Category: VLN

Alternative Racing Facts

“The entry list for VLN1 is online!”
“Is it any good?”
“Yes! Very! Over 180 cars in total and a massive number of entries for SP9.”
“And the drivers? Any big names?”
“Loads. But that was to be expected.”
“How so?”
“Now we’ve lost VLN3 there are only two races before the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring instead of three. So if a driver wants to practice or get his Nordschleife permit, he now has less opportunity to do so. Ergo, more people will want to race in VLN1 and VLN2.”
“VLN3 is lost…? Where did it go?”
“Who knows! I’m not good at philosophical questions.”
“Hang on. VLN3 isn’t lost. It’s right here on the racing calendar, see? 24th of June, 2017.”
“Yeah, but that’s just what the calendar says.”
“Huh?”
“We all know the race on June 24th isn’t really VLN3.”
“I’m going to regret this, but okay: explain.”
“The VLN season has always been ten races long, but this year the organisation has reduced it to nine.”
“I know. So you lose VLN10. Not VLN3.”
“Wrong. For as long as I can remember, we’ve always had three races before the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring.  Teams can use those races to put in practice time. It’s like a tradition. But in order to reduce the calendar length, one of those three pre-24 Hours races has been removed. Do you see it now?”
“No.”
“Goodness… do I have to spell everything out? The organisation has removed one of the pre-24 Hours races, but has left everything else in its traditional time frame. VLN1 is raced around the time when VLN1 has always been raced. The same goes for VLN2 and for every single one of the post-24 Hours races as well. The race organised on June 24th, the one that you call ‘VLN3’, is sitting in the exact time frame where VLN4 has always been. Likewise, this year’s ‘VLN4’ is sitting in the time frame that traditionally belonged to VLN5 and this pattern runs all the way through the season, straight up to ‘VLN9’ – which is held at the exact time you would expect VLN10. So, if no timeslot has been changed except for that of VLN3, which was deleted, logic demands that VLN3 was dropped. Not VLN10.”
“But the calendar says…”
“…exactly what they want you to believe. This season, all VLN-races after the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring will be run under a false name and because people like you aren’t willing to see what is right under their noses, they are getting away with it!”
“But…”
“They are getting away with it!”
“Honestly…”
“You are letting them get away with it.”
“Don’t you…”
“IT’S A CONSPIRACY.”
“I need a drink.”
“What you need is more resilience.”
“Will you be bickering like this the whole season?”
“Like this? Nah. It’s only March. I’m still warming up.”
“I need two drinks.”

The new VLN season is kicking off on Saturday March 25th, at 12.00h. Follow the race at www.vln.de, commentary will be available in both German and English.

Unbelievable

I spend a good proportion of my free weekends running around race tracks, merrily tweeting about my adventures. But don’t get me wrong, I don’t simply sling everything that happens onto social media. I apply a light form of censure: I try not to post messages that lose their appropriate context when you reduce them to 140 characters and become ambiguous – or simply incomprehensible. I also deliberately don’t write about things that are so utterly ridiculous that, if I were to strip them of their details and turn them into an ultrashort tweet, readers probably wouldn’t believe they had actually happened. I was talking this practice over with a friend last week and she said it was a shame that my most bonkers stories never make it onto the web. Initially I disagreed with her, but today I’m wondering if the odd events that don’t work as tweets could perhaps work as a blog post, since a blog allows room for contextualisation. Maybe that concept is worth a test run. So I hereby present…

The Top Three of Odd Things That Really Happened in 2016 But Seemed Too Improbable When Written Down in 140 Characters!

3. Size Matters
In the spring I attended the Blancpain GT Sprint Cup at the Nürburgring. That weekend, the Sprint Cup was a support series for the Truck GP. I’d never before seen a truck race and I’d definitely never shared a race track with truck fans. I wasn’t worried about it though. What could possibly happen? It’s not as if truck racing is a big deal or anything, right? WRONG. Truck racing is HUGE. It attracts thousands of super-enthusiastic fans, who outnumbered the GT fans by far all throughout the weekend and at times made me feel a bit isolated, because they had their own fan culture which I didn’t truly understand. However, it turned out that this was a mutual sentiment. When the Blancpain GT cars first hit the track on Saturday morning, immediately after the truck practice had finished, I overheard one of the truck fans saying: “Aaaaaw, look how cute! Aren’t those GT cars SMALL?!”

