VLN #8 - the race that never happened

RPR Racing was more than ready, but the Eifel fog never cleared.

13 September 2014

Friday

The team had decided not to run in the T&E session on Friday, so Friday was a very relaxed day. Julius was missing, having dropped the truck off, then absconded to Spa for the Super Sports Cup, so Carsten and Selda found themselves getting the equipment out of the truck and putting the repaired front bumper / spoiler back on Einstein, after its excursions in the last race. The repair was interesting in itself: for a €1,000 “carbon” splitter, Carsten was less than pleased to find that it is, in fact, a plastic splitter with a wrap of carbon on it. Another example of Opel’s determination to make money out of the Cup series, rather than build a brand.

MC appeared in a polo shirt, despite the cold, and disappeared off to meetings, rearranging the world as usual. He came back just before 6pm looking very pleased with himself; so he and Carsten headed off to the drivers’ briefing, just as Einar texted that he would arrive at 2100hrs. The briefing was up to Karl’s usual standard, adding the Code 60 flag before double yellow sections; but was followed by the DMSB describing – or rather reading out a series of slides on – the new Nordschleifen licence for 2015; a really sensible move to improve safety; they deserve congratulating on it. Let’s see if three races in Group B cars is enough, or whether it needs increasing to 5 or possibly 6 races, but the framework is a good one; and the approval of the room was pretty clear from the applause; which was repeated in the German briefing.

Shortly before Einar rocked up, MC got very excitable as a result of a series of calls and emails; but wouldn’t open up at all on why? Heading off to the Agnesenhof, muttering quietly to himself, he bumps into Einar rumbling through the tunnel in his SL55 – does anything sound better in tunnels? They have a conflab for a while, then head their separate ways. Einar and Carsten take advantage of MC’s absence to hold a quick Chinese parliament on the running order for the next day.

Saturday

It’s a cold, foggy morning as the team assembles. Michael, Dirk are already there; and Einstein is ready in the garage. Einar has to attend the German-language drivers’ briefing at an unfeasibly early hour, poor lamb, but Carsten is already in his race suit, so is volunteered to go first. There is an old-timer race before quali, so the timetable for the morning looks ambitious. So it proves; and the green light for the pit lane doesn’t light up for almost ten minutes after the official start.

In a break from tradition – maybe its Julius’ and Tom’s absence – Carsten is strapped, the tyres end engine are warmed and ready to go before even the official start. Keen or what? Carsten is one of the earlier cars to rumble down the pit lane, after the Alzen boys have cleared a passage through their acreage. He heads out to the GP circuit to find it wreathed in yellows, almost all the way round. Hmm, he thinks mindful of last race’s overenthusiasm, maybe they are to warn us that the official timing hasn’t started yet, so continues to circulate the GP circuit, but puzzles over the Frikadelli Porsche and a few other cars heading off round the Nordschleife. After four or five laps of driving round in a steady train, “f*&^ it”, he thinks, “I’m here to drive, not parade around the GP circuit” and heads off round the Nordschleife. It’s a good call. The fog is thinner on the Nordschleife than the GP circuit, so he gets a nice clear lap; scarcely seeing another car. He’s clearly feeling good, pushing 200kmh through Schweudenkreutz and getting ever faster through Mutkurve.

Einar is ready and waiting as Carsten arrives in the pits, to a slightly different pit crew. MC pulls him out; Michael barks orders at the rest of the crew. Einar is in, strapped and out again. A GP lap to warm himself up and he’s off round the Nordschleife for a timed lap. Over the Quiddelbach bridge, Einar spots a pair of double yellows and nails the brakes: there’s a car facing the wrong way in the tyres on the outside just over the Flugplatz crest, but there’s no green flag to be seen on the next two marshals posts. Enough, he thinks and nails it. The SP9 cars start coming by shortly afterwards: backing off isn’t in their lexicon. Exiting Galgenkopf there’s a static yellow, which continues all along the straight until Hohenrain chicane; puzzled by the lack of accident, Einar concludes that it must be for the fog. He reports in on Dottinge Hohe and is told to do another lap. This turns out to be a nice clean lap until he catches a Mini around the Touristfahrten entrance, who is more cautious than others with the yellows along the main straight, and has to sit patiently behind it until Hohenrain.

MC is ready in his helmet of multi colours as Einar coasts into the pits. Quick swap, and MC is off. No tyre change needed. A GP lap to warm himself up and he’s off round the Nordschleife. It’s not to be, though. Plunging down to Breidscheid, there’s a red flag being waved vigorously: “What??” asks MC? “It’s a lovely day, what’s the problem?” Soon enough a train forms and proceeds at a stately pace back to the pits. MC radios in that all is well, but there is a red flag. Carsten heaves a sigh of relief. He radios in a few more times that he can’t see an accident, and is told to head straight into the pits and park head on to the Alzen GT40. Not THAT close, thank you. Clearly with utter faith in Carsten’s signals, MC ends up millimetres from the GT40’s splitter. The Alzen mechanic looks aghast at the invasion of their (rather large) personal space.

Out of the car, MC briefs that for the first time there is some semblance of feel in the front end, with the steering getting lighter and the tyres juddering to signal incipient understeer. He’s pleased. Einar had noticed the same, but thought that the track must be slightly damp. The red flag is from a marshal at post 38, who claims he can’t see the other side of the track. MC disappears to get more tea muttering that the marshal should take his dark glasses off and that he’s raced with much less visibility; and even in the dark… Tom appears looking much more wide awake having had a good night’s sleep after his marathon rebuild of an M3 for the Friday practice, to help out Black Falcon. He’s in a Black Falcon jacket, which Carsten removes immediately with much tutting and replaces it with an RPR equivalent. Much better.

It doesn’t look like the race will start on time, somehow. And that, my friends, was that. The fog got heavier and never lifted, so we yakked, drank tea and polished Einstein; but race we did not. Next time.

Big thanks to all track-side photographers for smashing action pictures, your watermarks have been preserved for proper identification and rights protection.

Special thanks to Selda Schretzmann (HIGHSPEED-IMAGES.COM) for fantastic pit-lane pictures!