On Monday morning before the Ring opened up we met a local named Thomas. He was from Frankfurt and was nice enough to talk a bit about the Ring with us.
He also offered to take me for a lap in his modded 350z, and I was of course more than happy to go along. That morning the track was very wet and he took it pretty slow and gave me a few tips on what to look for.
One other thing Thomas mentioned to me was that some of the photographers you see snapping pictures of you on the Ring actually host websites where they sell the photos.
After scouring the web, I found a nice portal site:
http://www.ringportal.nl/en/photography
There I found two pics from our Ring Taxi ride and even a pic from one of my laps!
http://hatzenbachfreak.de/images/sto...2/DSC_0436.jpg
http://highspeedfotos.de/Coppermine/...um=1006&pos=61
The Porsche you see behind us in that pic actually PASSES us eventually. Fritz, our driver (Pretty sure that was his name!) was impressed to say the least and was wondering what tires they had, since the track was so wet. The passenger had a big ridiculous grin and gave us two thumbs up as they passed us, no doubt enjoying the drift show Fritz was putting on.
Fritz definitely wasn't going for time though and when he says "Now let's see how it goes without all of the electronics on!", you know you're about to have some fun!
The Ring's parking lot is just a rotating car show all day.
From one of my laps! Found it here:
http://www.tourifotos.de/galerie/alb..._6444.jpg.html
Wait, what's that in the distance?!
A tour bus on the Ring, if it's street legal it can ride! Gotta love this place haha.
This 599 GTO was gathering quite a crowd. Keep note of it and his friend with the Black M3!
During a lap we came across a caution and then eventually discovered it was the M3 and 599! My heart sank at the sight, thinking the 599 wrecked.
Luckily it seemed like only the M3 spun out and his friend in the 599 pulled over to help.
There were some very cool roads in the Nurburg area. We found this one with lots of switchbacks and hairpins going up and down a mountain while we were looking for one of the nearby castles.
It's checkout time, sad to see the Am Tiergarten in the rear view but it was fun while it lasted.
You're not going to drive your new M3 past the BMW M Test Center without stopping for a picture, right?!
We found this on our drive through Brussels, The Atomium!
Ok this deserves some explanation. What you see down there is Mini Europe. From here it doesn't look so bad, right? Soon we would come to find out it was about eleventy billion miles of walking! Maybe it was the fact we were already so beat by the time we got here but it sure felt like forever.
I kid though, as Mini Europe was actually pretty awesome and a fantastic value. We were able to see a lot of things throughout Europe that we definitely did not have time for.
The last I saw of my baby, as I dropped her off in Amsterdam. Already anxiously awaiting re-delivery, she's been booked on the Elektra!
I'd like to thank David Aviles at Northwest BMW for being a great CA and helping to put this together.
I also put together a couple of videos from the trip. Filmed mostly with a GoPro HD, the footage has been sorta mashed together and sped up to keep it interesting. Unfortunately the engine sounds are lost in the process.
Here's a shorter vid:
If you actually liked that one then I made a longer video here: