A Visit to VLN 7 2017

Only a short holiday to visit the VNL7 race at the Nurburgring.


I spent the 2 nights in Hotel Hohe Acht. A very nice Hotel with a friendly Host and at a very reasonable price. And visited by Guests with one thing in common: a passion for the Nordschleife.

As I arrived at Thursday I wanted to do a few laps during Touristenfahren, but the track and entrance with very crowded.

The reason was that the previous two days, Touristenfahren had been cancelled because Porsche AG. where setting a laprecord with their new Porsche GT 2 .

During Touristenfahren one visitor stood out of the crowd: A long distance cyclist.

When I woke up on Friday, testing day for the VLN race, my car was already sunbathing in a glorious morning Sun.

At the Track, I walked straight in to a Pitstop of the Nismo Team. They used this race to test their new Nissan GT-R for next season.

The Sun gave the scenery this day a glorious light. I must admit, for me Autumn light is my favourite: warm, glowing and it gives everything a softness. Less harsh then the light in high Summer.

Porsches Factory Driver Kevin Estre takes his time to adjust his Desk to his liking.

And at the Track you can also small remarkable moments:

Like Dutch company Intrax, helping out with the setup of a car, sponsered by the competition. But it gave the team the class championship 2017.

And nobody can ad Oil as good as the teamowner himself: Franz Konrad.

Autumn has started but the leaves still show a high degree of green.  Fullcourse Yellow (who gets this joke.) is still some weeks away

You dont see a lot of track photos on this Blog, but the weather was good and there were not many spectator. So I went to Brunchen, parked my car at this corner at the track and walked a few miles along the track.

Saturday, Race Day started Foggy. 

So no reason to rush to the Circuit. Normally the Track is closed when there is too much fog. But the Sun put all its effort in making the fog disappear. So business as usual. 

Cars do their Qualifying and then everybody (drivers, teammembers, media and a big part of the crowd) go to the Starting Grid, where the final interviews are made.

During the Race, when there is no car pitting, the crew is in the back of the garage keeping a watch on the monitors and tv.

Nismo Driver Tom Coronel has a doorway conversation with the Team. Perhaps we will see them again this season.

I dont know if this will be the last blog of VLN this season. We will see.

Historic Grand Prix Zandvoort 2017

Since a few years now, the circuit of Zandvoort has put great effort in organizing the Historic Grand prix Zandvoort.

And the organization has done well. There are a lot of spectators and competitors. And with the famous Goodwood Revival just a week later, there are nevertheless plenty of teams that don't want too skip Zandvoort for that Goodwood Revival race.

The weather was sunny and everybody made a big effort to show up, with cars as authentic as possible. This means that it was a colourful ensemble of cars.

Among the drivers I picked out two Dutchman who played or still play an important role in the automotive History: Adrian van Hooydonk and Harm Lagaaij.

Harm Lagaaij is well known for his work he did as a Designer at Porsche until his retirement and Adrian van Hooijdonk is now Director of Design for the complete BMW Group.



Adrian really can't wait to start up his BMW 2002 TI

Another BMW Adrian drove this weekend: the 1800 TISA. With lots of memories stuck on the rear window

A glorious Tyrrell 003 (1970)

A Brabham BT37 (1972)

A Ligier JS17 (1981)

An impressive rear of this BMW 320 Turbo group 5 from 1978

A modern car: the McLaren 540C.

 Harm Lagaaij and his Shadow Can Am Car.

A Formula 3. The March 793 (1979)

Just some nice photos.

And at the end, two nice Mini's well taken care of.

VLN 3 2017. Three Days of Motorsport.

Just a small work break. The best way to use that is by visiting a race for the German VLN championship, held at the Nurburgring.

Thursday I arrived at the Motorsport Hotel. It is situated in the small vilage of Nurburg.  And the Nurburgring  runs aprox. 23km around it. Next to the Motorsport Hotel, is the BMW M test Centre.

 At the other end of the street you can see one of the grandstands at the Ring.

At Thursday the Ring is during the day hired by automotive companies. At the end of the day, it is time for the Touristenfahrten. After the dials had shown a 35+ degrees celsius, there was no doubt, that it would start raining, sooner or later.

But the rain didnt last for long. So the paddock for the Touristenfahrten, was soon taken over by the enthousiasts that showed up with cars very well prepared for this purpose.

And than there was a small camera group for the German TV magazine Grip. I dont know what the show was about, but is sure put some focus on the Michelin Tires on the gorgeous Mercedes-AMG GT-S.

Friday the track was open for a general practice. The weather was really great. And the atmosphere was like always very relaxed in the paddock.

The Isert Motorsport team was testing their KTM X-Bow GT4 cars. They will start competing from next race on. This is a Youtube Video showing one of their pitstops.

Saturday: qualifying day and race. Look how glorious the sun woke us up. Exept for this butterfly that was still a bit sleepy, although spending the night on my ceiling.

The teammembers of the Ferrari 488 GT3 Wochenspiegel are rightfully assured they did everyting to prepare a winning car.

But other teams where just so self assured:

And then there is the formation of the start grid. With a total of almost 200 cars, its quit an organization. The grid is divided in 3 parts. This is a series of photos of the middle part. Almost at the end of the straight.

On Facebook I was live. Here is the result uploaded to Youtube as well. I am sorry for the bad noise and  camera quality.

The race was not that spectacular, But in the end, the finish is there. Drivers are happy after 4 hours of frantic racing, to park their car in Park Ferme.