September 19, 2019 • 46 mins
It’s 12.9 miles of test-track that the auto manufacturers love to use as a standard for performance. But why there? Scott and Kurt explore some of the more colorful characteristics of The 'Ring, and fill you in on some tips that you can employ to stay safe if you wish to test your mettle on "The Green Hell".
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to The Fast Track, a production of I Heart
Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to The Fast Track.
I'm your host, Scott Benjamin, and I'm joined by my
producer once again, Kurt Garin. Kurt, how are you doing?
I'm doing well, Scott, how are you? I'm also doing well?
(00:22):
And you know, I'm super excited about this show this
week because We've got a topic that's got a lot
of meat to it and something that I think that
it is going to be just right for conversation between
the two of us, because we both have an interest
in this sort of thing. Anyway, I met a little
bit of track driving, a little bit of uh that
little thrill seeking. I guess maybe we both kind of
not adrenaline junkies, but we both like to, uh, kind
(00:42):
of test the limits of our vehicles kind of you know,
just get out there and have a little bit of
fun in them. And I think this is something that
a lot of people can relate to. Maybe not a
lot of people have done this in the past, of course,
I think we're gonna find very few of our listeners
have actually done this. But there are a couple of
examples that that I'll tell you about in just a moment,
So let's just jump right into it and I'll tell
our listeners what we're going to be talking about today.
(01:02):
And it was kind of a question that I had,
and it's something that I know I've voiced on my
other show on car stuff in the past, and I
think I've maybe answered a little bit and and we've
even discussed this track and I'll get to all of this,
you understand it just a moment. But my question is
about the nerber Ring, and the Nerburgring has in the past,
(01:24):
i don't know, decade or maybe even twelve fifteen years,
seem to be the place that manufacturers have taken their
automobiles to test the limits to see how fast they
can lap the Nerburgring. And there's a specific part of
the nerbur Ring that they do this in. There's it's
it's a it's a certain loop that they tested on.
We'll talk about what it is. Is it's kind of
(01:44):
like a level playing field for all manufacturers to be
able to go and say, we can run this track
at this speed in this amount of time in this car,
and that's why our car is the best. And if
you think you can top it, go do it, and
it offers a bunch of different types of conditions as
well through the surface of the course and the terrain
(02:06):
and weather and all sorts of other obstacles that make
it interesting and kind of like a something something to
brag about. So absolutely, we'll we'll talk about all of
this because there's some really there's believe it or not.
Even the weather is a fascinating topic on this track,
and so as the like the surface material because it
changes over over time, over distance rather and maybe one
(02:28):
of the coolest things about this is that you can
go and drive on this track if you just have
a few dollars in your pocket. It doesn't really cost
that much money. It's officially a toll road. And I
know I'm probably not giving anything away by saying that
right now. And man, there's some fascinating things that go
along with this whole thing. Now, now here's a little
bit of background, and I want to temper this with
(02:48):
this thought. There's a car stuff episode on the nurbur Ring,
and we went through a lot of history. We went
through the details of how they've modified the track and
you know, like you know, the different curves and all
that stuff, and and the barriers, and it's just a
lot of information about the track itself. So there's a
ton of history. There's a ton of material there about
Grand Prix or you know about Grand Prix racing and
(03:10):
about um you know, the switchover to Formula one and
all of that. It's all there. So I don't want
to I don't want to double up on too much
of that. And I know that's tough not to step
on that. So we're gonna We're gonna have a little
bit of overlap, but not a whole lot. Now, there's
a few things that I do I do feel like
we need to repeat. This is just because there's some
really interesting things about this track that I think they're important.
(03:31):
And one number one, probably the most important thing that
we need to know about this track is that it's
insanely dangerous. Insanely dangerous. I mean, it really is. And
it was designed a long long time ago. I think
the track was built in what and it's like it's
a huge, huge track, it's it's what um well in
(03:53):
its current uh form. I think that the overall lap,
if you uh, the nord schlift or nordef that we're
going to talk about, which is the north loop um
is about fourteen it's over fourteen miles, right, okay, so
over a hundred and fifty turns. Yeah, oh yeah, that's right.
That's right. That's another important point. This is a this
is of course that goes through the mountains. Yeah, i'd
(04:14):
I'd like to see what the elevation changes. I think
I think that I think that I read somewhere that
the elevation change is over a thousand feet between the
start and finish of the of the tracks. So really
an interesting track. It's it's fascinating. What do you say,
a hundred and fifty some turns? They had more. They
tried to make it safer and uh. And that's partly
(04:36):
due to Jackie Stewart. Uh. In fact, it's it's mostly
due to Jackie Stewart and a lot of other F
one drivers that got together and said, we are actually
they're actually gonna boycott this race if they didn't make
some changes. And this this wasn't always the case because
early on, you know, Formula one, it was it was
a little bit different. It was it was it was fast, sure,
(04:57):
but it wasn't quite as fast and it wasn't quite
as dangerous as it was in the late nineteen sixties.
That's when they started adding some wings to the cars,
and we're add a little more down force, so you
know where the car stuck to the track exactly. And
so when they when they would go over some of
the more I guess pronounced elevation quick elevation changes, maybe
(05:18):
the car would get lighter than than it should have
been or yeah, that was I was just trying to
figure out why the drivers were so afraid of this
particular track, and that's all I could come up with. Well, see,
the course got it wasn't that the course changed, of course,
you know that is the same as it always exactly. Yeah,
the cars got faster and the car has changed. They're
probably more dependent on air flowing flowing around it in
(05:40):
a certain way. Absolutely, they're not. Cars aren't supposed to
get too far off the correct surface. Yeah, exactly right.
Cars are designed to be on the track surface. And
we've talked about this with you know, the thrust SSC
and you know all the other cars that are going
fast and essentially every car that we talked about so
far on the fast track. Um. But cars are designed
to stay low, to stay kind of stuck to the ground.
(06:02):
The faster you go, the more down force they have
to have in order to stay on the ground. And
what happens is that there's some dramatic elevation changes, and
whether it's just a little rise or um, you know,
it's like you're coming over a crest and you can't
see what's going on on the other side of it, UM,
and it drops right off. At this point, the cars
were going so fast that they were becoming airborne. And
part of the problem was that with the way that
(06:24):
the down force was UM designed, I guess in these
cars it was meant to act like a reverse wing
to push the car down. So when you get air
underneath the car, it acts in the opposite way. It
acts like it's gonna want to lift off. And we've
seen that in recent years, of course with Lama and
you know, other tracks as well. It's not just it's
not just the Nerve Orgring, but but tracks where cars
(06:46):
become airborne. These road courses are really really dangerous for
drivers that are going super super fast and UM. Back then,
you know, back in the late six nineteen sixties, Jackie
Stewart was saying that at the time, and I think
I've mentioned this another podcasts even you know, the F
one podcast is that you know, a lot of his
friends were dying on this, on this, on these circuits,
(07:06):
on these Grand Prix circuits, and the Nurburgring was especially dangerous.
In fact um, one of the facts that came out
of the Last Car Stuff episode, and I think it
was something that Bennett mentioned, is that this is hard
to believe. And I don't know where he dug this up,
but I do remember him saying this that F one
drivers had a two thirds chance over five years of
competition that they would be killed in competition in five years.
(07:29):
Two thirds chance, that's sixty six percent chance that you
would die in a race if you raced for five
years or longer in F one competition at the time.
And this is like, you know, during the late nineteen sixties,
early nineteen seventies. So Jackie Stewart had a very valid point,
you know, he said, you know, I'm I'm losing I'm
losing friends every weekend on these tracks. Safety has got
(07:50):
improved in some way. Let's start with cars, of course,
but let's move on to you know, safety equipment and
tracks and everything. So he wanted improvements everywhere the Nurburgring.
They respond they changed a lot of the a lot
of the track, you know, they slowed down some of
the corners, and you know, it made it a little
bit safer in a lot of ways. And there's a
lot of ways they can design corners to make them
a little bit better. But overall, still the Nurburgring is
(08:13):
just an inherently dangerous course for a lot of reasons.
And I think you you already know a couple of reasons. Why, yeah, yeah,
I think I know what you're trying to get at.
I mean, the fact that the track is kind of
laid right on top of these extremely rolling hills in
the middle of a forest. Um, it's a lot narrower
than a lot of modern day race tracks are designed
to be, the surfaces different, the weather conditions are different,
(08:36):
and then just the general speed at what you're going. Um,
of course is designed at a time when cars didn't
see speeds like they see now. Sure they were fast,
but they weren't quite as fast as they were in
the sixties and seventies. And then even now, I mean
they're they're incredibly fast. You know. I think I want
to mention this right now, if that's all right, I
want to take just a second to say that I
think the last German Grand Prix that was run at
(08:59):
the Nurburgring, and that's very specific. Well we'll talk about
that in a second, but the last one that was
running at the Nurburgring was and uh, you know, of
course there were other German Grand Prix. I mean the
latest one was in eighteen I believe, right, or was
there one? There might have been one they okay, alright, um,
but but yeah, they kind of like skip around. So
(09:19):
it's not always run at hockenheim Ring or at um
you know, the Nurburgring. It's kind of a mix of
the two, or sometimes it's just not even either one
of those, you know, depending on whether they're gonna run
something else. Um. You know you mentioned one thing here
that another thing that I need to mention real quick.
The weather. The weather is a huge factor in this. Now,
(09:41):
this course is so large that there is a there,
there's a town in the middle of the track. I
mean there are people that live there. There residents that
live there throughout the year. There's a castle in the
middle of the track. That's how big this is. And
all of the you know, the the surrounding property. I mean,
and the castle goes back to like the eleven hundreds
or something like that, goes back a long long way.
(10:01):
I mean it's an old, old castle. Of course. If
you ever look at any bit of footage that is
maybe shot where you know there's an airplane fly over.
The track itself is is beautiful track. I mean you
would you would just kind of your mouth with water
wanting to get onto this track and drive it because
it's such an interesting looking track. It looks beautiful, really
it does. And that's why Jackie Stewart decided he was
(10:23):
going to call it the Green Hell because he feared it,
but it was also beautiful and it was green, and
you know, the trees are right nearby. There's a great
sensation of speed and everything. But the weather is something
that you really have to factor into this thing because
it could be pouring rain on one part of the
course and the other part can be completely dry and sunny.
And we've seen Sir Jackie Stewart talk about this and
(10:45):
he one one scene is one where he was in
a rolls Royce and he's still in his his his
garb right his he saw his fire suit on, and yeah,
I think a little little yeah, I think they picked
him up in the pits and said, hey, Jackie, let's
go out and talk about the course a little it here.