2. My Little Pony Rocks
During one of the VLN races, my dad and I shared a row of chairs on one of the grandstands with another father and daughter. The two dads quickly got talking about photography and that left me with the other daughter – which was slightly problematic as she was three years old and I’m absolutely horrible with toddlers. So we ended up staring at each other uncomfortably, until I decided to point out the girl’s My Little Pony vest. “That’s cool!” I said. Just then a grumpy man walked passed us, muttering that it was not cool, just “something stupid for kids”. In a reflex I unzipped my backpack and pulled out my My Little Pony travel wallet. I waved it defiantly at the man, who shrugged his shoulders and walked on. Obviously furious, the little girl then climbed on her chair and… flipped the tiniest bird ever to be flipped at a race track, right at the grumpy man’s back. I’m still disappointed he didn’t see it! (And also relieved the fathers didn’t see it either. I probably would’ve gotten blamed.)

1. Head to Head
I have an annoying habit of typing my tweets while walking. It’s not difficult to do, not even in a paddock, as long as you keep a wary eye on what’s beside and in front of you. You don’t want to be hit by a race car, after all. Over the past seasons I’ve pretty much perfected the technique and I never run into trouble. Well, never? Once. Last May, during the 24 Hours of Spa-weekend, I literally ran into trouble when trouble didn’t come from the side or the front (where I was watching!), but from above. I was walking and tweeting along a support series pre grid, which was located in the paddock at the foot of Eau Rouge, being perfectly aware of the exact locations of all the cars and moving engineers to my left, right and front. Unfortunately, I was also perfectly oblivious to the push-out extension of the Garage 59 team truck that was hanging level with my forehead. I walked into it with a surprisingly loud BANG, almost fell backwards due to the backlash, and saw stars for a few seconds. The moment I regained my bearings, I felt embarrassed. I was surrounded by at least 100 people. How stupid an idiot would they think I was?! And that’s when I realised. Despite the bang, the show and the drama, nobody was looking in my direction. Nobody was pointing at me. Nobody was even laughing. They were all so interested in the pre grid, THAT NOBODY HAD NOTICED. The relief I felt was enormous. (FYI: so was the bump on my forehead.)

When Fandoms Collide

Some people say coincidences don’t exist. I’m not sure what I believe when it comes to that. All I know is that, on Saturday October 22nd at around 11.35h, I found myself wandering the starting grid of the tenth and last VLN race. Normally I spend my grid walks wandering around the first starting group, which is located in front of the pitboxes and includes amongst others the SP9-class. Usually I choose to ogle the cars there because a) it’s less of a walk and b) the SP9-class includes GT3 cars and I LOVE GT3 cars.

However, for that particular race the first starting group was relatively small and I thought that for once it’d be fun to check out the slightly slower, but still cool, race cars in the second starting group. So I strolled along the pit building, passed it by, and entered the main straight of the Nürburgring grand prix track at the point where the pit entry catch fence ends and the stone pit wall starts. That divide is the traditional spot where the group two pole sitters get to stand.

Normally I could’ve told you all about the pole sitters, but as it was, I barely even noticed them. I was completely distracted by a car that stood a few rows behind them. It wasn’t like most race cars. Most race cars have one fixed base colour, like black or red, and have that covered with all kinds of sponsor names. This car, however, had a base colour (white, if you’re interested) but no sponsors whatsoever. Instead, it was covered in pretty drawings in the Japanese manga style. For a second I thought it was a Japanese team (believe it or not, VLN attracts teams all the way from Asia), but that turned out not to be the case. It was a car run by a German outfit called Kuepper Racing.

I instantly pulled out my phone. I have a motorsport friend who loves manga comics and I just knew she had to see this. I took some quick shots of the car and Whatsapped them to my friend. I wasn’t sure what she’d make of them. I definitely didn’t expect any kind of overly exhilarated response, I was just hoping to put a smile on her face. But even so, it was an overly exhilarated response that I got. “OH MY GOODNESS THAT CAR IS COVERED WITH CHARACTERS FROM BLEACH, THAT’S MY FAVOURITE MANGA!!! THIS IS AWESOME!!!”

Needless to say I instantly obliged my friend by sending her every single picture of the Kuepper Racing car that I could find on my phone. I even went and buggered my father to see if he had taken any shots of the car in action, to complete my friend’s picture collection. It turned out that he did and again I managed to make my friend very happy. Personally, I thought that would be it. But as my dad and I started our journey home later that afternoon, my phone started to beep. And beep. And beep.

