Awed of the Ring: Part Two

The Nürburgring has become a bit popular these days. Since Clarkson thrashed a diesel Jaguar round it, and was in turn humiliated by a feisty blonde behind the wheel of a Transit van, the 'Ring has ceased to be the exclusive preserve of petrolheads, and has entered the wider consciousness. You can drive round a virtual 'Ring in any number of video games. You can enjoy in-car video of the track, chauffeured round by legends like Derek Bell or Sabine Schmitz (the aforementioned feisty blonde). It is, in short, a track which feels deceptively familiar. Once you're there, though, you realise that you are definitely not in Kansas any more. Just driving round the area, warming the car up, I had a moment of shock as the scale of the track sank in. "Nearly 14 miles" sounds like a short drive to Grandma's house. When you see it in the tarmac, winding through the forests on the side of a mountain, you realise how enormous "nearly 14 miles" really is. It's intimidating, too. This is the track which barbecued Niki Lauda, and still claims a disturbing number of lives today…

Having found spaces in the busy car park, we buy our tickets (a reasonable €16 per lap, or €56 for four) and toss a coin to see who gets to drive first. I lose, so it's the passenger seat of the TVR see the previous entry for me. My memories of this first-ever lap of the 'Ring are a bit impressionistic. It was an adrenalin-soaked, sweat-stained, grin-inducing experience, and after the first seven or eight miles I lost the capacity for human speech and started communicating with grunts and gestures.

Back at the car park, the TVR's engine making "tink-tink-tink" noises as it cooled, I grabbed a couple of swigs of water (yes, my mouth was dry) and tried to dry the palms of my hands. It was my turn.

I feel I should note, at this point, that I am not an experienced track driver. I've been on a couple of track days, but never in the TT, and never on something as huge and anarchic as a public day at the 'Ring. I know, in short, just about enough to get complacent, and get into serious trouble. Fortunately for me - and my insurer - I tried my hardest to keep this primitive wisdom at the front of my brain, and stayed on the track and well out of the way of faster drivers. Which is to say, almost everyone. This is no reflection of the car's performance, which was mightily impressive when fully utilised, but tells the tale of my own lack of familiarity with the track. Despite helpful advice like "the track follows the treeline. Except in a couple of places, where it doesn't", and many hours spent poring over circuit guides and in-car videos, after the first few turns I really had no idea what was coming next. This, and the number of high-speed veterans howling past, meant that the only time I followed the right line was by accident. This in turn meant that I was accelerating hard when I could see the track ahead, and braking too hard because I didn't know where the corners went. The TT is nearly 1,500 kilos and the weight was beginning to tell. By the end of my first lap, I had an extra two or three inches of dead travel in the brake pedal. This is not a reassuring feeling to experience while hammering towards a sharp corner on an unfamiliar piece of road. When I got back to the car park I left the car in gear and the handbrake off. It also seemed a good idea to leave the bonnet up, since there was enough trapped heat in there to roast an ostrich.

My concerns about the brakes turned out to be premature. On my second lap, about an hour later, I took things a bit more easily, and actually tried to act on all the trackday advice to drive smoothly and avoid sharp braking where you can. From the start, the brakes had their customary slightly over-servoed bite, but the fade I'd experienced on my first lap never materialised and my efforts to drive "properly" were clearly paying off. Encouraged, I headed straight back out for another lap and (finally) started to enjoy myself a bit. Most of the corners are quite fast and sweeping, and the TT's neutral cornering stance and fantastic traction make them a pleasure to drive. While the turn-in is hardly pin-sharp, the nose moves smartly to where you send it, and there's no threat of understeer. The car sits nicely four-square through the corner - with a bit of roll to let you know what's happening but not enough to upset it, or me. It responds well to early application of the throttle, too.

The four-wheel-drive computer recognises that you're opening the taps mid-corner and rather than waiting for the front wheels to slip so the car understeers into the Armco, it shuffles power rearwards immediately. The net result is that the rear of the car digs in and pushes you round the rest of the corner. Apply a bit too much throttle and the whole car slides wide in a benign, controllable four-wheel drift. There are a couple of places on the track where you can use this behaviour to your advantage, bang the pedal down at the apex and drift out wide on the exit on a wave of that lovely, turbocharged torque. I imagine that on a tight, twisty track the TT's weight would tell severely on its handling, but at the 'Ring it just soaks up the corners and asks for more. Well, it'd be rude not to…