We happen to have this Rolls Royce for you, you know,
as a convertible, very nice, perfect. Yeah, that's right, didn't
(11:06):
no problem. Maybe maybe he was even his who knows. Um, Yeah,
he's driving the track and he's discussing what some of
the surface changes are like and what some of the
weather changes are like. From what I gather from what
Stewart said was that the different types of pavement hold
water different besides the fact that one lap it may
not be raining, and then the next time you come
through a certain section that had rained or is currently raining,
(11:29):
the weight water drains off of the track is different
as well, So some spots that will dry out quicker
and some spots that will dry out slower, and then
water running across the track in a certain way creates
little streams. So if you can imagine flying over a
hill and then setting up for a turn right after
you jump over this little rise and then it being
(11:49):
wet on the other side, you know, you can imagine
how tricky and the h I guess just generally sketchy.
This particular track can get when you're racing on it. Yeah,
and it wasn't wet the previous lap, so like you know,
the things change on this course over the course of
one lap. It's just it's fascinating to me that you know,
there there is a weather factor as well in this
(12:10):
and it almost reminds me a little bit of um,
you know, like Pike's Peak or something like that, where
you might you might encounter a date with sunshine and
warm weather at the bottom, you get to the top
and there's a blizzard practically going on. Um, it's similar
to that or well that's why it maybe the ultimate
test track in a way. A lot of conditions are different.
Road surfaces are different. There's concrete slabs, there's bank turns,
(12:31):
uphill downhill, suspension gets light, gets heavy, like you mentioned,
it's just it's a place where everybody could go and
kind of see what they have. You know what. I
love the idea that you know, everybody's kind of got
their own opinion about what this course is all about.
Like the drivers do a lot of them are I
think a lot of them are afraid of it, and
(12:52):
I don't think there's anything wrong with that, or at least, uh,
there's a level of respect about the course. Well, you know,
I honestly, yeah, I guess maybe the respect is a
better way to say it. I mean to say they're
afraid of it. I mean they do it anyway because
they've got nerves of steel, right. I think I would
be afraid of it really if I had to go
out and do that. Of course, the first time. I
assume that rookies are afraid of it. Probably I'm sure.
(13:13):
I'm sure that they are. But Jackie Stewart, he said,
um in in one of those laps, you know he
has he does have great respect for the course he does,
and I think he has a little bit of fear
for of it because it is a kind of scary
thing to drive. You never know if you're gonna make
it back. He said. He always every time he left
to go to the German Grand Prix at the nerburg Ring,
he would stop at the end of his driveway, look
back at his house, kind of like one long moment,
(13:37):
and then leave. And he said, because I never knew
if I was ever going to come home from that race.
Because that's not dangerous. It was. And he said, while
he was driving this thing, he said, you know, I
drive this at speed, and I'm going a hundred and
seventy five miles an hour on this course at the
time he was this is back in again in the
late sixties, hundred seventy five miles an hour. He said,
you know, when I if I really were ever to
(13:57):
walk this course, if I would ever just like really
take in that you know, there's no guard rail here,
and over here there's you know, just pine trees, and
you know over in this area here, like if I
go off, I'm going into a stream. You know that
kind of thing. He said, if I ever, if I
ever really just took all that in, I probably would
never drive here ever. Again. I'd never raced his course.
(14:18):
And uh, And I think he's got a point. He said,
the less he knows about the course the better, and
that he just knows I gotta go fast and turn
left right there, right right there, and aim for that
tree so that I can hit the carousel in the
right spot. And it's just he knew the course really well,
but he said, the less he knew about the surrounding
part of the course, you know, the the dangerous part,
(14:38):
like if you were to go off course, the better
off he was. Yeah, so he had he did have
a healthy respect for it. And you know, I think
there's more, there's more to it. You know, we listened
to um some audio from Boris said who is also
he's a legendary road racing driver as well. You can
look up this interview if you want on YouTube. You
can find the entire Orris said, UM discussion, it's I
(15:02):
think it's got the title is long. It's it's like,
it's um, Steve Lottart's podcast. Yes, it's he's a he's
a he was a crew chief in NASCAR for several drivers.
So it's Steve Lettart on Location and that's his podcast,
although this one has video as well, but it was
from Watkins Glen and there he's discussing, you know, the
dramatic elevation changes and and if you skip forward to
(15:23):
about the ten minute mark, that's about where the discussion
about the Nurburgring starts. And uh, he's talking about he
races in something that's the twenty four hours of Nurburgring.
So imagine how grueling that would be on on you know,
a series of drives. It's not just one driver obviously,
but he said something just remarkable here. He said that
at the start of that race, two hundred and thirty
(15:44):
cars start that race, two hundred and thirty. Imagine starting
the race with two hundred and thirty cars on the track.
And we're talking about a track like what we've been discussing,
A long, long track, you know, a hundred and fifties,
some turn, hundred fifty six turns, l vation changes, it's
you know, going to get dark at some point during
this race. There's weather changes. Uh, there's very little runoff,
(16:07):
there's you know, the almost no guard rails of mentioned really,
I mean there are some, but you're in an extremely
fast cars and he said, you if you're in a
fast car and when he and he was, of course,
he's in one of the top end vehicles. He was
passing on average fifty cars per lap. Yeah, fifty, I
think he said something like the faster cars a lot
slower cars every three laps. A sports car races, all
(16:31):
different kinds of categories. Yeah, you know that can make
it dangerous too, because you've got slower cars and faster
cars on the same track. You know, what's interesting And gosh,
you know, I know we're going way over here, we
have to stop a moment, but um, what's really interesting?
He said? And here's our answer here. He says, it's
about a nine minute lap for him in the sports
car series, So you know that Formula one Cars is
(16:51):
doing a lot faster than I mean, I guess a
seven minute lab something like that ballpark during the tourist
and parting, which is the kind of the daily driver
events they have at the track. I think they said
like a ten minute laugh is something to brag about.
So we'll get we'll talk about that soon, but I
think first maybe we should take a break. Hey, we're
(17:15):
back and you're listening to the Fast Track with your
host Scott Benjamin and Kurt Garon. Kurt, how you doing.
I'm doing well, Still doing well over there, hanging in there.
I love this topic. This is a This is an
interesting one because the truck has so much history, so much,
so much going on for it. We're gonna talk about
the manufacturers and what they're doing at the Nurburgring because
(17:36):
it's not just you know, races that happen there, it's
it's manufacturers that are going there and using it as
a test facility, and they're using it as kind of
a level ground test facility, so that you know, when
one manufacturer says our car can lap to Nurburgring in
this amount of time, the other manufacturer has a way
to compare exactly to that time with their own version
(17:56):
of whatever car that they want to bring, whether that's
an all electric car, whether that's a hybrid car, internal
combustion car, whatever type of car they want to bring,
sports car, sedan, any of those things. They can claim
that they have the fastest vehicle based on the timing
that is consistent that at that track. Now we talked
about all the other things that are inconsistent. Of course,
(18:17):
drivers are not going to be consistent. You're not gonna
have the same driver in uh different manufacturers. Cars are
gonna bring your own driver, you know, whether it's a
pro or somebody that you know they have in their
own test track or whatever. Um, there's gonna be the weather,
there's going to be uh just you know, even um
atmospheric conditions that day at high pressure, low pressure, wind,
you know whatever. They're gonna have to deal with all that.
(18:38):
But the thing is that you know, you're on the
same track, You've got the same distance, you've got the
same timing facility that you know says like this is
an accurate time. Everybody gets the same treatment. There's no
there's no difference in this. It's the exact same distance
every time and no no difference at all, no variance.
And you don't have to do like a one run
one way in one run the other way like you
do for land speed record. It's just a lap time.
(19:00):
And that lap time is something that these manufacturers have
really promoted over the last decade or so, or maybe
even more. It might be more like fifteen years. I
haven't really been paying attention, I guess for that long
to figure out when they started, but it seems like
for the last decade or so, the Nurburgring lap time
is a huge deal for sports car manufacturers. So they
they bring a lot of different cars, they bring a again,
(19:23):
there's a huge variance. And and let me tell you
just a couple of times here and and we'll just
kind of get the ball rolling here maybe and we
can we can talk about, you know, um, some of
these in a little bit more detail, maybe in just
just a moment. If that's all right, all right, So
but number ten on the list is the the Lexus
l F a Nurburgring package, also a special package just
for the nurbur Ring, Right all right, interesting right the
(19:46):
time that the lap time is seven minutes fourteen seconds,
all right, just in a couple of hundreds of a
second as well. I'm not even gonna read those. So
seven and fourteen, alright, almost almost seven fifteen. If you
move up, you you get to like the Corvette C seven.
Then there's this is a surprising one. The gumper To
Apollo comes in at two to end from two thousand nine.
(20:08):
This is a car from a long time ago. The
Gumpert Apollo is still number eight on the list. It's
seven minutes and just under seven minutes and twelve seconds,
so still really really fast for that car. You go
up a little bit higher. You got a Mercedes, a Nissan.
There's a g t R of course. Uh, there's the
Dodge Viper ACR, which comes in at seven oh one
point zero three, so just under just shy of breaking
(20:32):
that seven minute mark. They didn't quite do it with
a Dodge Viper a c R. Then there's a Porsche
which is the nine eighteen spider, they we have the
first Lamborghini. Oh that's a clue. I just gave away,
right clue. The first Lamborghini comes in at the number three.
That's the Hurricane I think, I hope that's the way
you pronounced that hurricane. Hurricane um which comes in at
six fifty two, so they actually broke the seven minute mark.
(20:53):
This is a Porsche g T two r S and
then the number one car on this list is a Lamborghini.
Event the door feed J which comes in and get
this is a fast time six minutes and forty six
minutes forty four seconds point nine seven, so just under
six minutes forty five seconds, and that's really really moving, right,
but a smoking But I want to point out one
(21:14):
thing here. These cars from one to ten, they're all
sports cars. Of course, they all come in within thirty
seconds of each other. And that's how tight this race is, right,
And we talked about all the differences in the track
and things that can happen, weather conditions and whatnot. And
it's funny that they use this as a standard and
(21:35):
they quibble over thirty second difference. And you know, the
drivers are all of course, they're different manufacturers spend a
lot of money to go and do this right, and
they want to be number one. They want to at
least be in the top ten. And I understand, I
completely get that. It's it's kind of important to keep
your sports car in the top ten on the fastest
cars that they're working right now, because that's kind of
(21:56):
the standard, right Where is a Ferrari on this list? Exactly?
