Do You Wanna Be a Snowman?

The heating is broken. Or at least, I’m pretty sure that it is. I turned it wide open three days ago and even though the outside temperature hasn’t risen above ten degrees Celsius since then, the radiator continues to feel stone cold to the touch. I’ve put my ear against it (FREEZING!) and I can hear the water running through, so that’s not the problem. I’ve also checked the central heater in the attic, but that’s burning away quite happily at eighteen degrees. So that’s not the problem either. Still, despite the hidden cause, the heating has every appearance of *somehow* being broken.

Once it dawned on me that something was wrong, I alerted my father. He seemed rather sceptical about my suspicions. In his opinion, it’s probably not cold enough yet for the heating to start doing its work. I pointed out to him that his own central heating is working fine, even though where he lives the weather is exactly the same as where I live. I was quite proud of that argument, but it had little effect on him. All I got was a vague promise he’d take a look at it later this week if the problems continued.

So here I am, sitting behind my computer, wearing the thickest vest I own and wrapped in a thick blanket. Even though some people will undoubtedly say the current eight degrees aren’t cold enough to warrant such attire, I disagree. Eight degrees is freezing cold, especially when you’re forced to spend several hours sitting on a chair behind your desk. The lack of movement quite easily makes eight degrees feel like one. Or maybe even minus one. And that’s not nearly enough to make me a happy bunny.

Still, annoying as this ordeal is, it’s good training for the final race I’ll be attending this season: VLN10. Or, that is to say, that I hope to be attending. I’ve planned to go various times before, but it has always been made impossible by coldness. Not the kind of coldness a broken house heating brings, but the kind of coldness caused by the onset of German Eifel winter. The first time I planned to go, I had to stay home because VLN10 was cancelled due to snow fall. The second time I wanted to go, winter arrived so early that even attending VLN9 was impossible. It was so cold that I had to go home an hour before the finish with a stinging headache, which by midnight had developed into a case of sinusitis that would keep me in bed for a week. When temperatures dropped even lower for VLN10, I was again forced to skip it.

This year I’m trying again, though, in the hope that the third attempt will be lucky. So far the weather forecasts look fairly okay. There will be some rain in the early morning, but the showers should seize somewhere around 8AM. If there’s not too much fog, qualifying might even get underway at 8.30AM without much delay. Temperatures are predicted to be around 9-10 degrees. That may not be very warm, but we had the same temperatures during VLN9 two weeks ago and if you were dressed properly, it was quite doable.

But the biggest risk factor at the moment is snow. When I was at VLN9, a local man warned me that “it is coming. I’ll give it three more weeks at most, but you can feel it in the air. It’s turning chilly. That’s never a good sign.” So right now I’m keeping all my fingers crossed that the suspected snow won’t come just yet. It’d be a shame to have to miss the race again. However, if the snow must come and ruin VLN10, I hope it’ll come before Saturday. As I sit here, freezing despite being wrapped in a thick blanket, I can’t think of anything worse than being at the Nürburgring when the first snowflakes start coming down. You see, despite the fact I’m freezing, I’m not like the characters from Frozen. I do NOT want to build a snowman and I most definitely don’t want to become one either.

The Worst Tragedy in the History of Motorsport

He’s a 20-year-old race car driver from Spain. A couple of seasons ago he was a high-flyer in European Formula 3 and last year he made name for himself by claiming P2 in a soaking wet Porsche Carrera Cup Deutschland race in which a submarine would’ve been a far more useful mode of transport than the four-wheeled vehicle he was stuck driving. In 2016, Alex is honing his skills in the VLN Nordschleife championship. He’s racing a Porsche R-Cup in the SP7-class and has already taken five wins, six podiums and a handful of pole-positions.

However, Alex’s results aren’t what I want to write about today. Don’t get me wrong, they’re important. Good results like that are what keep a race car driver in business; but they aren’t what make a race car driver cool. And believe me, Alex Toril is cool. Unlike many of his racing colleagues, Alex has got Style – with a capital S. He’s incredibly aware of what he’s wearing and when it comes to his racing gear, he’ll only accept the absolute best. He demands the right size, the right material and, above all, the right colour. This is why a few months ago he decided to swap his old, grey (BORING!) racing gloves for a pair of brand-new, absolutely fabulous pink ones.

On VLN8-Saturday, Alex allowed me a personal Meet & Greet with his pink gloves. (If you looked at your twitter timeline that day, you may have noticed the almost fifty pictures I uploaded of them.) Upon seeing them in real life, I was almost overawed by their sheer awesomeness. Still, despite that I couldn’t help noticing one tragic problem: Alex’s orange helmet didn’t match their radiant colour, not even in the slightest. When I asked Alex about this, it turned out that his superior sense of Style had already noticed the issue ages ago: “Yeah, I know. I really need a pink helmet to match them, but a new helmet costs 2.500 euros! And pink spray paint is another 500. That’s a lot of money.”

It is, indeed. Most people don’t just have 3.000 euros lying around. I sure don’t and neither do any of my friends – and that’s nothing short of tragic. Go figure. At last there is a driver with the superior brain capacity to recognise the importance of the colour pink for the bettering of his racing career, and then he can’t get the helmet he wishes to have because of A LACK OF MONEY. It’s one thing to not have a race seat due to a lack of money, but missing out on a pink helmet due to financial troubles is just cruel and UTTERLY UNACCEPTABLE. It’s the worst piece of motorsport injustice I’ve ever seen.

Leaving Alex to suffer through this dreadful fate on his own would be inhuman. That is why we need to help him – all of us, together. I already looked into starting a crowdfunding campaign, but since I live life without a credit card that proved a bit complicated. So I’ve come up with an alternative way to help him: we need to find him a personal helmet sponsor. I suggest that next Monday everybody goes to ask his/her employer if they have the financial ability to give Alex the 3000 euros he needs to buy himself his dream helmet. (Please note that in return Alex’ll have to put the sponsoring company’s name on his helmet, but even if you work for a potentially ego-painful company like OB or Always: please don’t let that deter you from asking your bosses for help! Sacrifices must be made for great purposes and no one knows that better than Alex.)

So please, my dear readers, take action.

Do it for motorsport. Do it for justice. But, above all, do it for Alex.

(And maybe also do it a little bit for me.)

Footnote: please note that most of the content of this blog has been blown up, overdone, overdrawn, and utterly exaggerated. The entire text is to be taken with a healthy pinch of salt. 😉

We Could Be Heroes

“When I was young, I wanted to become a doctor.”
“I wanted to become a teacher, just like my dad. That never happened though, haha!”
“You’re all so practical. I wanted to become a superhero. Pretty much like Superman.”
“Haha! Did you want to save people?”
“Nah. I just wanted a big red cape. It looked pretty cool on TV.”
“You’re weird… If I were to become a superhero, all I’d be interested in would be having some really cool superhero powers.”
“Such as?”
“As a child, I always wished I could fly.”
“I always really, really, really wanted to be able to do magic.”
“It was all about invisibility for me!”
“It’s funny, isn’t it? Children always want magical superpowers and when you grow up that just… disappears. Kind of.”
“Not for me. Not really. It just changed a bit. I still wish I had superpowers, even today. But now I wish I had the superpower of finishing all my paperwork on time, way before five o’clock, every single workday of the week. Then I’d never have to take it home with me ever again.”
“I’d never thought of that! That’d be cool. I would like to have that superpower too.”
“I know an even better one. I’d like to have a superpower that allows me to convince my boss to give me as many vacation days as I want. I’d only work one week a year. Maybe even less!”
“And we also need the superpower of making annoying colleagues disappear!”
“And the superpower of always maintaining enough air in the office for everyone to breathe, even on hot days! That’d be so awesome.”
“AND the superpower to take care of the garden in literally the blink of an eye. Just one blink and PRESTO. All done! Imagine all the extra free time we’ll get.”
“Haha! Can we also have a superpower that allows you to clean cars that way? My wife always make me do that on Sunday and I hate it. If I only had to blink once to clean it, I’d never have to get up again at seven. I’d be able to sleep in!”

*everybody looks at me*

“And what superpower would make your life easier?”
“Ehm… a superpower that allows me to look at a picture of the Nordschleife and instantly know what corner I’m looking at?”

Super Duper GT3 Finals Weekend

In my sheer unending brilliance, I once claimed you can never-ever-ever have too many GT3 cars. I’m not sure when I said that. Probably somewhere in 2012 or 2013. I truly believed it at the time too, but fast forward to 2016 and I’ve come to realise it’s not entirely true. It turns out there is such a thing as too many GT3 cars – although only when the cars come spread out over three racing series over the course of one and the same weekend.

The weekend of 1-2 October is about to prove it. Due to a small blip that occurred last winter in the department of Racing Series Calendar Planning, next weekend is filled to the brim with GT3 races. Not only is there a GT Open round planned at Monza, there’s also the grand finale of the German ADAC GT Masters taking place in Hockenheim and there’s the Blancpain GT Sprint final in Barcelona. This sudden onslaught of GT3 events has caused quite a mess over the last few weeks.

You see, even though GT racing requires multiple drivers per car, the pool of available GT3 drivers isn’t as big as many might think. As a result, PRO-drivers often sign multiple contracts per season and compete in two or more GT3 series simultaneously. Many combinations are possible, but for European racers the combination of Blancpain Sprint and GT Masters is an extremely common one. So with the finals of both these series clashing over the upcoming weekend, many drivers have been forced to choose between doing either the one or the other.

Haase with teammate Parisy at Blancpain Sprint Nürburgring

Take Christopher Haase, for example. He competes with Saintéloc Racing in Blancpain Sprint and with Land Motorsport in GT Masters, but for this weekend he’s opted to race GT Masters in Hockenheim. Consequently, Saintéloc was left with an empty seat for Blancpain Sprint Barcelona and had to find a substitute racer. Which it did. In the form of Marco Bonanomi. Yes, the very same Marco Bonanomi who normally races with Aust Motorsport in GT Masters and who will now, as a direct result, miss the Hockenheim final! In order to make up for Bonanomi’s sudden disappearance, Aust has had to beg the Audi factory to send them a replacement. Which they did – they sent them Pierre Kaffer. Of course, under normal circumstances Audi would’ve sent its main spare driver Marc Basseng, but since Car Collection had already been suffering an empty seat since August when the aforementioned Haase hopped over to Land Motorsport, Basseng had already been ordered to go and help out the Car Collection crew by the time the Aust call came in and thus wasn’t available.

Am I still making sense? I hope so, because the confusion’s about to get worse.

Both the Blancpain GT and GT Masters standings are currently being led by the same driver: Christopher Mies. Since Mies isn’t an amoebe (not as far as I can tell anyway) and can’t split himself into two separate entities to fight for both titles at the same time, over the last few weeks he saw himself forced to choose which title he would like to win the most. He could play it safe by opting for Blancpain GT, where he and Enzo Ide have an 18-point lead in the title battle. Or he could go for glory by choosing GT Masters; if he and teammate De Philippi can somehow claim the title for Audi despite the GT Masters’ extremely limiting 2016 Audi BoP, that’d be a massive coup for Ingolstadt. In fairness, there’s something to be said for both options. However, no matter what he did, Mies knew he would unavoidably have to disappoint one of the teams he’s loyal to – and in the end he decided he couldn’t do that. So he put the decision in the hands of the Audi bosses, who at length decided that he should fight for glory in GT Masters.

Christopher Mies will race for Land Motorsport in Hockenheim

Audi’s decision meant that last week there were even more changes made to the GT3 driver distribution. I could tell you all about  those changes. If I wanted to, I could tell you everything I know about how WRT decided to put Robin Frijns in Mies’ empty Blancpain GT seat, how this left WRT a driver short on one of their other cars, and how they had to call on the Audi DTM squad to ask if they perhaps had any GT3-savvy drivers available for the weekend of 1-2 October.

But I don’t want to do that.

It would just make for another complicated explanation that takes up too much space on the internet and that’ll give me another ginormous headache. Instead, I’m inclined to remember the words of a man I once met in Zandvoort. He told me that the really important races shouldn’t be discussed, no matter how intriguing the factoids might seem. Instead, such races should simply be experienced. I’ve decided that that’s what I want to try and do this weekend. I want to forget about all the mix-ups and the fact that so many drivers are in the ‘wrong’ car. Instead, I just want to enjoy the action. Because I’m pretty sure it’ll be one hell of a ride.

