Around the ring with an expert

Gavin Mason has been riding the Ring for 12 years this is how he describes a lap.

” When you leave the pits there are a couple of kinks, but the first real complex is Hatzenbach, which I have been told is German for snake. It doesn’t look impressive on the map, but it’s the kind of place that if you get the first corner wrong you pay for it on the fourth. There are regular spills here due to people pushing too hard on cold tyres. Next is Quiddelbacher-Höhe, a really fast double-apex right-hander. The quickest guys are banked over and just on the back wheel through here. From there you can get a good 150mph run down to Schwedenkreuz. A lot of cars get in trouble here because it goes off-camber, but it doesn’t affect bikes badly. This leads to the lovely knee-down Aremberg. This corner’s a little unnerving because the exit is right next to the base of a concrete bridge, but I’ve never known anyone hit it.

Fuchsröhre is where you’re tummy hits your tonsils. It’s very fast, 150-plus, and you head down a 10 per cent gradient and straight up an 11 per cent one. They’re counted as curves, but you straightline it all and enter Adnenauer-Forst, a section that catches people out. On courses they teach riders to run up the kerb here to prove they’ll be alright if they judge it wrongly and have to run over the kerb it if it all goes wrong.

Kallenhard doesn’t look dangerous, but it sucks people in. It’s a really late entry, very bumpy, downhill right. Next is Wehrseifen a very tight 40mph kink; get the entry wrong and you pay for it. At the Breidscheid bridge the key is to peel in late. The approach to Bergwerk is an innocuous kink with a yump. It was over this yump that Lauda’s car went light, he spun, went straight into the mountain and burst into flames. Bergwerk is cambered. You can’t realise it when you’re on the bike, but the camber is in your favour and because of this you can go through 40mph quicker than you first think.

Out of Bergwerk the track climbs. On a powerful bike you don’t really notice, but the tourist coaches are reduced to a 10mph crawl up here. The good riders are doing 150. Then you get to the Karussell, the corner that most people have heard off. It’s steeply banked and has two surfaces. The lower bit is the steepest and the right line for bikes. It’s concrete and not very grippy. You can take it at about a maximum of 65. Most of the cars stick to the shallower banking of the top, which is regular tarmac. On a bike you’ve got to hold a tight line or you get spat out early and head towards the Armco which is very close to the track here. A lot of people have been killed here. I’ve only had one spill at the Nürburgring and it was here.

The Ring varies in elevation by about 1000 feet (300 metres) and the next corner, Hohe Acht, is the highest part of the track. There’s not a lot to say about Wippermann or Eschbach, but Brünnchen is where all the vultures congregate. There’s a car park that overlooks this corner and people either come to watch the cars and bikes go round or just hope they’re going to see a crash. It catches a lot of people out so they’re normally in luck. Then on through Pflanzgarten you’re half-cranked over going over lots of yumps and bumps at over a ton. This is the place you need a steering damper. There’s a lot of trouble here.

Schwalbenschwanz translates as swallow’s tail and this section includes the baby Karussell. It has the same mixture of surface as its bigger namesake. Finally there’s Galgenkopf the scary last bend before the straight and the entrance to the car park.

On public days you can’t get a flying lap because you enter and exit halfway down the straight, so the agreed way of timing a lap is from the Antoniusbrücke bridge to a metal gantry that goes over the track shortly after the last corner, then add 23 seconds for the straight.