They stay out of Germany, they say, come to Italy.
This is the good point. They're running on Italian tracks.
I guess, yeah, maybe maybe they are. I don't know,
maybe there's a Monsa record that I don't know about
or whatever. But um, the Nurburgring is is fantastic for
this and it is a level playing field. But you
(22:18):
make a very good point, curtain, And we talked about
this off air when we were getting ready for this
podcast in that I kind of I I like, for
a short amount of time reading the forums. Uh, you
know that they go along with these numbers, you know,
like when you we look up the Nurburgring fastest times
or any article that has to do with like, you know,
someone breaking a record. I'd like to read the comments
(22:42):
just for a bit of a short time because quickly
people get out of control. They start to have a
flame war about all kinds of different things that really
have very very little impact on the on the ultimate
time of these cars, I believe, I think so. Anyways,
I mean, maybe maybe there's more to it than I
than I know, but you and I both kind of
had a good laugh about that, right. Yeah. So, so
(23:04):
there's minor, minor things that that people think make a
huge difference in wings, like tires and if the car
has a racing package built into it, roll bars and
and that sort of thing. Traction control, you know, the
driver assist options that may not be conducive to running
a fast lap or may actually help the car run faster.
(23:24):
All right, there's like three things there that I want
to mention. Okay, so he said, um, traction control and
drivers sist type functions. You know, I I don't know
where they stand on if those are turned off, turned on,
or you know whatever. I'm not sure how that all
works out with want to imagine the real race drivers
want very little of that, but I would think so,
but even if one has a little bit of it,
they do. Yeah, that's that's the crazy part. Okay, so
(23:46):
so UM also roll bars. Okay, so certain cars are
built from the manufacturer with a roll bar that's part
of the structure of the vehicle itself. So that's something
that has to be a factor because it does stiff
in the chassis does make a difference in the handle
in the vehicle. The other thing, and this is one
that a lot of people on these forums will get,
just I right about tires. Tires is a big one.
(24:08):
You mentioned tires is one of the first things, and
they seem to go crazy over this versus like the
factory tires versus aftermarket tires. Right. So the the main
argument here is that um, and this is if I'm
getting this right, and you tell me, Kurt, if you
get the same impression or not, or if you have
a different opinion about this, okay, But what I am
(24:29):
understanding is that people are upset that they're not using
the factory provided tires on the cars to do these runs,
but they are putting tires on the cars that cost
Let's say I'm gonna just ballpark this and it's general.
Let's say that the tires are a thousand dollars each
or two thousand dollars each or you know, maybe even
more super expensive tires. I mean, they're really really pricey,
(24:53):
great tires, sticky compound, you know all that. However, they
are available on the market. You can buy the like
you and I to buy them if we had the money,
if we wanted to, we could buy that same tire
from a manufacturer. What a lot of people are confusing,
I think is the fact that they're not using a
proprietary race compound that is for a certain team or
(25:13):
a certain series or something like that that you cannot
buy commercially on the market. You can't go out and
find a website where you could buy that tire. You
have to be part of that team in order to
get that that compound, that racing compound. And I think
that's the confusion, because it seems like it seems totally
fair to me that if you want to put a
pair of tires on our set of tires, or even
brake pads or whatever on the car, that you can
(25:33):
buy somewhere, you know, aftermarket or wherever from the manufacturer,
you know, whatever it happens to be. Those are consumables.
Those seem like you know, tires were eventually you're going
to replace the tires. Eventually you're going to replace the
break And of course some people, I'm sure, buy Lamborghini
and the first thing they do is buy a new
set of tires, tires and brake pads because they want
to improve the breaking performance. And of course that improves
(25:56):
your your lap time because you can go harder into
the turns and you can break faster and come out
of those turns faster. I mean, of course I understand
the importance of breaking, like a better break compound, a
better tire compound, I understand all that. I get it.
But if it's available and it's something that everybody could do, yeah,
why not? I mean, I guess maybe they're confusing, like
(26:18):
maybe stock production cars with production cars get a little
to nitpicky about records. Like a production car is a
car that you can buy with things on it that
you can also buy. Yeah, I feel the same way.
I feel the same way. Like if you may get
a Lamborghini, maybe not a new one, but he used one,
and you want to go out and bust the record
(26:39):
at the nerve burg Ring, but you don't want to
have the same beat up tires that came on the
car when you bought it. Used, you want to pop
some new tires on before you go run the nerveburg Ring. So,
but you should still be considered to still be considered
a stock car exactly. So do I mean in that
case you're I guess the other argument would be, in
order to break that record, you would have to go
and buy the exact same tire that they put onto
(27:00):
the factory in order to make break that record, right, right,
and not to mention as soon as you run a
lap or two or three on this a set of tires,
you might want some new ones. Anyway. What if I
have a different air filter in the car, what if
I have a different oil in the car? Does that matter?
I mean, I mean, what if I'm using a different grease,
you know for the chassis. You know, what if I'm
all that stuff like, it's not it's not production gasoline.
(27:25):
It's kind of the same argument that things that they
are consumable, things that that you use up you should
change when needed. Yeah, this argument is is just it's
it's it's funny in a way, but it's also maddening
in another way. Let's so let's talk about tourists and
fartans after a break, We're back and you're listening to
(27:48):
the fast Track, and I'm your host, Scott Benjamin along
with Kurt Garren. Kurt, everything's still going right over there.
I keep checking in every segment. So far, so good,
so far, so good. Okay, so we we we teased
a little bit that we're gonna talk about something that
has a rediculous name, uh this now as it's a
German name, of course, and I'm sure that they don't
think it's ridiculous. Of course. All it really means. I
think if if I had to guess what this really means,
(28:09):
it just means tourist day, right, or tourist driving experience
or something like that. But but the word is is silly. Yeah,
it's it's a tourist and partons. You can't even say.
I don't know why I can't say it. It's it's
we've laughed about this. It's so juvenile. It's like it's
like I'm like a kid, like a little kid when
when they we say tourist and farton, but it is
(28:29):
tourist and farting, and all it really means is that, Um,
there's certain days on the nerve bagering and I'm sure
a lot of our listeners are already aware of this,
that you can go and drive on the track and
you pay a little bit of a fee and I
don't remember exactly what it is. I want to say,
it's like thirty dollars or something like that. There's there's
a list somewhere online. I know that you can look
up the prices. But the list is a little bit terrifying.
(28:52):
And I'll tell you why in just a moment. I
just in ten seconds, I'll tell you. But you can
go and look at the prices of things and find
out exactly what it is and when it's happening, because
there are certain days when they're having other activities. You know,
manufacturers have it reserved, or uh they have a race,
or you know, something like that's going on. But essentially
this becomes like a one way toll road. Of course,
there's no opposing traffic on this little tiny road. But
(29:13):
the reason that the list that is terrifying is because
when you look at the price, like to just to
drive on the track, they start giving you the prices
if you crash, what it costs to replace the guardrail segments,
what it costs to have the track team members come
out and assist you in your car to get out
of the car. They give you prices for medical help.
(29:35):
They give you prices for a helicopter to come and
fly you off the track if they need to, which
has happened many times. I think, Um, they start giving you,
like some really scary numbers, and they're they're high numbers,
they're expensive, but maybe look past that, just look at
the price of entry and know that you can keep
yourself under control on the track and uh and you'll
(29:57):
be fine. But you know, from what I've seen, Kurt
Um and you've seen some of the footage as well,
like when when just anybody can go out there and
drive you know, any car that has and you know,
they get their engine checked out, they get you know,
it's not leaking oil or anything. They've got lights, the
tires are okay, you know, they check out. I'm sure
they have a little bit of a um A prep.
(30:18):
You know that they have to go through. There's no course,
like you don't have to learn any rules, but there
are rules we'll talk about once you get out there.
You deal with people that are professional and you deal
with some people that are absolute fools and everything in between.
From what I gathered in this. Any old car, any
old person can go out there and do whatever they
want to do besides go backwards and do donuts in
(30:42):
the middle of the track. I mean you, just as
long as they're going forward and abiding by some basic
rules of the road, can go out there and have
have a good time at the Nerburgring. Essentially, those are
the rules. Now, there are other rules that we should
talk about. There's a there's a funny video about what
you should not do on the nerveburg Ring, and I'll
mention these. I think there's like seven points that you
know you're not supposed to do, and they all make
(31:03):
perfect sense, and they're they're done in a funny way.
But I'll tell you that I've watched many videos of
this and and the you know that everybody loves to
watch the fail videos. I guess you know the ones
where you know someone's coming around a corner and they
just lose it and you know, horrible thing happens. They
destroy their car, they destroy their daily driver or maybe
it's a tracker. I don't know, but it's probably typically
a daily driver from the looks of it. Yes, yeah,
(31:25):
just people just go out there in their car like
a fun weekend from work, dip into the yeah, and
there's a little bit of everything. There's there's camper vans
out there. There's BMW's that you know, the cars that
have uh you know, full uh you know, decal packages
and everything. It looks like a race car, so maybe
it is a track day car, you know, a fun
toy for the weekend or whatever. But other cars they
do look like just maybe like the family sedan that
(31:46):
someone's taken out for fun. You can rent a car,
you can go out there. We'll talk about that too,
but you know, those are the fun ones to watch.
But there's also some great videos and I don't know
if you caught these or not, but there's some fantastic
videos of people that are driving the track really well,
and some some you know privateers, I guess, you know,
and I call them privateers. They're not real racers, but
but people that bring their own vehicle, you know, a
(32:07):
BMW or Mercedes or something, and they're just really skilled
and they can really handle it around that track, and
it's it's really cool to watch. I mean, they're really
good and they're racing close with other people, and that's
the cool thing in that discussion from Boris said earlier
that we mentioned there's a lot of traffic on that track,
and it's a lot of different speeds, so you gotta
like kind of be accommodating to that and the weather
(32:29):
and all the conditions and everything. But um, if you
get somebody, if you can watch somebody who's doing this
really well with another person maybe that's doing really well.
They're chasing each other around the track, it's fun to watch.
It's entertaining. It's just as good as any race that
you'll ever watch. It really is. It's fun. You know,
near this track, everybody kind of gathers around this one
gas station, and around this gas station is a lot
(32:53):
like when if you can imagine this, and I think
a lot of people can. When you know, people are
leaving those caffeine and octane type shows on the weekends,
and everybody is leaving the parking lot and they're kind
of doing burnouts and showing off a little bit. As
they exit the parking lot. There's hundreds of people lyning
the road. They're very very close to the road. They've
all got cameras out, they have some of them have chairs,
(33:14):
they've got their own personal cars. Lining the roads. There's
fences set up and everything. On these tourist days, people
line up like that near this gas there's particular gas
station and it's called the E D gas Station and
it looks it looks like doord ed uh the ed
gas station and and um, it's the one that's closest
to the track. So all of the cars and motorcycles
and trucks and whatever, they tend to fill up there
(33:36):
on their way to the track, and that means that
they're full of fuel, they're ready to go out on
the race track. They're excited, they're kind of adrenalines going,
and they've got this crowd that's kind of egging them
on to you know, do a burnout. So you'll find
a lot of like it, kind of interesting videos. You'll
see a little bit of everything. It looks like a
cruise event or something, you know, where some really amazing
(33:56):
cars drive by. Also some very playing cars drive by
that are a little bit maybe souped up, a little
bit ready for the track, or you know others that
are just plane jeans, sedans and are just there for
the fun fun of it. Um, from what I gathers,
that's just part of the experience of going to the track. Yeah,
for tourists and parting. Yeah, it's just you go, you
get your gas and you maybe show your car to
(34:18):
the crowd a little bit and then onto the track.
Isn't that The funny thing is because some people will,
you know, they'll they'll get an accident outside of the
track because they're trying to show off. But they're they're
like moments away from the one of the greatest tracks
in the world, and they're gonna be able to go
and just push it out right as far as that
when they can go crash on the track instead of
in front of the the gas Very good point, Yeah,
(34:40):
very good point. Now, thankfully, it seems like there are
fewer accidents there than at the caffeine and octane type
shows that that I've seen. It seems more common to
see people wrecking leaving those For some reason. Um, maybe
that's the star when at work leading out the before
you get to the track, if you can't handle the
gas station, then don't even go to the nerve orgering. No,
(35:01):
absolutely all right, So you know that's one thing, that's
one part of it, and you know that's part of
this little town that's right there within the boundaries of
the track or near the boundaries of the track, So
they ask you that you'd be respectful, and that's one
of the things that we're going to talk about, all right,
So one of the rules. And again this is coming
from a video that was kind of like a do
you know, don't do this on the track and it's
very funny in the way that it's done. You can
(35:22):
find it online on YouTube, and it's just it's it's
funny in the way that things are phrased, you know that.
So I'm not going to do it very much justice here.
You should go and watch this if you get a chance,
because it's kind of comical, but it also has some
decent footage of what's going on there and and tells
you some of the rules and explains them a little
better than I can. But um, now, at first we
should say that, you know, it's open almost every weekend
(35:45):
and at the last and the last few hours of
almost every day for this tourist activity. So you know,
they call it tourists, but it's just open for people
to pay and go on this track. Of course, there
are track officials there and everything to make sure that
things are safe. They've got flags and everything to keep
you in line. Cars can be driven any car. Bike
can be driven on the track as long as it's
road legal. That's that's one thing. Um. You can only
(36:07):
here's one of the rules. You can only overtake another
car on the left. There's no passing on the right.
If you're passed on the right, you're doing it wrong.
And that's which is also should be a rule here
in the United States on any road. It should just
just you don't want to go out there. Who who
don't know? It is a rule the right. It's an
it's an unwritten well maybe even probably written, probably has
(36:29):
written and one of them. So overtake on the left,
never on the right. Okay, that makes sense, right, lap
will get this. This is interesting because of what we've
been talking about. If you're going there and thinking that
you're gonna time your lap, that's not what's gonna happen.
And I don't want you to have the clock in
the car. Yeah, now this you can time your lap,
but you have to do it in kind of a
(36:49):
roundabout way, so you can use your go pro and
you can record your session. You know, you can record. However,
you want it to do. And of course that's gonna
keep time, so you're able to to go back later
and deduce your time from the go pro footage. But
you're not able to have a clock right in front
of you as you're driving. And they many drivers have said,
(37:11):
if you're out here for these tourist days and you're
watching a clock as you go around the track, you're
gonna have a bad day no matter what, because well,
somebody's gonna get in front of you in a camper
van and ruin your time. Right because there's so much
traffic on the on the course at any given time,
you're gonna have to pass and you know you might
have to slow down and do that, and and that's fine.
Just go out there, even like the guys and girls
(37:32):
that do it all times said, just go out there
and have fun. Just go out and have a great time.
Drive fast, get your adrenaline going, you know, just have
a good time and know that you've done. You've you've
completed a decent lap. But it doesn't have to come
down to the exact second, to the exact you know,
tens or hundreds of a second that that you think
it does. Just go out and have fun, and it's
better if you're not watching the clock, and especially you
(37:54):
know that the track officials don't want you watching it
because it's going to lead to aggressive driving because if
you start to fall behind in your time, you're gonna
try to push it even harder and you're gonna end
up wrecking probably. So um it makes sense when you
think about it that way, But initially I thought, well,
that's crazy. They're not letting you time your own lap. Well,
you can time it. There's also GPS units that you
(38:17):
can get that will just keep time as you go around,
so there's no reason to have it there on the dash.
Look at it, and I think you can even you know,
in your own head you can just create a little
variance and you could say like, okay, well you know
when my time was decent, it was nine or it
was ten minutes and thirty seconds, but I was held
up for you know, a good twenty seconds of that
by uh, you know, the Honda Civic or whatever it
(38:37):
was it was in front of me. Um. Oh, don't
leave the scene of a crash. Um. So if you
crash and you know, you bang up a guard rail,
even if it's just you alone. You're not supposed to
leave that scene of a crash. Um, you can stay there,
um and wait for somebody come over and check you
out and make sure that things all right and get
things back on track again. I guess, so to speak,
because because um, there's probably some clean up that has
(38:58):
to happen, and they want to make sure that you know,
the sel is not going to fall off in the
next turn. Fluid leaks from the car. They don't want
you dragon, that's a huge fluids across the track. That
is a big one because I've seen many videos where
someone has leaked fuel on the previous you know, the
previous cars leaked fuel or or oil, and four cars
will wreck, I mean, ruins their day, ruins their year, month, whatever,
(39:20):
I don't know. It's expensive, it's very expensive. So um, yeah,
that's that's a that's a huge issue. There's no standing
on the track and you and I have both seen
examples of this in those videos. Uh one one boy.
One of these videos, a guy nearly loses his legs
when another car comes by. He barely makes over that wall. Yeah,
he dives over the fence, yeah fall. I think you
(39:43):
can kind of see him frolling down the other side
because there was a hill on the other side. He
tumbled for quite some time. He and yeah, and you
know he I don't know, he's like flicking off the
people with the damn er. They're yelling something back. Yeah,
well they're probably yelling idiot. Is stupid. You know that,
you know, what are you doing? Because he was he
was between the guardrail, which is I mean, it looked
(40:03):
like it was chest high and and I don't think
it's like a BMW that's coming at him really fast.
And it did clip the wall right where he was,
and yeah, he hopped over like and just I mean
just just half a second before it hit him. It's
crazy too, because he was on the inside of a
turn and you wouldn't as places where you wouldn't think
that a car would be crashing into But how that's
why there's the rule. Again, I don't stand on the side.
(40:26):
And I think that situation was an oil situation where
there was oil or something slick on the trail, like,
because there were many cars that were wrecking in the
same turn for no good reason. I mean, they're just
spinning out for no good reason. Um, okay, the next one, Uh,
this one a little again counterinto no drifting. You're not
allowed to intentionally drift on the Nurburgring and a track.
Marshal uh will report you if they see you doing
(40:47):
doing this drifting. Now, I watched videos where you can
see that people are taking turns intentionally drifting through them.
You know, it's if you slide a little bit, that's
one thing. If you are drifting through the turn, that's
a big difference. And there are people that I've seen
in tensionally drift and yeah, they do get reported. And
I think, I don't know if there's a fine involved
or if you just are kind of banned for maybe
that day or that week or whatever from the Yeah, um,
(41:10):
this last one, this is no driving like a maniac.
That's the last rule. I mean, that was the funniest
last rule. Like I thought, I thought, Okay, there's gonna
be something big here. There's gonna be something really you know,
monumental here at the end. No driving like a maniac
because it's on a public road. And you know, I
guess it does make sense when you when you understand this,
when you get off the track, you are in this
(41:31):
little town. You know, if you're going to the gas
station or wherever. I think this is where that they're
talking about is like, you know, you've got all that
energy from the track and you're still are kind of
at the track, you know, because you're in that area.
Don't keep driving like you're on the track when you're
in the town. I mean, the Jones people don't want
to deal with that. They would have to deal with
that every day all day if that was the case,
and I can imagine that would be infuriating. So, uh,
(41:53):
they don't drive like a maniac. Thing makes more sense
when you understand that, Yeah, there's this community there and
you're really disrupting the community if you drive like that
through there. You should just leave the track situation on
the track and then realize that you're on a public
road after that. Well, what I find about all of
these rules is they are generally just rules of the
(42:15):
common sense. All Right, So I have a one, one
quick question for you before we wrap up, and I
think we already talked about this, but um, would you
go and drive this track knowing what you know about
it and seeing what you've seen? Um in your own
personal car? Now, of course, rental cars if you rent
a car from anywhere other than um a place called
Big Grudge, which is right in that area. You can
(42:35):
rent a sports car and go there, very expensive. You
can do it. If you rent a car like an
Avis or Hurts or whoever. You will be banned forever
from renting a car from them if you take it
on the Nurburgring track. So, and we do have a
listener from car stuff that that happened to. He showed
me the letter um so and he showed it's probably courage,
(42:55):
you know, yeah he did. He was he was happy,
he knew, he knew the consequences. But would you take
your own personal vehicle on the Nerve Ring and drive it?
Knowing what you know? Now? It would be fun to
go out there and and just tool around a little bit.
Would you be a little bit, just just a little
bit afraid of some yahoo that's gonna, you know, try
to like they're trying to break a lap record or something.
You know that they're gonna cause you to to wreck.
(43:18):
Because I know you can control yourself, of course, but
what about the the the part of it that you
don't have control over a little bit? But I mean,
I feel as if you should have that fear in general,
so it's easier just not to think about the other people.
And then from what I can tell, there's a healthy
mix of people just out there having fun, and then
there's some people that are taking it a little too serious.
(43:40):
It's yeah, and this this is not an event to
go out there and try to break a track record,
because first of all, you're not going to there's no
way you're gonna get even close to the six minutes
and forty five second time of the Lamborghini, of course
not probably not even gonna get under ten minutes. Probably not.