It turned out that the Kuepper Racing car had inspired my friend to look up all the Bleach merchandise that she owned. One by one pictures rolled into my Whatsapp of plushies, big ones and small ones, t-shirts, gloves, and even a pyjama that my friend linked to the black-haired character on the right side of the #455 car: “It’s the same guy!!!” It turned out she’d also found the Kuepper Racing website and had dug through the gallery, but had unfortunately only found a few additional shots of the Bleach car – and, to her disappointment, no explanation about the origins of the manga livery.

It’s been a few days now, but so far that origin story has remained a mystery. But don’t think my friend has forgotten about it yet. She’s still determined to find out and I suspect it’s only a question of time before she’ll e-mail the team. All she needs first, is a bit of courage – German isn’t her strong point. Still, in this case it might prove to be worth the trouble for her. After all, to her, “this is the best race car ever. It’s such a shame the VLN season is over now. If I’d known this car was there, that livery alone would’ve been worth the trip!” So, Kuepper Racing: if you keep that livery for next season, I can guarantee that you’ll have an extremely dedicated fan for 2017!

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. 😉

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.

All Belgians Look Alike

I’m part of a group of girls who all love racing, but we don’t all have the same interests within the sport. Some prefer motorbike races, while others (like me) lean towards car races. Some prefer to watch single seaters, while others have a soft spot for endurance events. Within my group of friends I’m probably a bit of an odd-one-out, because my main interest lies with GT cars. Or, as my friends call them, “cars with a roof”.

It’s not always easy to have a group of friends with such varied interests. For one thing, we always struggle to plan a race visit with the entire group, because invariably not everybody will be equally interested in attending the event. Luckily, though, diversity also has its advantages. It’s an ideal opportunity to learn about new things. For example, my friends have taught me the basics of motorbike racing. Some years ago they even dragged me along to a British Superbikes event. Bike racing’s still not my thing, but it was great to get a taste of the atmosphere.

Of course it’s not just my friends influencing me. I do a good deal of influencing my friends as well – and by “influencing” I mean I shower them in unsolicited GT racing propaganda. I’m forever trying to get my friends to watch it. The results so far have been mixed, but I’ve gotten one friend hooked on GT Masters and another is now very keen to take a bigger interest in GT3 races after I dragged her to Germany last year to see VLN. My current mission is to get the latter friend to watch the Blancpain GT Series. It has big fields, close grids, fierce competition, and both sprint and endurance races. It’s ideal to get started, if you ask me.

Yesterday my ongoing promo campaign reaped its first results. My friend decided to sit down and watch last weekend’s qualifying race on the Nürburgring. Afterwards I immediately rushed up to her to ask her what she thought of it. I’m glad to say that she enjoyed the race! But at the same time I’m also somewhat humbled to admit she stumbled across a characteristic of the series that could possibly be problematic for new fans.

“So, what did you think?!”
“It was really fun! But it could’ve been better.”
“Really? How?”
“It would’ve been even more fun if it had been easier to tell the cars apart. Now I kept muddling everything.”
“Was it really that bad?”
“Yes! I wanted to follow Nico Müller’s race, but I could barely even recognise him!”
“I can sort of get that. WRT has six cars in this series.”
“Six?!”
“Yeah, and they all look pretty much identical.”
“And you wonder why I got confused…”
“But Nico is in car number 4, if that helps. He has teamed up with Vanthoor.”
“Laurens?”
“No, Dries. Laurens’ younger brother. You can really tell they’re family if you look at his face.”
“Great. So there are six near-identical WRT cars and two near-identical Vanthoors?!”
“Yes. Kind of…”
“Originality in sport isn’t a crime, you know.”
“Say that to the Belgians. Most others in Blancpain are relatively easy to tell apart.”
“True. The Nissan is easy.”
“Bless the Japanese.”

I know it’s one of those fiddly-tiny tid-bit problems, but my friend does have a point. The more GT cars a team is entering into a race, the more homogenous a GT grid tends to look. If you’re a regular viewer, that’s not a problem; but if you’re a newcomer, it could be discouraging. Although of course it could also be seen as a challenge, since recognising cars on livery colours alone is somewhat of a right-of-passage for many fans. Still, I personally wouldn’t mind if WRT became a bit more like my group of friends, with some more shades and some more colours, and generally more diversity.

Going out with Eeriness

I love the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring. It has the same kind of friendly atmosphere you can find at a VLN event, only bigger. Much bigger. For me personally, this friendly atmosphere culminates at the end of the race when the fans give a big show of respect to the race winner, regardless of which driver/car/team/brand won or who the fans supported during the race. Everybody always stands up for the winner, everybody always claps, and everybody always cheers. Usually there are even some people with fireworks to lighten up the celebration some more.

