way is coming from someone who is about to start the expensive hobby of racing Caterhams. Staying out front is one of the big ways of keeping out of trouble.....motivation I like to call it!

that barrier charge won't only be the cost of the barrier but the down time of the track whist its being repaired.

Fair play you must have been absolutely flying to do that kinda time! I was a passenger is a fully sorted 440bhp Evo 9 GT on cut slicks that did an 8:24 and that was impressive.

Best i've done is a 9:21 in my TVR Chimera - but like others have said, i'd always keep a bit back to try and avoid an accident like that.

I suppose the most important thing is that nobody, including yourself was hurt.

There are plenty of precautions you can take though. It's worth joining ADAC since they will apparently recover you from the ring for free if you're a member, and track day insurance is well worth it. You wouldn't be liable for damage to anyone else's car if you hit them, but obviously if you take out 20m of barrier and destroy your car you'll be stuck with a broken car and 1000 miles to get the car home.

Track day insurance isn't worth the paper it's written on because Touristfahren at the Ring is not an organised private event like a trackday in this country. I made that mistake last year, paid £120 for 2 days of track day insurance, luckily nothing happened but when I read the small print earlier this year it wouldn't have paid out because it's a public road, not a trackday :(

Was it on this bit? There's always signs there about that corner. The corner I always have given most respect to on all my laps.

In the distance

A bit closer

Yeah that's the place mate. It is a tricky little bugger for certain and the annoying thing was I took a freind around for his first ever lap and warned him about that corner on the way around. Next day I stacked it! I have learnt my lesson, I think someone who has never driven the track before is safer than someone who has done a few visits and think they know it!

The top pics Flugplatz. Managed 135mph down there in the Octy... luckily there were no Smart cars in the way

I know in that last pic you're meant to be right over and turn in by that white spot, but I never had the courage / willing to attack it like that so was usually taken as a "back off and middle of the road" corner.

Mr Chicken - That came up on searches as "approach to Schwedenkreuz" - but you're right, and a LOT of speed needs scrubbing off to take SZ at a really safe pace. I think I was doing at least 120 to 125 down FP, and that's me being a relative Ring newbie and still wary of the whole track in general.

im off to the ring in a weeks time and im getting rather put off driving due to all the horror stories i have been hearing, might just do a couple of sighting laps and that will please me enough

sorry to hear about the car, amazing time though, i went round last year in a lamborghini gallardo se in 8.04, the guy driving was truly awesome. The lap after he did 7.50 then his engine exploded lol

PLEASE do at least 2 if not 3 totally off-pace sighting laps. I did at least 3 I think when i first went and I had a pretty good knowledge of the track from GT4. It doesn't prepare you for the real thing though.

its ok i dont plan to be attacking the laps in anger, nice steady pace

not going to throw my car around, just want the tick in the box really, plus i know my driving limits after writing off a scooby lol

i ran out of talent half way through the corner

Hope you get sorted out soon enough chap. Best not to time laps round there imo

Now you don't get that with an e-bay FMIC

.

How ever, it's a massive amount cheaper to start with

Sorry to hear and glad your ok, sounds like youve been pretty lucky with it all.

Are there any corners there that are hidden that'll really catch you out? or are they mostly well sighted so you can see what the corner is so you can choose an appropriate speed rather than going into a bend and either finding it tightens a lot, or someone spun in the middle?

Rich, I've never been, but I'm told it's not just hidden turns but combinations where the right line through the one you can see means you're way off line for the next one, tightening turns, crests, blind turnins, and places where "this bit looks like that bit, but this bit is "medium right into right opens" and that bit is "medium right into left tightens jump".

Ken's got it pretty much spot-on, there's very few bends you can see round, and blind crests.

the one thing that hours of playstation doesn't prepare you for is how much gradient there is, both uphill and downhill. And the amount of time you need to be looking behind you to know when someone's closing at +50mph, and looking out for bikes, as they can arrive faster still and not so easy to spot, and they aren't fussy about leaning on your front wing round the corners which can be quite offputting.

Oh, and not forgetting coming over a blind crest that you have got used to, only to find a bus travelling at 60mph less than you are

If there is one key series of corners it is the "hit miss hit" section which is just before the long LONG uphill stretch toward the Karussel. Losing a few mph through that set of right handers can cost a LOT of time on the long straight uphill slog. A good thing about GT4 on the ps2 in this respect is they've got that gradient set up well, and having a bad corner does really make you realise how much time you lose on the straight (based on a middle of the road car though, not a supercar/race car)

I can't wait for mid September now to go back. Anyone else coming? [guessing this thread is putting a few off - not me!]