So if anyone's planning to go out there, just take
it easy and have fun with the experience. Good advice. Now,
(44:02):
I one one little caveat that I want to mention
here because I think it's worth worth mentioning, is that
you know, when you're on the track, I would assume
that insurance doesn't play a factor in this. Will like,
I think that insurance is probably off. They're not gonna
They're not gonna cover anything that happens on that track,
I think, So that might be the only difference between
you know, like the risk that you assume when you're
(44:24):
on the highway, and I know there's still a physical
danger and there's still you know, property damage danger and
all that. I get it, But I do think that
you're financially risking a little bit more when you go
on this track, and it's worthwhile to look into that
before you go and before you do this, because you know,
again I don't have all the details here about this obviously.
I'm just kind of, you know, giving you an overview,
and I want listeners to go out and really investigate
(44:46):
all this and find out what's what's happening there, because
I think there's some I think there's some fun to
be had there. Of course, there's a lot of fun
to be had there. Yeah, So Scott, would you do? Do? Oh?
What I do? This is what everyone wants you. I
think I think that, you know, I might. I would
probably rent a car. I know it's expensive, but if
I were going to do it, I don't think i'd
(45:06):
risk my own car out there. Um. I think that
I would rent a car from this this place that
I mentioned, this Big Grudge that if you go to
want to go to a website and check out the prices,
it's Big Grudge dot d E and you can check
out what they've got there. They've got all kinds of
sports cars and they're expensive. They're not cheap, you know,
and you pay for like two laps or twelve laps
or you know whatever. It's like different rates. But I
(45:28):
would assume that insurance comes along with that. You're probably
still paying quite a bit if you wreck it, but
I bet there's a limit to it. But anyways, it's
it's a worthwhile thing to check into. So look up
the nervebourg Ring and these tourist days and and you
know what you can do, what you can't do, But
it seems like it's kind of a fun destination. Maybe
a bucket list in your episode. This is one of
those things that all you car enthusiasts should put on
(45:50):
your bucket list. It seems like a really great experience.
Why not. I'd love to get over there to do it.
And you know, in the meantime, if you want, you
can contact us and tell us if you have done
this or if you want to go over and do this.
On social media, you can reach us on Facebook and
Instagram where we are the Fast Track Show, or on
Twitter where we are the fast Track Pot And if
you want to check out our show's website where it's
(46:13):
a brand new website really, but it's not many podcasts
there yet, but there will be. You can go to
the fast Track show dot com and check us out there,
and of course you can leave reviews on Apple podcasts
or on the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you
happen to listen to your podcasts. And if you like
what you're hearing, if you like listening to Kurt and
I talked about all this stuff, and I think you
have a friend that might be interested in this kind
of thing, let them know as well. Tell your friends
(46:35):
and you know, we're happy to have you as a listener,
and we're always trying to gain new ones, so we
appreciate it. Thanks a lot, guys. Thanks. The fast Track
is a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to The Fast Track, a production of I Heart
Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to The Fast Track.
I'm your host, Scott Benjamin, and I'm joined by my
producer once again, Kurt Garin. Kurt, how are you doing?
I'm doing well, Scott, how are you? I'm also doing well?
(00:22):
And you know, I'm super excited about this show this
week because We've got a topic that's got a lot
of meat to it and something that I think that
it is going to be just right for conversation between
the two of us, because we both have an interest
in this sort of thing. Anyway, I met a little
bit of track driving, a little bit of uh that
little thrill seeking. I guess maybe we both kind of
not adrenaline junkies, but we both like to, uh, kind
(00:42):
of test the limits of our vehicles kind of you know,
just get out there and have a little bit of
fun in them. And I think this is something that
a lot of people can relate to. Maybe not a
lot of people have done this in the past, of course,
I think we're gonna find very few of our listeners
have actually done this. But there are a couple of
examples that that I'll tell you about in just a moment,
So let's just jump right into it and I'll tell
our listeners what we're going to be talking about today.
(01:02):
And it was kind of a question that I had,
and it's something that I know I've voiced on my
other show on car stuff in the past, and I
think I've maybe answered a little bit and and we've
even discussed this track and I'll get to all of this,
you understand it just a moment. But my question is
about the nerber Ring, and the Nerburgring has in the past,
(01:24):
i don't know, decade or maybe even twelve fifteen years,
seem to be the place that manufacturers have taken their
automobiles to test the limits to see how fast they
can lap the Nerburgring. And there's a specific part of
the nerbur Ring that they do this in. There's it's
it's a it's a certain loop that they tested on.
We'll talk about what it is. Is it's kind of
(01:44):
like a level playing field for all manufacturers to be
able to go and say, we can run this track
at this speed in this amount of time in this car,
and that's why our car is the best. And if
you think you can top it, go do it, and
it offers a bunch of different types of conditions as
well through the surface of the course and the terrain
(02:06):
and weather and all sorts of other obstacles that make
it interesting and kind of like a something something to
brag about. So absolutely, we'll we'll talk about all of
this because there's some really there's believe it or not.
Even the weather is a fascinating topic on this track,
and so as the like the surface material because it
changes over over time, over distance rather and maybe one
(02:28):
of the coolest things about this is that you can
go and drive on this track if you just have
a few dollars in your pocket. It doesn't really cost
that much money. It's officially a toll road. And I
know I'm probably not giving anything away by saying that
right now. And man, there's some fascinating things that go
along with this whole thing. Now, now here's a little
bit of background, and I want to temper this with
(02:48):
this thought. There's a car stuff episode on the nurbur Ring,
and we went through a lot of history. We went
through the details of how they've modified the track and
you know, like you know, the different curves and all
that stuff, and and the barriers, and it's just a
lot of information about the track itself. So there's a
ton of history. There's a ton of material there about
Grand Prix or you know about Grand Prix racing and
(03:10):
about um you know, the switchover to Formula one and
all of that. It's all there. So I don't want
to I don't want to double up on too much
of that. And I know that's tough not to step
on that. So we're gonna We're gonna have a little
bit of overlap, but not a whole lot. Now, there's
a few things that I do I do feel like
we need to repeat. This is just because there's some
really interesting things about this track that I think they're important.
(03:31):
And one number one, probably the most important thing that
we need to know about this track is that it's
insanely dangerous. Insanely dangerous. I mean, it really is. And
it was designed a long long time ago. I think
the track was built in what and it's like it's
a huge, huge track, it's it's what um well in
(03:53):
its current uh form. I think that the overall lap,
if you uh, the nord schlift or nordef that we're
going to talk about, which is the north loop um
is about fourteen it's over fourteen miles, right, okay, so
over a hundred and fifty turns. Yeah, oh yeah, that's right.
That's right. That's another important point. This is a this
is of course that goes through the mountains. Yeah, i'd
(04:14):
I'd like to see what the elevation changes. I think
I think that I think that I read somewhere that
the elevation change is over a thousand feet between the
start and finish of the of the tracks. So really
an interesting track. It's it's fascinating. What do you say,
a hundred and fifty some turns? They had more. They
tried to make it safer and uh. And that's partly
(04:36):
due to Jackie Stewart. Uh. In fact, it's it's mostly
due to Jackie Stewart and a lot of other F
one drivers that got together and said, we are actually
they're actually gonna boycott this race if they didn't make
some changes. And this this wasn't always the case because
early on, you know, Formula one, it was it was
a little bit different. It was it was it was fast, sure,
(04:57):
but it wasn't quite as fast and it wasn't quite
as dangerous as it was in the late nineteen sixties.
That's when they started adding some wings to the cars,
and we're add a little more down force, so you
know where the car stuck to the track exactly. And
so when they when they would go over some of
the more I guess pronounced elevation quick elevation changes, maybe
(05:18):
the car would get lighter than than it should have
been or yeah, that was I was just trying to
figure out why the drivers were so afraid of this
particular track, and that's all I could come up with. Well, see,
the course got it wasn't that the course changed, of course,
you know that is the same as it always exactly. Yeah,
the cars got faster and the car has changed. They're
probably more dependent on air flowing flowing around it in
(05:40):
a certain way. Absolutely, they're not. Cars aren't supposed to
get too far off the correct surface. Yeah, exactly right.
Cars are designed to be on the track surface. And
we've talked about this with you know, the thrust SSC
and you know all the other cars that are going
fast and essentially every car that we talked about so
far on the fast track. Um. But cars are designed
to stay low, to stay kind of stuck to the ground.
(06:02):
The faster you go, the more down force they have
to have in order to stay on the ground. And
what happens is that there's some dramatic elevation changes, and
whether it's just a little rise or um, you know,
it's like you're coming over a crest and you can't
see what's going on on the other side of it, UM,
and it drops right off. At this point, the cars
were going so fast that they were becoming airborne. And
part of the problem was that with the way that
(06:24):
the down force was UM designed, I guess in these
cars it was meant to act like a reverse wing
to push the car down. So when you get air
underneath the car, it acts in the opposite way. It
acts like it's gonna want to lift off. And we've
seen that in recent years, of course with Lama and
you know, other tracks as well. It's not just it's
not just the Nerve Orgring, but but tracks where cars
(06:46):
become airborne. These road courses are really really dangerous for
drivers that are going super super fast and UM. Back then,
you know, back in the late six nineteen sixties, Jackie
Stewart was saying that at the time, and I think
I've mentioned this another podcasts even you know, the F
one podcast is that you know, a lot of his
friends were dying on this, on this, on these circuits,
(07:06):
on these Grand Prix circuits, and the Nurburgring was especially dangerous.
In fact um, one of the facts that came out
of the Last Car Stuff episode, and I think it
was something that Bennett mentioned, is that this is hard
to believe. And I don't know where he dug this up,
but I do remember him saying this that F one
drivers had a two thirds chance over five years of
competition that they would be killed in competition in five years.
(07:29):
Two thirds chance, that's sixty six percent chance that you
would die in a race if you raced for five
years or longer in F one competition at the time.
And this is like, you know, during the late nineteen sixties,
early nineteen seventies. So Jackie Stewart had a very valid point,
you know, he said, you know, I'm I'm losing I'm
losing friends every weekend on these tracks. Safety has got
(07:50):
improved in some way. Let's start with cars, of course,
but let's move on to you know, safety equipment and
tracks and everything. So he wanted improvements everywhere the Nurburgring.
They respond they changed a lot of the a lot
of the track, you know, they slowed down some of
the corners, and you know, it made it a little
bit safer in a lot of ways. And there's a
lot of ways they can design corners to make them
a little bit better. But overall, still the Nurburgring is
(08:13):
just an inherently dangerous course for a lot of reasons.
And I think you you already know a couple of reasons. Why, yeah, yeah,
I think I know what you're trying to get at.
