Alps to the Ring Tour -Day 6

Day 6 - Bad Kreuzach to the Ring, 140 miles

The day started quite grey but warmed up nicely. Another short day to make sure we got to the Ring for the 5pm opening time.

After a few miles to get out of town, the next 40 miles were an awesome run alongside the Rhine, with beautiful views to each side, hills and vineyards, barges and quaint towns:

My son's car was having a problem, using oil at a not small rate. After calling a specialist back home, we eventually diagnosed a blocked crankcase breather, causing oil to backup the cylinders and be burnt off. There wasn't much we could do except check the level regularly and keep topping the oil up. 

The rest of the route to the Ring was superb; twisting, smooth, empty roads taken at speed - awesome. In fact, we made such good time,  we arrived at 2.30, with 2.5 hours to kill before the track opened. Fortunately, that wasn't a hardship,  as it was great just watching some awesome and weird cars arriving. 

And finally, the time came to enter the Green Hell... !!

I'd paid for 2 laps initially (£30 each) and I started taking it easy but I'd spent several hours on a sim and watched 100s of videos, so I knew the track pretty well - I was soon up to full speed. Unfortunately, my full speed was much less than the numerous tricked up M2s, M3s, Porsches etc, so I had to spend a lot of time moving over for faster cars, taking crap lines - I was never going to get a good time.  And so it proved; 10.53 on lap 1 and 10.29 on lap 2.

I did overtake a few cars, though,  and took the carousel on lap 1 (on lap 2, I had to take the outside as a couple of fast cars wanted to get past).

(Low-res pictures, I'll get some better quality later)

Other interesting things you don't get from a sim or a video; the track is much wider than I expected, very useful when you come into a corner too hot. Also, some of the armco is huge, more like a large pavement - I really wouldn't want to touch them.  And finally, some of the gradients are much steeper than they look. 

To be honest, because I spent so much time worrying about who was coming up behind me,  I didn't have as much fun as my son, who was much faster and had far fewer cars going past him - he only managed 1 lap (9.15) before the track was shut for an accident and that was it for the evening. We go back tomorrow...

We drove back 10 miles to our very nice guest house, a kebab and bed.

Route of the day: