Gerwin and yours truly just returned from a great weekend at the Ring! Drove over on Thursday evening and met our French friend Eric Wassermann (yeah really, French) in the hotel. Next day was, as Gerwin already wrote, sunkissed and we had the best of times. Felt a little hot but after some lady told us it was 37 degrees we knew why haha!
Ran into Le Mans winner and Jaguar celeb Andy Wallace as soon as we walked onto the historic paddock. His team was having some stress as the ignition key for their race Jag MKII was missing but when that was solved he was happy to have a little chat. Did you know he was the guy who set the speed record in the McLaren F1 that held for 11 years btw? Also spoke to Ulrich Sauer who has competed in ALL (!!) 43 editions of the OGP in his BMW 328.
At a later stage we briefly met Audi rally legend from the golden era Stig Blomqvist and then we soon decided to go trackside to see Andy Wallace have fun and see many different classes in action, the day being concluded with the DRM cars, the M1's like Gerwin already showed and an acquaintance had also brought his ex Le Mans winning Luigi UFO CSL so we had a fabulous time. One disappointment, the orange Goup 2 E21 320i in Jägermeister livery just like Lukasz's did not start the entire weekend, apparently it had serious engine trouble.
Always nice braking action at the end of the straight
Oops red flag! Gladly no serious accidents
Ah there's the Luigi UFO we hadn't seen in action for some time!
On Saturday we met up with several friends, spent quite some time in the pitlane to see the preparations for the F1 race, even took photos on the start grid and stuck around for the race. Friends were running a ATS F1 car that kept having fuel pressure problems, sad to see their despair when the car came in with repeated problems and had to retire, a real pity. A new Touringcar Revival class allows more recent cars in for the first time, roughly until the year 2000. Great to see legendary cars like the Alfa 155Ti, Volvo's and a whole bunch of BMW's and Mercedeses again after quite some years. Stayed on the track until late, saw the historic GT's drive at around 8pm, wonderful light and atmosphere!
Sunday was the day to dot some i's and cross some t's when it comes to photography, and there was time to relax and chat with people. Special moment when former Luigi CSL driver Eddy Joosen dropped by when we were at the UFO tent. The UFO that was present was the E9 CSL that was class winner in the 1977 Le Mans 24 hours driven by Xhenceval and Dieudonné, but before that it was owned by Joosen and he was eager to get behind the wheel, even if it was just for a sit. One happy man and we were there, equipped with cameras. Ran in at the Coys auction to see a sweet 328 get sold for 500k and ran out right away... what a load of money!
The ex Olaf Manthey 325i owned by Steffan Irmler was out again and this time former DTM E30 M3 driver Marc Hessel was behind the wheel
The new Tourenwagen Revival class definitely wasn't just a slow demo session as you can see, this is another car from Steffan Irmler, driven by himself, the Opel Astra SATCar 1994
And team FW Motorsport ended up winning their class in the DRM race in their 320i!
Two years ago we ran into a funny situation when the Stefan Bellof S Kurve was unveiled, meeting Derek Bell and Bellof's father, and doing the Nordschleife in a touring bus including the Karrousel! This year we were picked up by a cheerful young blonde in a press shuttle and taken for a lap on the Grand Prix strecke. As the Outlander was quite stuffed Gerwin had to sit in the luggage compartment for the lap haha!
Anyway, another memorable weekend of fun behind us and another zillion photos added... more soon!