I mean, the fact that the track is kind of
laid right on top of these extremely rolling hills in
the middle of a forest. Um, it's a lot narrower
than a lot of modern day race tracks are designed
to be, the surfaces different, the weather conditions are different,
(08:36):
and then just the general speed at what you're going. Um,
of course is designed at a time when cars didn't
see speeds like they see now. Sure they were fast,
but they weren't quite as fast as they were in
the sixties and seventies. And then even now, I mean
they're they're incredibly fast. You know. I think I want
to mention this right now, if that's all right, I
want to take just a second to say that I
think the last German Grand Prix that was run at
(08:59):
the Nurburgring, and that's very specific. Well we'll talk about
that in a second, but the last one that was
running at the Nurburgring was and uh, you know, of
course there were other German Grand Prix. I mean the
latest one was in eighteen I believe, right, or was
there one? There might have been one they okay, alright, um,
but but yeah, they kind of like skip around. So
(09:19):
it's not always run at hockenheim Ring or at um
you know, the Nurburgring. It's kind of a mix of
the two, or sometimes it's just not even either one
of those, you know, depending on whether they're gonna run
something else. Um. You know you mentioned one thing here
that another thing that I need to mention real quick.
The weather. The weather is a huge factor in this. Now,
(09:41):
this course is so large that there is a there,
there's a town in the middle of the track. I
mean there are people that live there. There residents that
live there throughout the year. There's a castle in the
middle of the track. That's how big this is. And
all of the you know, the the surrounding property. I mean,
and the castle goes back to like the eleven hundreds
or something like that, goes back a long long way.
(10:01):
I mean it's an old, old castle. Of course. If
you ever look at any bit of footage that is
maybe shot where you know there's an airplane fly over.
The track itself is is beautiful track. I mean you
would you would just kind of your mouth with water
wanting to get onto this track and drive it because
it's such an interesting looking track. It looks beautiful, really
it does. And that's why Jackie Stewart decided he was
(10:23):
going to call it the Green Hell because he feared it,
but it was also beautiful and it was green, and
you know, the trees are right nearby. There's a great
sensation of speed and everything. But the weather is something
that you really have to factor into this thing because
it could be pouring rain on one part of the
course and the other part can be completely dry and sunny.
And we've seen Sir Jackie Stewart talk about this and
(10:45):
he one one scene is one where he was in
a rolls Royce and he's still in his his his
garb right his he saw his fire suit on, and yeah,
I think a little little yeah, I think they picked
him up in the pits and said, hey, Jackie, let's
go out and talk about the course a little it here.
We happen to have this Rolls Royce for you, you know,
as a convertible, very nice, perfect. Yeah, that's right, didn't
(11:06):
no problem. Maybe maybe he was even his who knows. Um, Yeah,
he's driving the track and he's discussing what some of
the surface changes are like and what some of the
weather changes are like. From what I gather from what
Stewart said was that the different types of pavement hold
water different besides the fact that one lap it may
not be raining, and then the next time you come
through a certain section that had rained or is currently raining,
(11:29):
the weight water drains off of the track is different
as well, So some spots that will dry out quicker
and some spots that will dry out slower, and then
water running across the track in a certain way creates
little streams. So if you can imagine flying over a
hill and then setting up for a turn right after
you jump over this little rise and then it being
(11:49):
wet on the other side, you know, you can imagine
how tricky and the h I guess just generally sketchy.
This particular track can get when you're racing on it. Yeah,
and it wasn't wet the previous lap, so like you know,
the things change on this course over the course of
one lap. It's just it's fascinating to me that you know,
there there is a weather factor as well in this
(12:10):
and it almost reminds me a little bit of um,
you know, like Pike's Peak or something like that, where
you might you might encounter a date with sunshine and
warm weather at the bottom, you get to the top
and there's a blizzard practically going on. Um, it's similar
to that or well that's why it maybe the ultimate
test track in a way. A lot of conditions are different.
Road surfaces are different. There's concrete slabs, there's bank turns,
(12:31):
uphill downhill, suspension gets light, gets heavy, like you mentioned,
it's just it's a place where everybody could go and
kind of see what they have. You know what. I
love the idea that you know, everybody's kind of got
their own opinion about what this course is all about.
Like the drivers do a lot of them are I
think a lot of them are afraid of it, and
(12:52):
I don't think there's anything wrong with that, or at least, uh,
there's a level of respect about the course. Well, you know,
I honestly, yeah, I guess maybe the respect is a
better way to say it. I mean to say they're
afraid of it. I mean they do it anyway because
they've got nerves of steel, right. I think I would
be afraid of it really if I had to go
out and do that. Of course, the first time. I
assume that rookies are afraid of it. Probably I'm sure.
(13:13):
I'm sure that they are. But Jackie Stewart, he said,
um in in one of those laps, you know he
has he does have great respect for the course he does,
and I think he has a little bit of fear
for of it because it is a kind of scary
thing to drive. You never know if you're gonna make
it back. He said. He always every time he left
to go to the German Grand Prix at the nerburg Ring,
he would stop at the end of his driveway, look
back at his house, kind of like one long moment,
(13:37):
and then leave. And he said, because I never knew
if I was ever going to come home from that race.
Because that's not dangerous. It was. And he said, while
he was driving this thing, he said, you know, I
drive this at speed, and I'm going a hundred and
seventy five miles an hour on this course at the
time he was this is back in again in the
late sixties, hundred seventy five miles an hour. He said,
you know, when I if I really were ever to
(13:57):
walk this course, if I would ever just like really
take in that you know, there's no guard rail here,
and over here there's you know, just pine trees, and
you know over in this area here, like if I
go off, I'm going into a stream. You know that
kind of thing. He said, if I ever, if I
ever really just took all that in, I probably would
never drive here ever. Again. I'd never raced his course.
(14:18):
And uh, And I think he's got a point. He said,
the less he knows about the course the better, and
that he just knows I gotta go fast and turn
left right there, right right there, and aim for that
tree so that I can hit the carousel in the
right spot. And it's just he knew the course really well,
but he said, the less he knew about the surrounding
part of the course, you know, the the dangerous part,
(14:38):
like if you were to go off course, the better
off he was. Yeah, so he had he did have
a healthy respect for it. And you know, I think
there's more, there's more to it. You know, we listened
to um some audio from Boris said who is also
he's a legendary road racing driver as well. You can
look up this interview if you want on YouTube. You
can find the entire Orris said, UM discussion, it's I
(15:02):
think it's got the title is long. It's it's like,
it's um, Steve Lottart's podcast. Yes, it's he's a he's
a he was a crew chief in NASCAR for several drivers.
So it's Steve Lettart on Location and that's his podcast,
although this one has video as well, but it was
from Watkins Glen and there he's discussing, you know, the
dramatic elevation changes and and if you skip forward to
(15:23):
about the ten minute mark, that's about where the discussion
about the Nurburgring starts. And uh, he's talking about he
races in something that's the twenty four hours of Nurburgring.
So imagine how grueling that would be on on you know,
a series of drives. It's not just one driver obviously,
but he said something just remarkable here. He said that
at the start of that race, two hundred and thirty
(15:44):
cars start that race, two hundred and thirty. Imagine starting
the race with two hundred and thirty cars on the track.
And we're talking about a track like what we've been discussing,
A long, long track, you know, a hundred and fifties,
some turn, hundred fifty six turns, l vation changes, it's
you know, going to get dark at some point during
this race. There's weather changes. Uh, there's very little runoff,
(16:07):
there's you know, the almost no guard rails of mentioned really,
I mean there are some, but you're in an extremely
fast cars and he said, you if you're in a
fast car and when he and he was, of course,
he's in one of the top end vehicles. He was
passing on average fifty cars per lap. Yeah, fifty, I
think he said something like the faster cars a lot
slower cars every three laps. A sports car races, all
(16:31):
different kinds of categories. Yeah, you know that can make
it dangerous too, because you've got slower cars and faster
cars on the same track. You know, what's interesting And gosh,
you know, I know we're going way over here, we
have to stop a moment, but um, what's really interesting?
He said? And here's our answer here. He says, it's
about a nine minute lap for him in the sports
car series, So you know that Formula one Cars is
(16:51):
doing a lot faster than I mean, I guess a
seven minute lab something like that ballpark during the tourist
and parting, which is the kind of the daily driver
events they have at the track. I think they said
like a ten minute laugh is something to brag about.
So we'll get we'll talk about that soon, but I
think first maybe we should take a break. Hey, we're
(17:15):
back and you're listening to the Fast Track with your
host Scott Benjamin and Kurt Garon. Kurt, how you doing.
I'm doing well, Still doing well over there, hanging in there.
I love this topic. This is a This is an
interesting one because the truck has so much history, so much,
so much going on for it. We're gonna talk about
the manufacturers and what they're doing at the Nurburgring because
(17:36):
it's not just you know, races that happen there, it's
it's manufacturers that are going there and using it as
a test facility, and they're using it as kind of
a level ground test facility, so that you know, when
one manufacturer says our car can lap to Nurburgring in
this amount of time, the other manufacturer has a way
to compare exactly to that time with their own version
(17:56):
of whatever car that they want to bring, whether that's
an all electric car, whether that's a hybrid car, internal
combustion car, whatever type of car they want to bring,
sports car, sedan, any of those things. They can claim
that they have the fastest vehicle based on the timing
that is consistent that at that track. Now we talked
about all the other things that are inconsistent. Of course,
(18:17):
drivers are not going to be consistent. You're not gonna
have the same driver in uh different manufacturers. Cars are
gonna bring your own driver, you know, whether it's a
pro or somebody that you know they have in their
own test track or whatever. Um, there's gonna be the weather,
there's going to be uh just you know, even um
atmospheric conditions that day at high pressure, low pressure, wind,
you know whatever. They're gonna have to deal with all that.
(18:38):
But the thing is that you know, you're on the
same track, You've got the same distance, you've got the
same timing facility that you know says like this is
an accurate time. Everybody gets the same treatment. There's no
there's no difference in this. It's the exact same distance
every time and no no difference at all, no variance.
And you don't have to do like a one run
one way in one run the other way like you
do for land speed record. It's just a lap time.