Bring on #SuperDuperGT3FinalsWeekend

In at the Deep End (with Ben Barnicoat)

I love GT racing to the point where I’ll get up for it in the middle of the night if necessary. Unfortunately, some of my friends struggle to share my enthusiasm. They prefer to stick to what they know; aka single-seaters. I’ve tried to win them over by bombarding them with GT fun facts, but the results of that method have been mixed. So last weekend, while attending the Blancpain Endurance Cup at the Nürburgring, I decided to try something new. The event didn’t just mark the end of the Blancpain Endurance season, it was also the GT debut of Formula 3 ace Ben Barnicoat. Barnicoat was confirmed for Blancpain Nürburgring only 40 hours before the start of the event and barely 24 hours after his first-ever GT test (yikes!), which makes him as new to GT racing as my sceptical friends. If my friends won’t take my word for it that GT racing is cool, then maybe they’ll take that of a single-seater racer who’s crossing over. Guys, this one’s for you!

Out of nowhere WRT announced you’d be driving the Blancpain Endurance final in their number 4 car, alongside Pierre Kaffer and Adrien de Leener. Can you explain how that deal came about? Because I never saw it coming!
“To be honest, I don’t know how it happened either! I just kind of found myself here… On Tuesday the 6th of September I got a phone call from the Racing Steps Foundation. They told me WRT wanted me to test with them in Barcelona, on Wednesday the 14th. I was really excited to get that opportunity, only I’d never driven a GT car before. The test was my first time driving the car and I tried to learn everything I could. I did a qualifying and a race simulation, which went well. At the end of the day the gap to regular WRT-driver Robin Frijns was only about three tenths. I was very happy with that!”

And then they told you the drive was yours?
“No. I thought it was just a test. I had no idea there was any chance of a racing drive, so I just went back to the airport to catch my flight home. At ten o’clock that night, when I was still at the airport, I got another call from the Racing Steps Foundation. They said “okay, you’re going to the Nürburgring this weekend to race Blancpain Endurance on the 17th and 18th”, and I was like “Oh wow… OKAY!!”

You’re new to GT racing. What has the experience been like so far?
“It’s been a really big eye-opener. From the first I was happy about getting this opportunity, but I didn’t realise until I started my preparations how high the level of the Blancpain series is. Obviously I knew it was a strong series from back when I was racing NEC Formula Renault [=a Blancpain support series] in 2014, but I never realised just how much the manufacturers were involved and to what extent they’re pushing the cars.”

And was that the only surprise?
“Everything’s new for me, so there’ve been many surprises. The car, for example, is much harder to drive than I expected. I thought it’d be a little easier than a single-seater, but if anything I’m finding it harder at the moment. I’m also impressed with the high quality of the drivers. Take Robin Frijns. From what he’s done in his single-seater career I knew he was a good driver, but being his teammate and seeing his data… he’s just really, really good! This weekend I’m going to try and learn as much from him as I can. And then there’s the traffic. In single-seaters, if you want to finish well, it’s all about where you qualify; but here in GT, it’s all about who can pass the backmarkers the fastest. I’ve noticed that the bronze drivers, and some of the silver drivers too, don’t always move out of the way straight away, so for a GT newcomer like myself that’s tricky.”

How is the transition going from having your own car to sharing one with two teammates?
“Pierre’s an experienced driver and he’s helping me a lot this weekend. Adrien’s also very kind. It’s nice to be in a car with two such nice people. At first I thought they might be worried because this is my first GT race, but so far I’m showing strong pace and they’re happy with the job I’m doing. So no problems there. But you know, I’ve yet to do a GT-pitstop with a driver change. That’s going to be a challenge.”

As long as you don’t climb out of the car and fall flat on your face, I think you’ll be fine.
“A lot of the guys told me that that was what they expected me to do during my first practice, but luckily it wasn’t that bad. There’s room for improvement, but I always pull it off quickly enough. At any rate, I’m planned to do the last stint of the race so I’ll only have to climb in!”

