Driving the Nurburgring!!!

So recently a few members of the racefriv community took a trip to see our racefriv friend Parker in Germany, I got a ton of pics and will make a post about the rest of the trip soon. First though Im going to concentrate on the highlight of the trip, the epic, the awesome, the Green Hell...... The Nurburgring. We weren't going all the way to Germany without driving the Nurburgring, so we rented some wicked slow cars and hit the track!!! Click read more to see all our pics from the green hell!!

For those of you that dont know the Nurburgring is a giant motorsports complex built around the small town of Nurburg. It holds Le Mans, DTM and many other races throughout the year.  But the real reason why the Nurburgring is so famous is the Nordschleife.

 The Nordschleife is a 13 mile long race track around the city of Nurburg in Germany. It a "public" owned race track where you can drive pretty much any street legal car you want. It has been the mecca of all gear heads since it was built around the 1920's and is the proving grounds for just about every sports car made in the last decade. Since it is a public road it follows the same rules every other road in Germany does, if your slow get to right, if your fast use the racing line and pass on the left. Seems simple but when your on the track it can get quite scary. We weren't even worried, however, we were ready for some track time.

We got to the track a little early so we had some time to waste and decided to check out the little town of Nurburg and its midevil castle. Thats right, Germany built a race track for the public to use around a castle. Awesome. 

The castle was pretty awesome and gave an amazing view of the surroundings, you could see random parts of the tracks here and there as it swerved through the woods. You could also clearly see the Nurburgring main grand prix area from the top. 

Now to the Nordschleife, it was time. 

We drove our rental car to a place were you rent cars. Why you say? because this was no ordinary rental place, this was Rent4Ring and they rent cars for the soul purpose of driving them on the Nordschleife. They have many different cars you can chose from but we went with the fastest car you could think of,  the amazing, race bread....... Suzuki Swift.

Our thought was we were going to have a blast either way, driving a slow car fast is always hella fun, so we went with the cheapest option. We got 2 cars, 2 hours 4 laps in a Swift. Woot. This was going to be fun.

Here was one of our trusty steads, the Suzuki Swift, this one was Cory and Parker's, Darci and mine's was basically the same. Caged, brakes, tires, springs, sway bars, racing seats. These little cars were bad ass!!!!

So the Ring, let's get to the track. It's sick! It reminded me a lot of running the Tail of the Dragon back in the Smokey Mountains. Its a constant turn type of course, there were no straightaways to be found. The only straight part on the track is where you turn in to either let your car cool down or pay for another go.

It was about 30 euros a run, which is totally worth it for about 10 min of full adrenaline while driving a little Suzuki as fast as it can go. Even though the Suzuki was slow it was still hella scary to drive full out, the ring is full of many surprises and mistakes on the ring are very costly. 

This was no drive through the park, this was an open race track lined with guard rails with everybody from licensed race drivers in BMW M3's to average joe's with VW bus's (really I saw one there).

Since the ring is chocked full of hills there are a few scary moments, sometimes the change is so drastic when you go flat out, it just feels that the ground just fell out from under you. Hills of course lead to blind turns and there are a few that sneak up on you here. Lucky we made it through no problem with around 4 laps a person and headed the cars back to the rental place with out a scratch on them. Whew......intense. 

As you can see the track is filled with just about every car you can imagine. Its total insanity and great fun.

Maybe next time we go well get our hands on a 1M. #drool

So after four laps I decided that I had some awesome runs and kept the car shiny side up, so it was time to head home. The others took a few more laps and I checked out the passing cars. As you would guess the town is just filled with local race cars which was pretty awesome to see.

Germany loves their VW's and they're good for more than just gas mileage!

No surprise Germany also loves BMW's and if I lived around this track, Id have myself one too.

I saw a few Porsche 944's out that day, even had some fun on the ring with a few of them.

Id drive this golf everyday....

ring taxi!?

Saw a lot of flat matte paint jobs on BMW's over there. Seems like the hard core racers like to buy it from the factory like that.

They also has a Boss Hoss meet over there. Even the Germans love the 350 block on wheels.

Caught this sick Sirocco leaving the ring. We need these in the states.

Speaking of things the US doesn't get.......grrrrrr Ford.

Nothing to see here, just a strait up race car driving though town.

Well that's our coverage of our little trip to the 'Ring. We had a blast, If you ever end up there check out the guys from rent4ring, we had an awesome time driving their little cars around. This is not the last Germany post, stay tuned for the rest of the trip including, old mercs, wrecked rental cars, and the usual shenanigans. Stay friv everyone!!!