Nürburgring trip with a CTR Yellowbird

Wednesday was public day, so decided to head up to the ring. We left on tuesday night, pretty much after rush hour to make good progress.
I hadnt driven the ctr for quite sometime so it was fun to get reaccustomed to it. The little niggles that you dont have to worry about in modern cars like:
- when you start it you have to apply a tiny bit of throttle just to help it catch.
-To select reverse you have to shift to first and then move a tiny bit forward, then you can find reverse.
-its lumpy and unhappy when cold, takes about 15mins to reach 90 C operating temp with <3000rpm driving.
We took a really good route from my GF's house to nurburgring. If anyone is planning on visiting ruf and driving to the ring or the other way round this is by far the best route imho. Its not a route the sat nav or route planners will give you because it is 20km's further to drive, however it is really worth it.
our route was:
A7 North to Würzburg
then the A3 past Frankfurt, the first 80kms of the A3 is crap, however once you get near frankfurt and if the traffic is light its quite a drive. 4 Lane derestricted highways which are lighted. You blast past the frankfurt airport and its quite surreal!
The you pick up the A48 followed by the A61 where you take exit 33 to the ring.
We arrived quite late but made really good time.
We were up and ready for the 8am opening. I immediately took a sighting lap and the track was good, however it was a bit greasy in certain predictable places, Exit of bergwerk and Eiskurve. Here is a pic of lisa putting in the card to go out for her first run of the day after my sighting lap.



She did a really good run, and so we thought as traffic was light she should do another.
I had a go and it had been a while since i had driven the car on the ring, (6months or so) Boost is set to low by the way (450bhp, 0.8bar)


My limited experience and impression of the car on the ring is that:
ours is the hardest suspension offered by ruf, however it feels really composed 100% of the time, however this may be because im not going that fast, but really its a bit too confidence inspiring for such a little monkey of a car.
The brakes are superb, i never used them fully as i want to preserve them (I have a woeful reputation with brakes) but the feel and sheer force they exhibit is really impressive.
Power comes everywhere, even with low boost. I find it more fun to short shift and just use the torque. That way you dont have to worry about any "excess" of boost coming in mid corner and making things interesting. Dont get me wrong though, the boost comes in really progressively, like a bit tidal wave, but to be honest i have neither the talent nor the requisite white socks and mocassins of Stefan "sideways" Roser and really enjoy driving it in the higher gears. Plus it really helps you stay smooth and with that i believe you can make some pretty quick laps without sweating it too much!
However regardless of this fact, as the day went on it got hotter and hotter, and the little car becomes an oven. The engine creates so much heat and it just seeps into the cabin, where the little vents are easily overcome and do little to cool the car down. I love the lightweight nature of the car, but just sometimes a little bit of AC would be nice
by 11am i had done about 8 laps and it was getting more busy. There were of course the requisite imbeciles. When we came back to the car park after a lap i parked up and headed for the loo, whilst lisa wandered about the car park with some of our friends who had joined us. She watched a swedish ferrari F430 attempting to park. He was doing a pretty bad job of it, and crunched the car on a bit of curb, even with the help of some friendly passers by. When parked he noticed lisa watching,pulled the handbrake up and gave a demonstration of the sound of the ferrari. Whereapon lisa told him it didnt impress her, because the F430 is too slow, and has no torque!
So by 1pm with the track filling up, we decided to head for lunch in Adenau with some friends and then head home.
In total we did 1420km, used god knows how much shell Vpower, and a tiny bit of oil. I love this car.
Here are some pics:

My buddy Niek after a passenger lap:

Lisa and CTR:

Exiting Adenaur Forest:

Here is a video of the Yellowbird round Adenaur forest:

http://s65.photobucket.com/albums/h203/gijskluppels/Nurburgring%2006-0 . . . .¤t=100_2161.flv&refPage=40&imgAnch=imgAnch55

very best
AdamT

Öhum:

https://rejsa.nu/forum/viewtopic.php?p=434022#434022



/Johan

Gissade direkt på att det var Adam som varit framme igen . Alltid lika bra berättelser. Tack för posten Erik!