I have some GT-sceptic friends. Is there anything you’d like to say to them?
“After driving the Audi GT3, I’d say they should definitely give GT racing a chance. As an F3 driver I can say it really isn’t any easier than single-seaters. Also, GT drivers are just as talented as single-seater drivers. Again, Frijns is the perfect example. He probably should’ve been an F1 driver, but in this field he didn’t even qualify in the top two. It just shows how strong the drivers and the teams are. Come Sunday there’ll be some very good battles. It’s well worth watching – and supporting.”

Barnicoat and his teammates had a strong start to their Blancpain Endurance race, but ultimately finished in 29th place after suffering a puncture. If you want to see their race, click here.

Postponing the Inevitable

It’s that time of year again. That time when the season has well passed its midway point. That time when it’s become obvious who the lucky few are that can still go for the title. That time when the first champions are beginning to be crowned. (Although with some luck only in series I don’t follow too closely.) That time when it’s becoming increasingly clear that, as they say in Game of Thrones, winter is coming.

However, it’s also the time when the true end of the season is still just far enough away to go on denying its existence for a little while longer. After all, even if most of the racing calendar is behind us now, most championships have at least a round left to run. Some even have three or four races left to go, like DTM. That means there are still many, many weekends on the way in 2016 in which I can enjoy watching races from my comfy couch. And of course there are also still some weekends on the way in which I’ll go and attend race events live! Although… I’m getting  frighteningly close the bottom of my calendar. There’s Blancpain Endurance this weekend and then VLN8 next week, and then… nothing.

That’s where the list ends.

Or, does it?

My motorsport friends and I have very different characters, but there’s one thing we all have in common. The moment we’re getting signals that our string of race visits is about to end, we all fly into a frenzy. A but-what-if?! frenzy. Suddenly ideas are flying around the room left, right, and center. “Yes, I know VLN8 was the last race we had planned to attend, but the weather is still good and we still have a little bit of money left, so what if we also went to…[fill in event+venue here]?”

It’s not always easy to find races to attend so late in the season. From September onwards, championships either end or leave Europe, to race on tracks where the weather hasn’t gone into early-winter mode yet. But scarce options or no, we somehow always manage to come up with a pretty decent short list. In the last three weeks, I’ve heard many ideas, ranging from attending VLN9 and VLN10 to the GT Masters final in Hockenheim, the DTM final in Hockenheim and even the Blancpain GT Sprint final in Barcelona.

That last one is definitely the most bonkers idea – and probably also the most impossible one to turn into a reality. Provided I can scrape together the money for an air-plane ticket to Barcelona and back, my only option to return home on time for work on Monday morning would be to fly home on Sunday afternoon… during the main race. The other suggestions, however, might well turn out to be doable. Maybe not all of them (that’d cause financial trouble), but with some planning an extra VLN race and perhaps a Hockenheim final seem to be realistic options right now.

My friends and I would really love to extend our race-visit calendars a bit. It would mean getting to see this-and-that driver racing once more in his current car before he/she moves up to another series. It would also mean getting to support our favourite teams one more time. And of course it would mean getting to breathe in one more whiff of gasoline aroma before we’ll have to go without for a whole winter. I guess that’s what all this late-season buzz is really about, when it comes down to it. We’re simply trying to postpone the season’s end; to postpone the coming of the big W and the empty weekends it brings; and, most importantly, to postpone the inevitable. Forever, if we can.

And if we can’t, then at least until the middle of October.

The Grid Girl Garments

Last week I wrote a blog about grid girls. I fully expected to be lynched for it, as the few tweets I posted about grid girls in the past triggered rather extreme replies. However, even though the response to that blog was larger than usual, people on the whole were fairly positive about what I had to say. That has given me the courage to write this second blog about grid girls, to address the other thing about them that I dislike: their clothes.

Before the pitchforks come out, I should quickly say that I’m not writing this blog to criticise the design of the clothes the girls are given to wear. Okay, fine. I’ll admit that personally I see no appeal in girls (or, for that matter, men) who are clad in scantily-designed outfits that leave half their bodies uncovered, but I know everyone is different. Just because I personally would sooner buy a product when it’s promoted by a fluffy puppy than a fashion model, it doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who prefer to see a model – and as long as that model is willing to do the job and is paid properly for doing it, there’s no reason these people shouldn’t get the visuals they want. Also, there undoubtedly are models who find wearing such outfits empowering. And if so, all power to them.

But what enrages me time and again, is that in motorsport grid girl/promo girl outfits are hardly ever matched with the weather. When an event organiser has decided that their girls should wear heels, a mini skirt and an upper-body garment that holds the middle ground between a tank top and a bra, that is exactly what they will wear. Even if the series races at a track like the Nürburgring, where it’s sometimes 5 degrees Celsius with a storm wind rolling in from the North East.

Too many times I’ve sat on a grandstand, wrapped in six layers of clothing and still freezing, while watching a grid full of girls who are braving the cold in their bare skin, with red knees, pale hands, frozen fingers, and blue lips. I know grid girls are paid a good salary for the work they do, but somehow I can’t imagine they knowingly sign up for such dreadful working conditions. Surely they expect better than that – and, moreover, deserve better than that?

I’ll never forget the pitwalk I did at Zandvoort a few years ago. It was below ten degrees and the sea wind was howling around the pit building. The promo girls that day were clad in cat suits so thin that I couldn’t just tell the form and model of their underpants, in one case I could even tell the colour. All of them were shivering like mad. As the pitwalk went on, the girls suffered more and more from hypothermia. After fifteen minutes one dropped the sign she was holding and walked away. Her neighbour decided on a different tactic. She turned to the mechanics in the garage behind her and begged them for a coat. Nobody even bothered to look up. So she turned to another garage for aid, but got the same response there. In the end one of the fans pulled a vest out of his bag and handed it to her. I’ve rarely seen such gratitude on a race track.

I know for a fact that I’m not the only one bothered by this mismatch of weather and clothing. Last year, while attending an event I won’t name here, I was walking through the paddock and came across a member of the organisation who was having a huge row with a furious woman. She was shouting abuse at the top of her lungs. “How dare you?! This is not what we signed up for! My girls are getting ill this way, IT’S FREEZING COLD! I will not stand for this! You either come up with decent clothes or we will never, EVER, work with you again! This is sick!!!” I don’t know who she was, but the girls who work for her should be proud to have someone like her fighting for their rights. I honestly hope that the woman made good on her threats too. Unless agencies stop accepting that their employees are made to work in tough weather conditions in unsuitable clothing, I fear the practice will continue for a long time to come.

The Grid Girl Comparison

Grid girls. A long time ago I made a conscious decision to avoid the topic of grid girls as much as possible on @girltalksracing. The reason is not that I’m oblivious to their presence, but because even the smallest comment about them usually evokes rather extreme commentary.

To give you an example, I was spending the weekend at a friend’s house once and she’s a motorbike fan so on Sunday morning we were watching a motorbike race. I can’t quite remember which one. MotoGP, I think. Anyhow, at some point I saw an umbrella girl that was rather minimally dressed. So I took a picture of the tv and in an attempt to be funny, I tweeted something along the lines of “fashion conundrum: can we still classify this outfit as ‘clothes’ or is this already in the ‘bikini’-range?” I didn’t realise until later that if you read that tweet in a particular way, it could be seen as having a critical undertone – although that was never my intention. Nonetheless, I’m not sure I deserved the barrage of ‘GRID GIRLS MUST STAY’, ‘KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF OUR TRADITION’ and ‘YOU ******* FEMINIST’ that I received.

After all, never in all the time that I’ve been running @girltalksracing have I called for the tradition to be abolished.

If you were wondering why that line is standing on its own: that’s in case I’ve re-enraged some people by mentioning that old tweet. Maybe the counter-comment’ll stand out more that way. But where was I? Ah yes, the tradition of grid girls. I’ve never asked for the tradition to be abolished, because I know it’s tied in with the sport’s history and I can respect it if people wish to maintain the girls for that reason. That doesn’t mean, however, that I’ve never had any struggles with the grid girl phenomenon…

The grid girls often represent (Western) society’s underlying ideals of femininity: beautiful, professional hairdo, perfect make up, prominent cleavage, high heels, dressed provocatively, quiet, smiling, and decorative. These are ideals I’m not able to live up to, not even on the best of my days, let alone on a race track. My hair is usually one big wind-caused explosion, I’ve never worn make up in my life, I’ll never be more than an A-Cup, I’ve a problem with my feet so I wear flat shoes only, I’m usually dressed to withstand -45 degrees and snow (aka I look like an eskimo), I’m probably not quiet, I only smile when my favourite drivers do well, and on the whole I’m nowhere near decorative. And you know: that’s okay. If people think that makes me unattractive, they are free to think so.