(19:00):
And that lap time is something that these manufacturers have
really promoted over the last decade or so, or maybe
even more. It might be more like fifteen years. I
haven't really been paying attention, I guess for that long
to figure out when they started, but it seems like
for the last decade or so, the Nurburgring lap time
is a huge deal for sports car manufacturers. So they
they bring a lot of different cars, they bring a again,
(19:23):
there's a huge variance. And and let me tell you
just a couple of times here and and we'll just
kind of get the ball rolling here maybe and we
can we can talk about, you know, um, some of
these in a little bit more detail, maybe in just
just a moment. If that's all right, all right, So
but number ten on the list is the the Lexus
l F a Nurburgring package, also a special package just
for the nurbur Ring, Right all right, interesting right the
(19:46):
time that the lap time is seven minutes fourteen seconds,
all right, just in a couple of hundreds of a
second as well. I'm not even gonna read those. So
seven and fourteen, alright, almost almost seven fifteen. If you
move up, you you get to like the Corvette C seven.
Then there's this is a surprising one. The gumper To
Apollo comes in at two to end from two thousand nine.
(20:08):
This is a car from a long time ago. The
Gumpert Apollo is still number eight on the list. It's
seven minutes and just under seven minutes and twelve seconds,
so still really really fast for that car. You go
up a little bit higher. You got a Mercedes, a Nissan.
There's a g t R of course. Uh, there's the
Dodge Viper ACR, which comes in at seven oh one
point zero three, so just under just shy of breaking
(20:32):
that seven minute mark. They didn't quite do it with
a Dodge Viper a c R. Then there's a Porsche
which is the nine eighteen spider, they we have the
first Lamborghini. Oh that's a clue. I just gave away,
right clue. The first Lamborghini comes in at the number three.
That's the Hurricane I think, I hope that's the way
you pronounced that hurricane. Hurricane um which comes in at
six fifty two, so they actually broke the seven minute mark.
(20:53):
This is a Porsche g T two r S and
then the number one car on this list is a Lamborghini.
Event the door feed J which comes in and get
this is a fast time six minutes and forty six
minutes forty four seconds point nine seven, so just under
six minutes forty five seconds, and that's really really moving, right,
but a smoking But I want to point out one
(21:14):
thing here. These cars from one to ten, they're all
sports cars. Of course, they all come in within thirty
seconds of each other. And that's how tight this race is, right,
And we talked about all the differences in the track
and things that can happen, weather conditions and whatnot. And
it's funny that they use this as a standard and
(21:35):
they quibble over thirty second difference. And you know, the
drivers are all of course, they're different manufacturers spend a
lot of money to go and do this right, and
they want to be number one. They want to at
least be in the top ten. And I understand, I
completely get that. It's it's kind of important to keep
your sports car in the top ten on the fastest
cars that they're working right now, because that's kind of
(21:56):
the standard, right Where is a Ferrari on this list? Exactly?
They stay out of Germany, they say, come to Italy.
This is the good point. They're running on Italian tracks.
I guess, yeah, maybe maybe they are. I don't know,
maybe there's a Monsa record that I don't know about
or whatever. But um, the Nurburgring is is fantastic for
this and it is a level playing field. But you
(22:18):
make a very good point, curtain, And we talked about
this off air when we were getting ready for this
podcast in that I kind of I I like, for
a short amount of time reading the forums. Uh, you
know that they go along with these numbers, you know,
like when you we look up the Nurburgring fastest times
or any article that has to do with like, you know,
someone breaking a record. I'd like to read the comments
(22:42):
just for a bit of a short time because quickly
people get out of control. They start to have a
flame war about all kinds of different things that really
have very very little impact on the on the ultimate
time of these cars, I believe, I think so. Anyways,
I mean, maybe maybe there's more to it than I
than I know, but you and I both kind of
had a good laugh about that, right. Yeah. So, so
(23:04):
there's minor, minor things that that people think make a
huge difference in wings, like tires and if the car
has a racing package built into it, roll bars and
and that sort of thing. Traction control, you know, the
driver assist options that may not be conducive to running
a fast lap or may actually help the car run faster.
(23:24):
All right, there's like three things there that I want
to mention. Okay, so he said, um, traction control and
drivers sist type functions. You know, I I don't know
where they stand on if those are turned off, turned on,
or you know whatever. I'm not sure how that all
works out with want to imagine the real race drivers
want very little of that, but I would think so,
but even if one has a little bit of it,
they do. Yeah, that's that's the crazy part. Okay, so
(23:46):
so UM also roll bars. Okay, so certain cars are
built from the manufacturer with a roll bar that's part
of the structure of the vehicle itself. So that's something
that has to be a factor because it does stiff
in the chassis does make a difference in the handle
in the vehicle. The other thing, and this is one
that a lot of people on these forums will get,
just I right about tires. Tires is a big one.
(24:08):
You mentioned tires is one of the first things, and
they seem to go crazy over this versus like the
factory tires versus aftermarket tires. Right. So the the main
argument here is that um, and this is if I'm
getting this right, and you tell me, Kurt, if you
get the same impression or not, or if you have
a different opinion about this, okay, But what I am
(24:29):
understanding is that people are upset that they're not using
the factory provided tires on the cars to do these runs,
but they are putting tires on the cars that cost
Let's say I'm gonna just ballpark this and it's general.
Let's say that the tires are a thousand dollars each
or two thousand dollars each or you know, maybe even
more super expensive tires. I mean, they're really really pricey,
(24:53):
great tires, sticky compound, you know all that. However, they
are available on the market. You can buy the like
you and I to buy them if we had the money,
if we wanted to, we could buy that same tire
from a manufacturer. What a lot of people are confusing,
I think is the fact that they're not using a
proprietary race compound that is for a certain team or
(25:13):
a certain series or something like that that you cannot
buy commercially on the market. You can't go out and
find a website where you could buy that tire. You
have to be part of that team in order to
get that that compound, that racing compound. And I think
that's the confusion, because it seems like it seems totally
fair to me that if you want to put a
pair of tires on our set of tires, or even
brake pads or whatever on the car, that you can
(25:33):
buy somewhere, you know, aftermarket or wherever from the manufacturer,
you know, whatever it happens to be. Those are consumables.
Those seem like you know, tires were eventually you're going
to replace the tires. Eventually you're going to replace the
break And of course some people, I'm sure, buy Lamborghini
and the first thing they do is buy a new
set of tires, tires and brake pads because they want
to improve the breaking performance. And of course that improves
(25:56):
your your lap time because you can go harder into
the turns and you can break faster and come out
of those turns faster. I mean, of course I understand
the importance of breaking, like a better break compound, a
better tire compound, I understand all that. I get it.
But if it's available and it's something that everybody could do, yeah,
why not? I mean, I guess maybe they're confusing, like
(26:18):
maybe stock production cars with production cars get a little
to nitpicky about records. Like a production car is a
car that you can buy with things on it that
you can also buy. Yeah, I feel the same way.
I feel the same way. Like if you may get
a Lamborghini, maybe not a new one, but he used one,
and you want to go out and bust the record
(26:39):
at the nerve burg Ring, but you don't want to
have the same beat up tires that came on the
car when you bought it. Used, you want to pop
some new tires on before you go run the nerveburg Ring. So,
but you should still be considered to still be considered
a stock car exactly. So do I mean in that
case you're I guess the other argument would be, in
order to break that record, you would have to go
and buy the exact same tire that they put onto
(27:00):
the factory in order to make break that record, right, right,
and not to mention as soon as you run a
lap or two or three on this a set of tires,
you might want some new ones. Anyway. What if I
have a different air filter in the car, what if
I have a different oil in the car? Does that matter?
I mean, I mean, what if I'm using a different grease,
you know for the chassis. You know, what if I'm
all that stuff like, it's not it's not production gasoline.
(27:25):
It's kind of the same argument that things that they
are consumable, things that that you use up you should
change when needed. Yeah, this argument is is just it's
it's it's funny in a way, but it's also maddening
in another way. Let's so let's talk about tourists and
fartans after a break, We're back and you're listening to
(27:48):
the fast Track, and I'm your host, Scott Benjamin along
with Kurt Garren. Kurt, everything's still going right over there.
I keep checking in every segment. So far, so good,
so far, so good. Okay, so we we we teased
a little bit that we're gonna talk about something that
has a rediculous name, uh this now as it's a
German name, of course, and I'm sure that they don't
think it's ridiculous. Of course. All it really means. I
think if if I had to guess what this really means,
(28:09):
it just means tourist day, right, or tourist driving experience
or something like that. But but the word is is silly. Yeah,
it's it's a tourist and partons. You can't even say.
I don't know why I can't say it. It's it's
we've laughed about this. It's so juvenile. It's like it's
like I'm like a kid, like a little kid when
when they we say tourist and farton, but it is
(28:29):
tourist and farting, and all it really means is that, Um,
there's certain days on the nerve bagering and I'm sure
a lot of our listeners are already aware of this,
that you can go and drive on the track and
you pay a little bit of a fee and I
don't remember exactly what it is. I want to say,
it's like thirty dollars or something like that. There's there's
a list somewhere online. I know that you can look
up the prices. But the list is a little bit terrifying.
(28:52):
And I'll tell you why in just a moment. I
just in ten seconds, I'll tell you. But you can
go and look at the prices of things and find
out exactly what it is and when it's happening, because
there are certain days when they're having other activities. You know,
manufacturers have it reserved, or uh they have a race,
or you know, something like that's going on. But essentially
this becomes like a one way toll road. Of course,
there's no opposing traffic on this little tiny road. But
(29:13):
the reason that the list that is terrifying is because
when you look at the price, like to just to
drive on the track, they start giving you the prices
if you crash, what it costs to replace the guardrail segments,
what it costs to have the track team members come
out and assist you in your car to get out
of the car. They give you prices for medical help.
(29:35):
They give you prices for a helicopter to come and
fly you off the track if they need to, which
has happened many times. I think, Um, they start giving you,
like some really scary numbers, and they're they're high numbers,
they're expensive, but maybe look past that, just look at
the price of entry and know that you can keep
yourself under control on the track and uh and you'll
(29:57):
be fine. But you know, from what I've seen, Kurt
Um and you've seen some of the footage as well,
like when when just anybody can go out there and
drive you know, any car that has and you know,
they get their engine checked out, they get you know,
it's not leaking oil or anything. They've got lights, the
tires are okay, you know, they check out. I'm sure
they have a little bit of a um A prep.
(30:18):
You know that they have to go through. There's no course,
like you don't have to learn any rules, but there
are rules we'll talk about once you get out there.
You deal with people that are professional and you deal
with some people that are absolute fools and everything in between.
From what I gathered in this. Any old car, any
old person can go out there and do whatever they
want to do besides go backwards and do donuts in
(30:42):
the middle of the track. I mean you, just as
long as they're going forward and abiding by some basic
rules of the road, can go out there and have
have a good time at the Nerburgring. Essentially, those are
the rules. Now, there are other rules that we should
talk about. There's a there's a funny video about what
you should not do on the nerveburg Ring, and I'll
mention these. I think there's like seven points that you
know you're not supposed to do, and they all make
(31:03):
perfect sense, and they're they're done in a funny way.