This year, however, the finish was vastly different from what I’m used to. I doubt you would’ve noticed it if you watched the race on TV; but for those who were there, it was impossible to ignore. The friendly atmosphere was missing and, frankly, I’m not even sure if there was much respect. The whole affair felt rather cold and it has left me feeling more than a little bit confused.

At first, the final stage of the race seemed promising. The audience was on the edge of its seat, watching the fight between HTP’s Christian Hohenadel, slowed down considerably by a fuel shortage, and Black Falcon’s lightning-quick Maro Engel. When a backmarker held Engel up for a bit, there were disappointed shouts all around the grandstands. Nobody wanted the fight to end like that! Luckily, Engel soon closed the gap again and, separated by mere tenths, he and Hohenadel shot into the final lap. Thousands of voices cheered them on as they passed through the Yokohama for the last time. Only a handful of corners later, Hohenadel made a tiny error and left open the tiniest hint of a gap. Engel dived into the crack of space and… ran into Hohenadel, hard. The clash pushed Hohenadel outward and almost into the gravel. Engel shot passed, claimed P1, and ultimately victory.

On the grandstand, the clash was met with a loud “oh!”. After that, silence fell. It felt eerie to me. Silence is not what you expect on a race track that’s still active. Around me people were looking at each other, confused. At length some muttering arose around me. “Was that on purpose?” “Do you think he meant this to happen?” “Should the stewards penalise him?” The footage on the video screen of furious-looking HTP personnel didn’t help the matter much. It probably made it worse. I could clearly hear some people behind me claiming that Black Falcon was “unworthy of the victory if they think this is acceptable racing. LOSERS!”

I didn’t know what to think. And to be honest, I still don’t. I’ve known Engel for years. He’s kind as a person and professional as a driver. He’s also a fair racer. Would he crash into Hohenadel on purpose? No. Never. But his overtake was very aggressive, wasn’t it? Yes. Maybe even too aggressive? Possibly. One could even argue that it was unnecessary for him to take so much risk at that particular moment, since he was obviously faster and probably would’ve found a far safer way to pass Hohenadel in the remaining 22 (!) kilometers of the track. So where does that train of thinking lead me?  Were the stewards right to investigate? Were they right not to hand out a penalty? Was Engel simply too eager? Or was he wrong to dive into that almost-gap?

I don’t know. I really don’t.

I only know that this year’s 24 Hours of the Nürburgring-finish was the strangest finish I’ve ever seen at the event. When Engel crossed the finish line, the entire audience remained in its seat. I tried to stand up, but I got weird looks so I quickly sat down again. Nobody clapped enthusiastically. Some people didn’t even clap at all. Engel did a celebration donut and even that only resulted in a meagre applause and one or two cheers. Compared to previous years, it was a funeral. There were no fireworks, no party atmosphere, just a sense of ‘that’s it then, let’s go home’. People left the grandstands in a downbeat mood. The contrast with the happiness of the Black Falcon crew on the video screen was almost painful.

In the end I’ve decided I’m going to be happy for Engel and his comrades. Few teams work as hard towards their successes as Black Falcon does, so every member of their crew has a right to be proud. I’ve duly extended my congratulations to them and I meant every word I said. However, I’ll never forget that eerie finish. Something about it just felt wrong. A part of me is hoping that Engel, Christodoulou, Schneider, and Haupt’ll win again in 2017, so we can do this whole miserable business over. I’m sure Black Falcon won’t mind cooperating.

The Writing

There’s an old saying that says you should always look at the writing on the wall, because that’s where you’ll find what you truly need to know. During my most recent Nordschleife visit, to attend the third VLN-race of 2016, I learned that the wall isn’t the only place where you should look for interesting writing. The race track is another one.

Anyone who has ever visited the Nordschleife knows that it’s a bit different from other race tracks. Where modern circuits boast about how smooth and clean their asphalt is, the asphalt at the Nordschleife is covered in, well… basically anything and everything, really. The complete length of the track is covered in graffiti, mostly done in white spray-paint, but black, yellow, and red are popular colours too. I think I once read somewhere that initially the Nordschleife owners had the asphalt cleaned every time a new message appeared, but when the graffiti just kept coming and coming they eventually gave up and let the writings be.