But somehow there’s something about grid girls that gives a certain type of person the feeling they can suddenly say their thoughts out loud. Too often I’ve heard groups of bystanders comparing grid girls to each other, choosing the one that has the best ‘assets’. I’ve also heard unknown people compare me to grid girls. The low-point example of that is definitely the time at a VLN race that I was sitting on my own on a grandstand and a man some distance off suddenly yelled: “HEY! THE BOOBS OF THE GRID GIRL AT *TEAMNAMEICANTREMEMBER* ARE MUCH BIGGER THAN YOURS!” Yes, well. Thanks for demonstrating your comparison skills?

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I don’t mind if race track visitors look at grid girls. They choose to be grid girls and they receive a good salary to be eye candy. But at the same time I wish that everyone would remember that they represent social beauty ideals – and in the real world no woman, not even a grid girl, can be 100% perfect and ideal all the time. So please don’t pass judgment when you see discrepancies. It’s quite simply unkind.

And if saying that makes me a ‘******* feminist’, then: guilty as charged.

The Quiet Kind

For a while I always stayed at the same hotel whenever I went to the Nürburgring. This hotel came with its own pub, which was frequented by hotel guests and locals alike.  An evening in the hotel pub was always a small adventure. Behind the bar would be one of the owners, Jürgen, a bold man who spoke German and very little else but believed that if you shouted loud enough you’d always get your message across, even in a foreign language. His wife Janna ran the kitchen and was only ever seen in the pub when serving out her home-cooked meals.

About four years ago, I walked into the pub on a quiet Friday night. All the tables were empty and there were only three bar stools taken; one by Jürgen, one by the local he was talking to, and one by an older man I’d never seen before. He was sitting in silence, staring at his pint of beer, presumably listening to Jürgen’s wild story of reversing a truck onto a busy crossroads in the middle of Cologne during rush hour. When Jürgen saw me, he shouted at me to get myself a bar stool. “IT’S SO EMPTY TONIGHT THAT SITTING AT A TABLE’S STUPID. GO TALK TO ARNOLD HERE.” He pointed at the older man. “HE’S HAVING ONE OF HIS QUIET DAYS.”

I dutifully sat down next to Arnold, who didn’t say much at first. It wasn’t until Janna had brought me an apple juice that we struck up a conversation about how similar in colour our separate drinks were. After that, I ventured to ask Arnold where he was from. He said he’d been born and raised in a village down the road. Then he asked me why I was staying in the hotel. When I told him I was there to visit the Nürburgring, he smiled. “I’ve been going to the Ring since I was a boy. I love that place. These days I often work there as a volunteer.” Soon after he finished his beer and left the pub. I didn’t think much of the conversation.

On Saturday night I returned to the pub and found it very crowded. I had just sat down at the last empty table with one of Janna’s home-cooked meals, when out of nowhere somebody sat down next to me. It was Arnold. “I’m glad I found you. I wanted to show you this.” He placed an old photo album on the table. “I was a marshall at the Nürburgring in the sixties and seventies. Have you ever seen the Ring in those days?” He opened the album and revealed a wonderful collections of black-and-white, slightly faded photographs.

Some pictured people, Arnold’s friends and fellow marshalls, of whom Arnold dutifully told me their life stories. Others showed a small tent next to the Nordschleife. “This was our marshall post. It gave us good shelter from the rain, but it wasn’t very stable. One day the wind was so strong it got blown into the forest and up a tree!” He burst out laughing. “We had to climb up and get it!” The album also contained photos of concrete buildings. With Arnold’s help I managed to recognise the pit building and some other Nürburgring landmarks. It seemed he had a funny story to tell about all of them. He did so with much gusto, too.

The final photograph in the album was a shot of an empty medical stretcher. When I asked Arnold what the story behind the picture was, his face turned grey. The light in his eyes faded and then disappeared altogether. “I thought I’d thrown that away,” he muttered. “That was taken in 1976. We were marshalling on the Nordschleife when we suddenly heard a lot of noise. I’ve never forgotten what I saw that day. We tried to help, but it was so difficult. Poor Niki. No one deserves to have such an accident. I’ve never marshalled again after that. Some of my friends tried to go on, but I just couldn’t do it anymore.. Nowadays I try to make myself useful for the Ring as a volunteer, even though it’s not the same.” Arnold closed the photo album and bid me goodnight again.

I saw him a few more times after that, but he was never again as talkative as that Saturday night. Some locals later told me he lived alone with two cats and didn’t go out much. They also said he’d been suffering from depression for over fourty years, which would put the starting point of his struggle somewhere in the 1970s. I’m not sure how much Lauda’s accident had to do with Arnold’s fall into sadness, but if it was the cause of it then marshalls run even greater risks than I thought they did.

Looks Can Be Deceiving

Last GT Masters weekend, there was some commotion about how long it took for the marshalls to pull away the #3 Bonaldi car after it had been punted off the Nürburgring by the Bentley #8. When I got home from watching the race live at the track, I found the residue of the hubbub in my timeline. Some people claimed the marshalls had been “incompetent”, “moronic”, and even “lazy”.

I didn’t understand where these comments came from until I saw the TV footage of the race. In it, you first see a brief shot of the marshalls pulling the stranded Bonaldi towards the barriers. The footage then cuts back to the remaining race cars cruising behind the safety car. Some minutes later, the director again shows a brief shot of the stranded Bonaldi. It hasn’t moved one bit and everything around the car looks quiet. Cue online outrage and verbal abuse by fans who would dearly like to see the race continue.

But you know, TV footage – especially when cut into brief shots – can be deceiving.

As I said before, I was at the Nürburgring to watch the GT Masters event live and during race 1 I happened to be sitting on a grandstand near the corner where the Bonaldi went off. This gave me an excellent view of the “incompetent”, “moronic”, and “lazy” marshalls in action.

I’m not entirely sure what the damage to the Lamborghini was after the crash, but from where I was sitting it looked like the right front suspension had broken. The car was hanging crookedly at an awkward angle, at any rate. The marshalls quickly approached the car, checked if the driver was okay (physically he was fine, in terms of mood; not so much) and went to work on the Lambo. They called out a tractor and attached a pulling line to the rear of the car. Very slowly they started pulling it towards the barriers. The slow speed was deliberate, because the odd angle at which the car was hanging meant that the right front tended to dig itself into the gravel.

Just before reaching the safety of the barriers, where the gravel made way for asphalt, the front dug itself in so deeply that the Lamborghini landed flat on its stomach. The marshalls tried, but it was impossible to continue pulling the car backwards without seriously damaging it. This must’ve been the moment when the first brief shot appeared on TV.

The marshalls tried to dig the Lamborghini out, but it was impossible. They then tried to push it forwards again, back into the gravel pit and up the gulley the front had dug, but this couldn’t be done with just 3-4 people. Some other marshalls saw the trouble and instantly came running. All together, they managed to free the car. While all this was happening, yet another marshall was shouting into a radio. It looked like he was trying to call for a crane, but it apparently couldn’t get there on time. (It didn’t arrive until 15 minutes later.)

Suddenly one of the marshalls had an idea. He told the tractor to drive into the gravel pit and park itself literally against the rear end of the Lamborghini. The marshall then took the pulling line and wrapped it so tightly and ingeniously around the rear of the Bonaldi and the front of the tractor that the trolley could pull the car upwards before driving backwards – making it impossible for the Lambo to dig itself in again. While the marshalls were doing this, hidden largely from view of the cameras, the second brief shot aired. Barely a minute later, the car had been pulled safely behind the barriers.

Now, I know that I’m not the number one all-out expert on marshalling practices, but I wouldn’t call this performance “incompetent”. I wouldn’t call it “lazy” either. Personally, I would call it “inventive” and “much better than anything I could’ve come up with that quickly”.