My Visit at the 24h of Nürburgring

It was my first time ever going to the Nürburgring. I got the 24h Race Tickets with my friends and also a place for camping. I didn‘t know what would expect me there, I heard a lot of stories about the Ring. And now I will tell you mine. Because there‘s much more going on than the actual race. I will tell you about what I was experiencing step by step and talk about the race at the end. Let’s begin with…

The Camping

Camping? Sounds boring right? Well, not at the Nürburgring. Some people come even one week before the actual race to gather the best place. And that‘s not for nothing. We arrived three days before the race and there were already a lot of people. Even if you don‘t camp you can expect a lot of action around the area of the track. Traffic jams and masses of people included.
Our camp was a truck lent from a friends father, packed with a bunch of stuff like pavilion’s, a smoker, cross bikes, couches and even our gaming seat to drive Nordschleife… on the Nordschleife. We had everything well organized and luckily we found a decent place to camp, located at Wippermann. We were around fifty meters from the track. What was interesting to see is how creative the other camps are. You think we organized well? Some people had entire rostrums at the track, a beer garden, pools, an own radio station and even more. The creativity there has no limits. The same goes for beer and craziness. The camping there has nothing to do with playing guitar and cozy campfires. Instead, you have Couches and other things lit on fire, Cross Bikes and Offroad vehicles driving up and down, and multiple police and security guards wandering around. There was even a firefighter mission. All this combined with loud music and engine noises. Sounds wonderful, doesn‘t it?

The Boulevard and the Paddock

The heart of the Nürburgring has to be the Boulevard. It‘s like a big shopping center only for car guys. We had multiple stands of motorsport companies, places to eat and even a rollercoaster. Next to the Boulevard across the track is the Paddock. The Paddock itself is a great attraction too. You can visit every racing team and look at their cars. Outstanding were the Audi, Ferrari and Mercedes buildings which had a nice architecture and a bunch of special cars too. Aside from the actual cars driving in the normal 24h race, there was also a Paddock for classic cars which also appeared in their own 24h race one day before. From the Paddock, you can go into tribunes to watch the race, or watch other events like stunt shows and drift events. But even without the events, you have a lot of action going on on the Paddock. You can see how most of the teams are working on their cars, getting everything ready and do their setup which was really interesting to see. My highlight was a Porsche 997 GT3 doing a launch on a dyno, the Paddock for the classic‘s and of course the Falken Drift Show.

The Track

The main part of the success and popularity of the 24h race is obviously the Track. How is it at the Green Hell, The Nürburgring Nordschleife? I can tell you it‘s different. It‘s not your usual race track where you have an overview and you‘re done seeing everything in one day. From how long the track is and all the surrounding areas, it feels like it is its own county. For example from our camping to the Boulevard it took us 1 hour by walking and driving on the bus. But it‘s not like a city, everything is kept rural. It is quite funny to drive by one or two villages and suddenly a Lamborghini drives by you, followed by a GT3 RS. It‘s so idyllic but yet filled with all this automotive excitement. And that‘s good like that because the whole landscape around the Nürburgring is really beautiful. The Track itself of course too. I can‘t tell you how exactly it is inside the track as I didn‘t drive on it yet, but if you think you know the place well from video games, forget it. I know every curve virtually but yet what I saw in real life baffled me. The amount of pitch there is brutal. Like in video games the uphill and downhill sections don‘t seem so steep, but when you see it with your own eyes, or even better if you try to walk through the sections, you realize how unbelievably hilly it is there. It‘s like a rollercoaster for cars. One night we were able to walk on the track too and at some sections, people literally drove down with bobby cars with quite good speed, I‘m not joking.
To sum it up, I thought that the Nürburgring and the area are big, but I never thought that the pitch would be so insane. Also, the views are really worth seeing, even if you aren‘t interested in racing.

The Race

The reason why everyone came and still comes. The moment everyone has been waiting for. The actual 24h race of Nürburgring.
If you came a few days earlier you have the opportunity to watch other events and races, like different cups, the qualifying and the 24h of classic‘s which I highly recommend seeing. It‘s like a nice foreplay before the actual highlight. But you really feel the tension going on when the race is about to start. You see everyone on the fences, ready with the camping chairs and beer in their hand. It started with the entrance lap. Obviously it took them a few minutes till they reached our section but when they came the euphoria was high. You can take a calm look at every single car on the grid as they drive by warming up their tires. The grid of over 100 cars is just insane to watch. And as all drove by it suddenly gets quiet, as if nothing happened. Now it‘s time to wait. Some had their Livestream ready so we were watching it a bit from there. As soon as the first cars approached our section again you heard the engine sounds already. You take a look at the furthest point of the section you can see…. And boom. A Porsche 911 GT3 R flashes by by an absolute mental speed followed by all his opponents chasing down on him. From then it just went on and on with cars flying by. After a few laps already cars of lower classes got overlapped by the superior beasts up front. The overtaking was really hectic and you could see some dangerous moments sometimes. But I didn‘t see any accidents or crashes, only a few damaged cars. We were watching the race a while till it got dark, checking out different spots like the Karussel and so on. We didn‘t stay up the whole night as we wanted to leave the day where the race was about to end, but we had one problem. It was pouring rain like crazy. And it wasn‘t only our problem. The race got suspended. Too much fog and rain was covering the track. Most of the people left already. We were about to pack too but when we were done the race was continued so we still watched it till the end. After the race was done we were watching the rest of the drivers doing their honorable round waving at us and we made everything ready to leave.

This was my experience and my first time at the Nürburgring. It was a unique weekend for me and it‘s definitely worth going there once. The amount of action there is just overwhelming. Inside and outside of the track. I hope I could convince you of how awesome this place actually is and I hope you enjoyed reading!