IgloONotes

If there's any two things that you should see in Germany, its Football (not American football, which really should be called handball) and Motorsports. The racing scene in Germany is just as big as the Hockey scene in Canada. There's competitive kart racing for the young ones, and even more competitive juior racing leagues. This weekend, I attended my first real auto race, ever. I guess you could count the time that I watched a Nascar race, but they only turn left.

This was the Deutsch Touringwagon Meistershaft, or DTM, one of the premer racing series in Germany. Many drivers are former F1 drivers; Markus Winkelhock, Christian Albers, Ralf Schumacer (brother of the great Michael Schumacher) and two time F1 world Champion Mika Hakkinen. Its a star studded event, not quite as big as Formula One, but still with lots of excitement.

My friend Adam was really the only other guy here that was interested in going to the racetrack. We were looking at ticket prices and found out that a weekend ticket cost 55 €. A single day raceday ticket cost 50 €. 5 € more for an extra two days of racing? I'm there! On Friday, we both left work a little early and made the trek to the Nuremberg Norisring.

Friday: Tires, racers, and excitement

The Norisring is considered to be 'The Monaco of Germany'. This is the only street race on the DTM calendar with the close proximity of the barriers and the nature of this being a street track, it makes the racing a bit more interesting. It was a really exciting trip because as we got closer you could hear the roar of engines pounding the cars around the track. Minutes later, there was silence, soon to be broken again by the Porsche Carerra Cup.

Our first glimpse of the cars was at the last hairpin as we were making our way around the track. The cars were hitting their top speed and braking hard for the corner. Some cars would dive in and drive out with no drama. Others would lock their brakes and run wide. It was a sight to see. We were so close to the car you could see the driver looking around, adjusting the steering, extracting every last bit out of the car.

Then, the one thing that really made my day even better...a guy walked past, carrying a used tire.

"Vie Viel that tire?" asking 'how much' in my mix of German and english

" Fünf euro!" he said with a huge smile on his face.

That was a DTM tire that only cost 5 €! Call me whatever you want, but I was getting one. Adam's first reaction?

"I'm not gonna help you carry that home." - though he later caught the tire bug.

As we were walking alongside the track we got some pretty spectacular views of the cars. One extremely cool spot to watch the race was right after the chicane. There was a retaining wall where we stood, and the track was about 3 meters below us. The cars would enter the chicane and as they were exiting, most of them would use up all the width of the track and play death games with the wall. I felt like I could reach down through the fence and touch the cars. It was an amazing viewpoint, being as close to these race cars as physically possible. Who wants to pay more for the expensive grandstands? This is 10x better.

We continued wandering the race track, watching as the Porsche's pulled off the track and the Seat (pronounced 'say-awt') racing series went on. At the race, there was just so much to see. Different races were continuously being run as we walked in the infield to check out the stores. The next highlight of the day was the encounter of the Formula 3 Euro series drivers.

Many of them had just parked their cars in Parc Fermè to be inspected after a qualifying session. They all needed to go back to their motorhomes but there was no direct path and they had to walk through the same way that all the spectators did. I walked up to someone and snapped a picture with a totally random driver. Does it really matter who he is? He races in the Formula 3 Euro Series! To put into perspective how cool this series is, Lewis Hamilton is only one of the current F1 drivers who graduated to F1 after winning the Formula 3 championship (not to mention GP2 as well) I kept walking and snapped a picture with another random Japanese driver. Then, there was someone I actually knew about!

Nico Hulkenberg. I had read about him because he had already dabbled about in the F1 racing scene. His manager is the same guy who manages Michael Schumacher. He's currently second in the championship standings, won the A1 Grand Prix series for Germany and is Williams F1's official test driver. The cool thing was, he just put his car in Pole position for the first race at the Norisring. As he was getting out of his car and started walking away, I asked him for a picture.

He was really quite a friendly guy. Maybe he didn't talk much, nor did he smile much either. But he didn't just brush me off saying he was busy. I thought that was really cool how lots of these young guys just don't mind mingling around with fans. This guy is a future of Formula 1, no doubt.

