Nigel Roebuck om Nordschleife

Sörpan · 09 Jun 2005 12:38

09 Jun 2005 12:38

Nigel Roebuck om Nordschleife

Taget från www.autosport-atlas.com

Dear Nigel,

Dear Nigel, Thanks for all your fascinating observations and stories over the years. I have just been watching an in-car video of Derek Bell in his Porsche 962 at the Nurburgring (the proper one!). It started me dreaming: when was the last time a contemporary F1 car taken around the circuit? Wouldn't it be great if just for one lap we could watch Michael and his Ferrari have a go (maybe even his tyres would warm up in that lap!)

Peter Goodchild

Dear Peter

I went round the 'Ring - the proper one, as you say - 30 years ago with Jackie Stewart in a 'Cologne Capri', and it was an experience I've never forgotten, as you might imagine. Two or three years ago, I went round it again with Bernd Schneider, in a Merc, and that also was a very memorable experience - particularly when he answered a call on his mobile as we went down the 'Foxhole'...

Like you, I've got the DVD - 'In Car 956' - of Bell driving a factory car round sundry circuits, and of course it's the lap of the Nordschleife which is far and away the most impressive.

As far as I'm aware, no F1 car has been around the track since the last German Grand Prix was held there, in 1976, the year of Niki Lauda's terrible accident. The thought of a contemporary F1 car lapping the 'Ring simply beggars the imagination - who knows what time it might do, in the hands of an ace who knew the track intimately?

Problem is, I can't really imagine that any of today's drivers would be prepared to do it - by today's standards, it ain't the safest place around, after all. Run-off areas? What?

Sörpan · 05 Apr 2007 21:03

05 Apr 2007 21:03

Nytt svar från Nigel Roebuck på den här länken:

http://www.autosport.com/asknigel/index.html/id/22199

och här är texten:

Dear Nigel,

I visit the old Nurburgring Nordschleife annually, to ruin the tyres and brakes on my road car whilst thrashing around the circuit for two days, and always come away with a big grin. I try to imagine what a Grand Prix weekend there must have been like prior to 1976, when F1 stopped visiting.

For one thing, seeing Grand Prix cars sliding and jumping around such a circuit must have been amazing, however the vast distance the track covers must have made it an unusual track from a spectator and organiser perspective, especially trying to understand what was happening! Did you ever visit a Grand Prix there, and if so what memories do you have of this experience?

Justin Dobson

Dear Justin,

No matter how many times I drive - or get driven - around the Nurburgring, it always takes me by surprise. It's the same with the 'old' Spa-Francorchamps. Why the surprise? Because it takes you time to adjust to the thought that, yes, at one time Formula 1 cars really did race around here.

In my early days as a journalist, I attended several German Grands Prix at the Nordschleife, the first in 1971, when Jackie Stewart absolutely dominant. JYS dominated that season, and in truth many of the races in '71 were boring affairs, in the sense that only rarely did anyone - usually Jacky Ickx - get anywhere near him.

The German Grand Prix - as a race - was no exception, but I've never forgotten that weekend, for it was my first visit to the Nurburgring. I got there a day early, and amazingly - this was the day before practice began - the track was still open to punters who wished to experience the track. I paid my three marks, or whatever it was, and pounded round endlessly in my Lotus Elan - which, remarkably, didn't fall apart.

It was a great introduction to the place, in fact, because now, as I watched the cars go out to practise the following day, I had some idea of what the drivers were about to face. And soon I was back in the Elan, driving out to various points on the circuit, watching Stewart, Ickx, Fittipaldi, Regazzoni, Siffert et al as they began seriously to go to work. It was, to say the least, mind-blowing.

In those days the press rooms at Grand Prix circuits were extremely primitive, with no TV or instant race data, or anything of that kind. You watched a race from out on the circuit - and that was the problem with the Nurburgring, for you saw the cars only every seven minutes or so. In one way it was great, for you quite often got major order changes - the 14-mile lap was like five at any other circuit - but if not much was going on, the silences could seem awfully long.

The place, though, had such an extraordinary atmosphere - absolutely not for the faint of heart. Karl Kling, who drove for Mercedes in the '50s, adored the circuit (as all drivers did, for its challenge was unmatched anywhere), but he feared it, too. "At the Nordschleife," he told me, "I would look at my room as I left each morning, and wonder if I would see it again..."

It was at the Nurburgring, in 1957, that Fangio drove the greatest race of his life, making up well over a minute on the leading Ferraris of Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins, following a pit stop.

When I interviewed him, more than 20 years later, the great Juan Manuel remembered the day like this: "People always say that was my best race, and I suppose they are right. After my stop, when I was catching Hawthorn and Collins, I beat my own lap record by 24 seconds, and even now I can feel fear when I think of that race.

"I knew what I had done, the chances I had taken. I had never driven like that before, and knew I never would again. The Nurburgring was always my favourite circuit, without any doubt. I loved it, all of it, and I think that day I conquered it. On another day, it might have conquered me, who knows?"

As for Stewart, who won that day in 1971, had already won at the Nurburgring in '68 (in the rain - by four minutes!), and would win his last Grand Prix there, in '73, he agreed that no circuit compared with the place, in terms of driver satisfaction, but he was also only too aware of its unforgiving nature. "The Nurburgring is at its best," he smiled, "on a winter's night, by a log fire, when you're reminiscing..."

When I left the track, following the 1976 race, I felt instinctively that there would be no more F1 at the Nurburgring. That day James Hunt had won superbly for McLaren, but Niki Lauda had crashed horrifically, and as I started the drive back, he was not expected to live through the night.

Mercifully Niki survived, but the Nurburgring's days as a Grand Prix circuit were indeed done. As much as anything, what worried the drivers that day was the length of time it had taken for medical help to reach the injured driver: it was impossible, they said, for a circuit of that length to be marshalled properly.

Thus, the following year, we found ourselves at nondescript Hockenheim, and the German Grand Prix had a new home. In 1984 they opened a modern autodrome, adjacent to the Nordschleife, and sadly chose to call it 'The Nurburgring'. They really should have thought of another name.