Touring Car Drivers Hit Each Other Multiple Times During Fast 'Ring Battle

Nestor Girolami, Frederic Vervisch and Rob Huff were involved in some wheel-banging, bum-puckering battles down the long Dottinger Hohe straight at the Nordschleife

Dan Thorn

22 Jun 2019

Touring car racing is up there with Nascar when it comes to testing the limits of the ‘rubbing is racing’ cliché. But out of all the circuits to try and prove it on, the legendarily difficult and dangerous Nordschleife perhaps isn’t the best place.

Coming down the long, long Dottinger Hohe straight during a WTCR race, Girolami’s Civic and the Audi RS3 of Vervisch made side-by-side contact as they battled over third place, allowing Huff’s Golf to pass the pair of them.

Touring Car Drivers Hit Each Other Multiple Times During Fast 'Ring Battle

Then, on the following lap, Vervisch and Huff did the same thing, each trying to intimidate the other into backing off while having to deal with the complexities of the aero-wash. Somehow, the argy-bargy didn’t result in what would surely have been a colossal accident.

All three drivers received reprimands for their driving but thankfully, there were no penalties applied. Girolami even praised his rivals for the respect shown and hailed the battles as “the most intense moments of all my life”. We’re not surprised!

A version of this article was originally posted on WTF1

Comments

phew

Don’t watch this if you have high blood pressure

its not called the green hell for no reason!

Now THAT is close combat racing. Commendable sportsmanship and respect from all drivers involved, glad no penalties ruined this display of sphincter puckering racing.

im a bit more curious about the drafting now
when they were side by side were they being pulled towards eachother because of the aero low pressure and stuff? ive always wondered that.

Basically, yes. Usually air passing over the side of a car has open space next to the car to flow, but due to a second car being right there, both cars have air trying to flow over the sides of them, resulting in twice as much air trying to flow in the same space it usually does. The only way it can do that is by flowing more quickly. Air that flows more quickly creates lower pressure. The area between both cars was a low pressure zone, sucking the both of them together. The larger the distance between them the less the sucking effect, so with too much countersteer they would fly off the course to the side, with too little countersteer they would’ve smacked together.