Could have been worse...

[Chii]

Oh man, I really wanted to give this a go! This has certainly put me off it.
Really gutting I'm sure

[mmm-five]

What the fastest mph you can get up to on a straight??

Depends on the car and the circuit configuration.

My mates R33 GTR gets 184mph up the Dottinger Hohe straight- but only when it's a full lap (i.e. not BTG tourist day). He also hits 160mph before braking for Schwedenkreuz, and is over 140mph down Fuchsrohre.

It's actually no the straight line speed that impresses me...although that is quick...but how early he can get on the throttle to pull the car through a corner.

As far as mine is concerned, I'm about 20mph slower into Schwedenkreuz, and 10mph slower down Fuchsrohre.

There's nothing to be scared of really - except for fluid spills, blind corners, track day warriors, Ring rental cars (tend to be driven like they're stolen)...just drive it like you would a B-road that you've never driven before. Don't worry about being 'too slow'...there's no such thing...and eventually you will find you're going much faster whilst putting less effort in, and taking less out of the car.

I've done about 1000 laps and am still here...in fact I've had more 'incidents' in the Z4MC on public roads (3) than I've ever had on the Ring (i.e. 0)..yet I take out 1st party insurance every trip. Luckily, due to my 'no claims bonus' with my track cover provider (MORIS), it's gone down every year...so I now pay the same for a 3 day weekend as I used to for a 1 day event.

BTW, I always carry an empty credit card...just in case.

[Vonlipvig]

...just drive it like you would a B-road that you've never driven before.

That's me in the barrier then

[andysat]

What the fastest mph you can get up to on a straight??

Depends on the car and the circuit configuration.

My mates R33 GTR gets 184mph up the Dottinger Hohe straight- but only when it's a full lap (i.e. not BTG tourist day). He also hits 160mph before braking for Schwedenkreuz, and is over 140mph down Fuchsrohre.

It's actually no the straight line speed that impresses me...although that is quick...but how early he can get on the throttle to pull the car through a corner.

As far as mine is concerned, I'm about 20mph slower into Schwedenkreuz, and 10mph slower down Fuchsrohre.

There's nothing to be scared of really - except for fluid spills, blind corners, track day warriors, Ring rental cars (tend to be driven like they're stolen)...just drive it like you would a B-road that you've never driven before. Don't worry about being 'too slow'...there's no such thing...and eventually you will find you're going much faster whilst putting less effort in, and taking less out of the car.

I've done about 1000 laps and am still here...in fact I've had more 'incidents' in the Z4MC on public roads (3) than I've ever had on the Ring (i.e. 0)..yet I take out 1st party insurance every trip. Luckily, due to my 'no claims bonus' with my track cover provider (MORIS), it's gone down every year...so I now pay the same for a 3 day weekend as I used to for a 1 day event.

BTW, I always carry an empty credit card...just in case.

Thanks for the write up -out of the 1000 laps you have done what's been your quickest time?

[mmm-five]

Thanks for the write up -out of the 1000 laps you have done what's been your quickest time?

No better than 8m23s...and that was only because my mate in his R33 was acting as a pacemaker/battering ram to make a hole in the traffic for me.

My regular pace is only 9 minutes...not particularly fast, but relatively safe, and I can hit that whether there's traffic, yellows, or not. But it is more or less standard, and on 152,000 miles. Although I haven't timed a lap for about 3 years.

Laps will be a bit quicker now, as some of the track has been reprofiled and smoothed.

The Alfa is only a minute slower

Video below of my first (sighting) lap of the day...where you can see I'm taking it carefully on the corners where it can be slippy early on, and braking very early...


...and another, slower, lap a few minutes later where I was asked to shadow a friend in his e34 M5 to see how he liked his new Michelin PSS, Bilstein suspension, and shorter final drive...

[andysat]

Hey don't knock yourself-nearly sub 8 mins!

[mmm-five]

Hey don't knock yourself-nearly sub 8 mins!

We don't go / never went to chase times, so we set ourselves challenges instead...such as completing the lap in 4th gear only...or not going above 4000rpm, or not doing a lap with clutchless changes...etc.

The times were only every noticed when we played back the videos at the end of the day...usually to point out some terrible driving by us/another.

Used to do 20-25 laps a day, but it got VERY expensive in lap tickets & fuel...so we now tend to do 25-40 over the course of 3-5 days.

[Nican48]

Don't think I'd fancy it after seeing the vid!

[hopz121]

Would like to go but seeing stuff like this makes me doubt my decision.

That is going to cost a lot of money to fix and recover all of those cars!

Hopefully everyone got out safe!

[mmm-five]

I'd like to reassure you all that these incidents are very rare...but I'd be lying.

There's an inordinate amount of time hanging around the car parks waiting for the track to reopen after either a multi-car accident (usually caused by one car dropping fluids), or multiple independent incidents (usually driver/car failure), or fatality (usually a biker vs fluid vs barrier incident). Then you can have up to an hour to get out of the overflow car park and back onto the track.

Some weekends are completely clear...but they're in the minority...so you need to have a back up plan on how you're going to spend the day instead of hanging around for 4 hours during a closure.

We tend to do early morning (8-10), and late afternoon sessions (5-7), and go driving around the region for the 'nutter time'. We can still get 15-20 laps in those 4, quieter hours.

We also turn up on the Friday afternoon so that we can get our tickets sorted and do a few laps before we check in to the hotel.

The German bank holiday weekends are the worst!

[stevo///m3]

The white/grey SEAT driver did pretty well!
Stevo

[Lance]

Just having a nose at the BTG Ring website and notice there's a Z4 caught up in a big crash at the Foxhole (spilt fluid).

Looks like a non UK plated car, anyone here?

There's a video here - http://www.bridgetogantry.com/mclaren-o ... ing-early/

Apologies if a re-post, was away for a week.

[MJJamieson]

The z4 only had light front damage in that video, see what it looks like in this one.
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A ... hAO7Re0rEz

[GuidoK]

I think there's a large topic on the german Z forum on this crash with additional video material/report.

By the looks of it after the z4 came to a standstill some others crashed into it? (really badly)

(video from btg site)


German news report that was made on this:
https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/rp/nach-u ... index.html
(click on the screen to start the video)


http://www.zroadster.com/forum/index.ph ... ng.120988/

What a brake save from that seat though.

You can also see that maybe the fluid spill messed up the brake bias on the cars (or maybe its brake balance). Both with the seat and the z4 the back steps out quite a bit under braking and they have to countersteer pretty heavily . Its a slight corner but still looks more than it should.

[buzyg]

There's another there's on here from a few weeks back. Some interesting comments...

Here you go.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=99382