Over the past few decades, anonymous people have covered the Nordschleife in a diverse array of messages. Some stick to egocentric phrases (“X was here”), while others praise their home town (“city Y is the best”) or showcase their business data (“Check Youtube @ZZZZZZ”); while again others use the opportunity to put their artistic talents for drawing boobs and genitals on display. Most messengers will leave their words on the track itself, but over the years catch fences and curbstones have also become popular writing surfaces.

When I’m trackside, I rarely pay attention to the writings. I quickly got used to them and came to accept them as part of the scenery; the background. I think it works that way for most people. It gives you a better chance to focus on the cars and the ongoing races. However, during VLN3 I suddenly found myself distracted by three words, written on the asphalt at the entrance of the Galgenkopf: “Estamos en Nurb”.

The words are Spanish for “We’re at the Nurb”. They’re painted in bright white paint with the exception of the final letter B, which is white-greyish in colour and half faded away. The message caught my eye, because it seemed so unfinished. Surely the messenger had been aiming for “We’re at the Nurburgring”. But if so, why didn’t he finish? Did something happen to distract him? For the first time ever I found myself wondering where the Nordschleife messages come from exactly. Do the messengers climb onto the track at night? Or do they do their work during the day, when they think the Ring is (temporarily) closed to car rides? Is it possible then that this particular author was surprised by the sound of an oncoming car and had to make a dash for safety? Or was he chased away by an official? Or was he perhaps so intoxicated at the time of writing that he forgot how to spell ‘Nurburgring’ and simply figured ‘oh sod all this, I’m going home’?

As with many other things related to the Nordschleife, the message will forever hold an element of mystery. It’s a shame really, because it seems like an interesting tale that I would love to know; but at the same time it’s also okay. The Ring is such a special place, it can handle a little bit of mystique here and there. In fact, it’s probably the better for it. But still, the mind can always wonder.

Opel – Wir Leben Langsam

My parents taught me it’s rude to be late. It’s simply bad manners to leave someone waiting for you. As a consequence I always try to arrive on time, not just when I know that a friend is waiting for me, but also when I have to attend an event, such as a motor race. I’m proud to say that most of the time I do arrive on schedule. Unfortunately, however, I can’t always get to the designated place at the designated time.

Sometimes this is my own fault. For one thing, I tend to get lost. I once spectacularly drove past the main entrance to the Zolder Circuit without seeing it, only to realise that something was off after I’d already steered onto the freeway leading to Antwerp. I’m also guilty of not always getting up on time. I’m well aware that, if I want to be at the Nürburgring when the VLN qualifying start at 8.30h, I must get up at 4.30h and be in the car by 5.30h at the latest. And yet, and yet… doesn’t that snooze button seem appealing, even more so at 4.30h? Aaargh.

But sometimes I’m late through no fault of my own. Sometimes I’m simply late because the universe is playing a game and odd things just seem to mysteriously happen en route. For example, I once missed a part of the GT Masters practice because Circuitpark Zandvoort had forgotten to open the ticket booths. I also once arrived late to the start of an event in Assen because there was a cow standing in the middle of the road, causing a considerable traffic jam. And just last year my arrival to the Nordschleife was delayed because in a tiny Eifel village we caught the tail end of a crocodile. Not a real one, luckily. That would’ve been too much, after the whole cow-thing. No, this was a crocodile of cars. Promotion cars. Opel promotion cars, to be exact.

We didn’t notice anything odd was going on at first. We just turned a corner and found ourselves stuck behind a white Opel Astra. No big deal. It happens. Only then we turned another corner and we saw there was a red Opel Astra in front of the white Opel Astra. Okay. That’s odd, but coincidences happen! But then we turned a somewhat wider corner and caught sight of a blue Opel Astra in front of the red Opel Astra. Eh… huh?!

It wasn’t until we left the village that we got a proper view of the full crocodile. It was twenty Opel Astras long. It was also going very slowly so as not to lose anyone on the narrow Eifel roads and, whenever a gap inevitably fell in the line, the entire front part of the crocodile would halt, wait until the backmarkers had caught up, and then sloooooowly crawl back to its steady pace of 60km/h – on an 80km/h road, thank you very much. We had no choice but to follow the crocodile as patiently as we could, with as little swearing at the existence of Opels as we could possible manage.

By the time we finally made it to the track – a whopping twenty minutes later than planned – myself and everybody else in the car had seen more than enough of Opel Astra for the rest of our hopefully very long lives. So even though it was probably not Opel’s intention when it decided on its promotion campaign; I now know exactly which car I’m NOT going to buy in the future.