The 24 Hours Of Nurburgring

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24 hours of nurburgring

 As dusk falls, the Manthey cars are firmly in control of the race.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

The Manthey RS Haribo bear car as night falls.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

The track takes a unique beauty of its own in the dark.  Jeff finally finds his way back to the media center after walking close to 5 miles and starts to take pictures again.  As night falls there are more crashes and drama to keep the crews busy.  One major crash took out the Manthey #1 Porsche RSR and effectively ended Manthey’s 4 year straight winning streak.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

The transporter area of the pits behind the grandstands.  Major time consuming repairs to the cars usually takes place in the team transporters.

 

 

24 hours of nurburgring

Some repairs that are too extensive for the hot pit lane are handled in the pits right under the grandstands.  This is a grand prix track type setup where there are garages right next to the hot pit lane.  I wish our tracks were like this.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

A team changes tires and brake pads on an Audi TT.  One of the drivers of this car is the Jurgen Wohlfarth,  brother of Klaus Wohlfarth (the “K.W.” of KW)!

 

24 hours of nurburgring

One of the Audi factory entries gets a driver change during the service.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

The Haribo car gets a major service down.  Part of the Manthey race strategy is to do extensive planned PM stops.  Seem excessive but the Ring is very hard on cars and Manthey is the winningest team here.

 

 24 hours of nurburgring

Most of the teams have telemetry carts where they can track the cars condition.  The carts are located across the hot pit lane by the other protective wall.

 

 

24 hours of nurburgring

The Manthey hot pit.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

Real time monitoring of timing and scoring.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

There is a lot of drama in the hot pits at night.

 

 24 hours of nurburgring

The factory BMW gets serviced and a driver change. The BMW team went on to win.

 

 24 hours of nurburgring

A driver debriefs with a crew member.

 

 

24 hours of nurburgring

A thoughtful crew dude offers Jeff a grape.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

The Lexus team naps in between stops.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

 The race takes its toll on us as well.  Calvin Kim of Road & Track is running out of steam around 2 am.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

Mike Ferrara falls asleep while waiting for the super slow internet connection to finish uploading.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

The end of the race, the cars cross the line!

 

 

24 hours of nurburgring

As the final minutes tick away, many teams have their cars slow down and sometimes stop right before the finish line to avoid having to do another grueling lap!

 

24 hours of nurburgring

Another Nurburgring tradition.  At the end of the race all of the crew members climb the crash fence to cheer their cars as they finish.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

This would never be allowed in the USA!

 

24 hours of nurburgring

The Hankook Ferrari crosses the line in second place.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

TV crews swarm around the pits of the winners of each class.

 

 

24 hours of nurburgring

An Audi R8 was in third.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

The crowd mobs the hot pits right after the race is over.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

Crowd heads toward the awards ceremony.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

The top finishing cars on display.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

During the awards ceremony, Mike Ferrara’s camera got doused in champagne killing it.  It was an expensive Nikon.  I think he managed to fix it though to salvage the rest of the trip.

 

 

 24 hours of nurburgring

After the race we get on the road again to the KW Suspension plant.  We throw up the KW gang sign.

 

 24 hours of nurburgring

Oliver pilots the Ubervan at 120 mph down the Autobahn.  You can go places so much faster at these speeds.

 

 24 hours of nurburgring

Oliver says no problem to high speeds.  It’s hard to read the speedometer but we’re approaching 190km/hr!

 

 24 hours of nurburgring

Who says that Germans don’t have a sense of humor?  At GP races they have safety cars which are usually highly modified AMG Mercedes sedans.  During the 24 hour races the safety cars are sometimes faster than the racers! These cars are the first responders to an accident.  Here is something funny we saw as we were leaving the track.

 

 24 hours of nurburgring

Typical beautiful German countryside.  Being from California, we found it to be very scenic.

 

 

24 hours of nurburgring

Having no sleep wears on us.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

Jeff takes yet another lame picture of me.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

Sorry Sarah and Annie, we thought that finding a woman checking her air was unusual.  You can’t mess around on the Autobahn.  German gas stations have a lot of different services.

 

24 hours of nurburgring

High tech toilets had UV sterilization and played music when you pissed in them!

 

24 hours of nurburgring

Lots of interesting devices were available as well.

 

Thus ends our 24 hour of Nurburgring adventure coverage.  We universally felt that this was the coolest automotive adventure of all time and can’t wait to do it again.  If you are into cars and motorsports, the 24 hour is like a trip to Mecca.  Next we travel to visit the KW factory and will look at their development and manufacturing technology.  Stay Tuned!

KW Suspension

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