I continued snapping my pictures of the cars, even getting a picture with a group of mechanics. I didn't try to blend in with the Germans, just observing everything. I was a tourist snapping pictures in every direction I could, with everyone that came along. My day had just started, but things were turning pretty awesome already! Sure enough, when I thought the excitement was starting to run dry, I turned a corner and saw tons of people walking around with tires.

The ultimate souvinier for any motorsports fan has to be a used tire off of a racing car. I lined up, sorta promoted myself to the front of the line and exchanged 5 Euros for a tire. I even got a picture with the tire mechanic!

After picking up my tire, we made our way to the granstands and sat down to watch some racing. We snapped tons of sweet shots and had some great seats. The grandstands were awesome because you could climb all the way to the top and see almost the whole racetrack. There was even a spot where you could snap awesome pictures and get really close to al the action at the chicane.

The other racing series I was really looking forward to was the ADAC GT Masters. This was a GT style race series with Lamborghini Gallardo's, Aston Martins, Porsche 911s, a Ferrari F430, a Ford GT, Corvette, and even a Porsche Carrera GT as the Pace car. Cars of dreams.

We managed to squeeze into an unobstructed view behind the barriers, looking right at the exit of the chicane. The cars dove into the corner, lurched right, then left, gripping all the way through, then scrabbling for grip as they exited the corner. Some cars would nail the line and make a clean exit. Some would get loose in the rear as the exited the chicane, needing to feed in some opposite lock. One common goal of almost every driver seemed to be playing chicken with the wall. Some were seemingly centimeters away from a new paint job. The best part about it was the noise.

One most straightaways, you would normall hear the same engine note over and over again. It can get a little boring, but here, you could hear the cars going up through the gears and every car had a distinctive note. The Ford GT had a ferocious roar while the Aston Martins presented a refined exhaust note. I have to say, the Lamborghini hit all the right buttons. They had a low rumbling noise and you could clearly hear the driver feathering the throttle or just the car getting light over the bumps. The car's suspension was working overtime just to keep the thing in line as the tires did their part to maximize the grip.It was a woundrous sight to behold.

Our day came to a pleasant ending, with a train and bus ride back, a 19 inch DTM tire in hand. We got many curious stares everywhere we went. I almost felt like a celebrity though certainly, the tire was getting all the attention. This had only been day one of three and it was already turning out to be a crazy awesome weekend.

Saturday: The bus and the race

We were planning on meeting one of my friends and thus had a set time to meet at the train station in Nuremberg. Our bus arrived at our first stop at 7:09 AM. As you know, keeping a schedule is pretty tough to do after a long day. When Adam and I left our rooms it was already 7:03, which gave us only five mintues. The first stop we were originally planning to go to was only a 5 minutes away, but the bus would have gone by already. We tried running for the next stop on the route.

I don't remember the last time that I had to run so much to catch a bus! We kept running for what seemed like an eternity and as we were nearing the stop, we saw the bus in the distance, stop at the first station, and drive off again. I thought that was it, and we would have to wait for the next bus a whole hour later. Undeterred, Adam beckoned me on, "C'mon, we can make it to the city center before the bus gets there" Off we went to catch our last hope.

What would usually be a 30 minute walk, we did in about 10. I didn't have much hope because no way in my mind could we outrun a bus. But as we turned the last corner, it was there! Our bus was stopped at our station! With the little energy I had left in me, I ran a bit faster to keep up with Adam who was almost at the bus. Just like a movie script, as Adam was running alongside the bus waving his arms, it drove off. We were goíng to be a whole hour late.

Dejected and tired, we sat down on the bench and contemplated what might have been. Literally, if we had woken up 5 seconds earlier we would have made the bus.

The ride to Nuremberg was uneventful from then on. Worried that we may have lost our friend by arriving an hour late, we asked the front desk to call his name over the public announcement system. After waiting almost an hour, Adam recieved a call. Turns out my friend totally missed his train and by the time he woke up, he should've been been meeting us half an hour before. It was a huge sigh of relief that our lateness didn't combine with misery. Now, we could make our way to the racetrack. DTM, here we come!

We grabbed a seat in the main grandstand, the Steintribune. It was made famous during the times of Hitler where he would address his troops while in the area. Today would be quite different.

Motor sports fans from all over Germany lined the seats, some waving flags, decked out in their favourite team's colours. Others were rolling around new-found tires while Adam and I had found a nice seat right at the top corner. From here, we would see the main straight, the first hairpin, the entrance to the chicane and the back straight. It was almost the best seat in the house. The best seat though, was just a step away.

We weren't allowed access because we didn't have the special pass. It was basically an overhead view of the entire track. It couldn't get any better. I was happy enough to have our spot.

Our friend from Schweinfurt finally arrived and we proceeded to go for a few more viewpoints around the racetrack. This is when we finally got to see the highlight of the day, the DTM race cars.

I was keen to spot the more well known drivers. Ralf Schumacher, Chrisjian Albers, Markus Winkelhock, Gary Paffet. Okay so maybe most of you have no idea who they are but these guys were former F1 drivers, the top tier of motorsport. I was also keen to spot the women drivers because well, I wanted to see how they drove.

Two things characterizes the DTM cars. They're Fast and they're loud. The manufacturer battle was between the Audi A4's and the Mercedes C-Class with the Audi's notably louder than the Mercedes. We had an awesome sight right by the end of the chicane. It was just unreal being so close to the cars.

Along our walk around the racetrack, we had to pass through the parking lot. Being Germany, we saw our fair share of BMW's and Mercedes. But what was quite unexpected was the Mercedes SLR, Porsche Carrera GT, Lamborghini Gallardo and Aston Martin DBS. The Mercedes was a cool car because it was a rental and was govered in dust it looked like it had been through cross-country rally. This was a supercar that was well used, just it should be. We spent quite some time snapping pictures of the cars, ignoring the race entirely. We had to remind ourselves that we were actuall here to watch the race-

We then stopped by the infield which was littered with hospitality areas for VIPs, a press room and lots of stores. Just outside the Audi store was the Audi R10 race car that won the 24 hour race at Le mans. It was one thing to see it in person, and another to notice that they never cleaned the car. All the dirt and grime accumulated from the 24 hour race was still freshly caked on.

Being at the DTM, I just had to buy something. Sitting on a rack was a Audi S-Line shirt. It was a tough choice between shirts because they were all so cool. In the end, I stuck with the more classy look over the racer style. This was a shirt I could wear any day, anywhere.

We stuck around long enough to see most of the races and almost every point of the track. By 5:00 PM, we were spent. Time to head home and come back on Sunday for the main race.

Sunday: A little less excitement but still lots of fun

By the time we came back from our 111 lap Go Kart race, it was nearly 1:00 PM. This gave us a couple hours to find a seat and watch the race. As you can imagine, there were at least twice the number of people and our favourite seats were filled. With no other choice, we found ourselves a seat right up front. It was not great because our view was obstructed by the barriersa and the 'Pommes Box' food stall. Though, we did get to see the first hairpin and the entrance to the chicane.

The race got underway with the cheering of fans and the blaring of horns. I wasn't quite hardcore enough to buy a flag and noise makers. The real fans camped right at the track, had a BBQ, a sun umbrella and the requisite sunburnt complexion.

I must say, it was really quite tough to follow what was going on at the track because we couldn't really see anything and we had to rely on the huge TV screen to keep us informed. I had to use the zoom on my camera and take a picture of the screen to actually read the stats. There was smoking tires entering the turns and passing cars on the straights.

Ralf Schumacher had a spectacular spin in the first corner while another driver had his engine blow. Sad enough, I was never looking in the right direction to catch the action.

The DTM race wrapped up with a Briton Jamie Green on top in a Mercedes C-class. On the way out, we picked up a brochure and read what the drivers thought about the Euro cup. Keep in mind that the final game was to be played later at night and Germany was up against Spain. Of all the drivers, only the British drivers said Spain would win. They wouldn't be caught dead voting for the Germans that's for sure.

It was one heck of a weekend, myself snapping away 1000+ photos over the three days. As they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in Germany, go watch a race.

Tags: cars, DTM, Germany, Life in the Fast Lane, racing