But I'll tell you that I've watched many videos of
this and and the you know that everybody loves to
watch the fail videos. I guess you know the ones
where you know someone's coming around a corner and they
just lose it and you know, horrible thing happens. They
destroy their car, they destroy their daily driver or maybe
it's a tracker. I don't know, but it's probably typically
a daily driver from the looks of it. Yes, yeah,
(31:25):
just people just go out there in their car like
a fun weekend from work, dip into the yeah, and
there's a little bit of everything. There's there's camper vans
out there. There's BMW's that you know, the cars that
have uh you know, full uh you know, decal packages
and everything. It looks like a race car, so maybe
it is a track day car, you know, a fun
toy for the weekend or whatever. But other cars they
do look like just maybe like the family sedan that
(31:46):
someone's taken out for fun. You can rent a car,
you can go out there. We'll talk about that too,
but you know, those are the fun ones to watch.
But there's also some great videos and I don't know
if you caught these or not, but there's some fantastic
videos of people that are driving the track really well,
and some some you know privateers, I guess, you know,
and I call them privateers. They're not real racers, but
but people that bring their own vehicle, you know, a
(32:07):
BMW or Mercedes or something, and they're just really skilled
and they can really handle it around that track, and
it's it's really cool to watch. I mean, they're really
good and they're racing close with other people, and that's
the cool thing in that discussion from Boris said earlier
that we mentioned there's a lot of traffic on that track,
and it's a lot of different speeds, so you gotta
like kind of be accommodating to that and the weather
(32:29):
and all the conditions and everything. But um, if you
get somebody, if you can watch somebody who's doing this
really well with another person maybe that's doing really well.
They're chasing each other around the track, it's fun to watch.
It's entertaining. It's just as good as any race that
you'll ever watch. It really is. It's fun. You know,
near this track, everybody kind of gathers around this one
gas station, and around this gas station is a lot
(32:53):
like when if you can imagine this, and I think
a lot of people can. When you know, people are
leaving those caffeine and octane type shows on the weekends,
and everybody is leaving the parking lot and they're kind
of doing burnouts and showing off a little bit. As
they exit the parking lot. There's hundreds of people lyning
the road. They're very very close to the road. They've
all got cameras out, they have some of them have chairs,
(33:14):
they've got their own personal cars. Lining the roads. There's
fences set up and everything. On these tourist days, people
line up like that near this gas there's particular gas
station and it's called the E D gas Station and
it looks it looks like doord ed uh the ed
gas station and and um, it's the one that's closest
to the track. So all of the cars and motorcycles
and trucks and whatever, they tend to fill up there
(33:36):
on their way to the track, and that means that
they're full of fuel, they're ready to go out on
the race track. They're excited, they're kind of adrenalines going,
and they've got this crowd that's kind of egging them
on to you know, do a burnout. So you'll find
a lot of like it, kind of interesting videos. You'll
see a little bit of everything. It looks like a
cruise event or something, you know, where some really amazing
(33:56):
cars drive by. Also some very playing cars drive by
that are a little bit maybe souped up, a little
bit ready for the track, or you know others that
are just plane jeans, sedans and are just there for
the fun fun of it. Um, from what I gathers,
that's just part of the experience of going to the track. Yeah,
for tourists and parting. Yeah, it's just you go, you
get your gas and you maybe show your car to
(34:18):
the crowd a little bit and then onto the track.
Isn't that The funny thing is because some people will,
you know, they'll they'll get an accident outside of the
track because they're trying to show off. But they're they're
like moments away from the one of the greatest tracks
in the world, and they're gonna be able to go
and just push it out right as far as that
when they can go crash on the track instead of
in front of the the gas Very good point, Yeah,
(34:40):
very good point. Now, thankfully, it seems like there are
fewer accidents there than at the caffeine and octane type
shows that that I've seen. It seems more common to
see people wrecking leaving those For some reason. Um, maybe
that's the star when at work leading out the before
you get to the track, if you can't handle the
gas station, then don't even go to the nerve orgering. No,
(35:01):
absolutely all right, So you know that's one thing, that's
one part of it, and you know that's part of
this little town that's right there within the boundaries of
the track or near the boundaries of the track, So
they ask you that you'd be respectful, and that's one
of the things that we're going to talk about, all right,
So one of the rules. And again this is coming
from a video that was kind of like a do
you know, don't do this on the track and it's
very funny in the way that it's done. You can
(35:22):
find it online on YouTube, and it's just it's it's
funny in the way that things are phrased, you know that.
So I'm not going to do it very much justice here.
You should go and watch this if you get a chance,
because it's kind of comical, but it also has some
decent footage of what's going on there and and tells
you some of the rules and explains them a little
better than I can. But um, now, at first we
should say that, you know, it's open almost every weekend
(35:45):
and at the last and the last few hours of
almost every day for this tourist activity. So you know,
they call it tourists, but it's just open for people
to pay and go on this track. Of course, there
are track officials there and everything to make sure that
things are safe. They've got flags and everything to keep
you in line. Cars can be driven any car. Bike
can be driven on the track as long as it's
road legal. That's that's one thing. Um. You can only
(36:07):
here's one of the rules. You can only overtake another
car on the left. There's no passing on the right.
If you're passed on the right, you're doing it wrong.
And that's which is also should be a rule here
in the United States on any road. It should just
just you don't want to go out there. Who who
don't know? It is a rule the right. It's an
it's an unwritten well maybe even probably written, probably has
(36:29):
written and one of them. So overtake on the left,
never on the right. Okay, that makes sense, right, lap
will get this. This is interesting because of what we've
been talking about. If you're going there and thinking that
you're gonna time your lap, that's not what's gonna happen.
And I don't want you to have the clock in
the car. Yeah, now this you can time your lap,
but you have to do it in kind of a
(36:49):
roundabout way, so you can use your go pro and
you can record your session. You know, you can record. However,
you want it to do. And of course that's gonna
keep time, so you're able to to go back later
and deduce your time from the go pro footage. But
you're not able to have a clock right in front
of you as you're driving. And they many drivers have said,
(37:11):
if you're out here for these tourist days and you're
watching a clock as you go around the track, you're
gonna have a bad day no matter what, because well,
somebody's gonna get in front of you in a camper
van and ruin your time. Right because there's so much
traffic on the on the course at any given time,
you're gonna have to pass and you know you might
have to slow down and do that, and and that's fine.
Just go out there, even like the guys and girls
(37:32):
that do it all times said, just go out there
and have fun. Just go out and have a great time.
Drive fast, get your adrenaline going, you know, just have
a good time and know that you've done. You've you've
completed a decent lap. But it doesn't have to come
down to the exact second, to the exact you know,
tens or hundreds of a second that that you think
it does. Just go out and have fun, and it's
better if you're not watching the clock, and especially you
(37:54):
know that the track officials don't want you watching it
because it's going to lead to aggressive driving because if
you start to fall behind in your time, you're gonna
try to push it even harder and you're gonna end
up wrecking probably. So um it makes sense when you
think about it that way, But initially I thought, well,
that's crazy. They're not letting you time your own lap. Well,
you can time it. There's also GPS units that you
(38:17):
can get that will just keep time as you go around,
so there's no reason to have it there on the dash.
Look at it, and I think you can even you know,
in your own head you can just create a little
variance and you could say like, okay, well you know
when my time was decent, it was nine or it
was ten minutes and thirty seconds, but I was held
up for you know, a good twenty seconds of that
by uh, you know, the Honda Civic or whatever it
(38:37):
was it was in front of me. Um. Oh, don't
leave the scene of a crash. Um. So if you
crash and you know, you bang up a guard rail,
even if it's just you alone. You're not supposed to
leave that scene of a crash. Um, you can stay there,
um and wait for somebody come over and check you
out and make sure that things all right and get
things back on track again. I guess, so to speak,
because because um, there's probably some clean up that has
(38:58):
to happen, and they want to make sure that you know,
the sel is not going to fall off in the
next turn. Fluid leaks from the car. They don't want
you dragon, that's a huge fluids across the track. That
is a big one because I've seen many videos where
someone has leaked fuel on the previous you know, the
previous cars leaked fuel or or oil, and four cars
will wreck, I mean, ruins their day, ruins their year, month, whatever,
(39:20):
I don't know. It's expensive, it's very expensive. So um, yeah,
that's that's a that's a huge issue. There's no standing
on the track and you and I have both seen
examples of this in those videos. Uh one one boy.
One of these videos, a guy nearly loses his legs
when another car comes by. He barely makes over that wall. Yeah,
he dives over the fence, yeah fall. I think you
(39:43):
can kind of see him frolling down the other side
because there was a hill on the other side. He
tumbled for quite some time. He and yeah, and you
know he I don't know, he's like flicking off the
people with the damn er. They're yelling something back. Yeah,
well they're probably yelling idiot. Is stupid. You know that,
you know, what are you doing? Because he was he
was between the guardrail, which is I mean, it looked
(40:03):
like it was chest high and and I don't think
it's like a BMW that's coming at him really fast.
And it did clip the wall right where he was,
and yeah, he hopped over like and just I mean
just just half a second before it hit him. It's
crazy too, because he was on the inside of a
turn and you wouldn't as places where you wouldn't think
that a car would be crashing into But how that's
why there's the rule. Again, I don't stand on the side.
(40:26):
And I think that situation was an oil situation where
there was oil or something slick on the trail, like,
because there were many cars that were wrecking in the
same turn for no good reason. I mean, they're just
spinning out for no good reason. Um, okay, the next one, Uh,
this one a little again counterinto no drifting. You're not
allowed to intentionally drift on the Nurburgring and a track.
Marshal uh will report you if they see you doing
(40:47):
doing this drifting. Now, I watched videos where you can
see that people are taking turns intentionally drifting through them.
You know, it's if you slide a little bit, that's
one thing. If you are drifting through the turn, that's
a big difference. And there are people that I've seen
in tensionally drift and yeah, they do get reported. And
I think, I don't know if there's a fine involved
or if you just are kind of banned for maybe
that day or that week or whatever from the Yeah, um,
(41:10):
this last one, this is no driving like a maniac.
That's the last rule. I mean, that was the funniest
last rule. Like I thought, I thought, Okay, there's gonna
be something big here. There's gonna be something really you know,
monumental here at the end. No driving like a maniac
because it's on a public road. And you know, I
guess it does make sense when you when you understand this,
when you get off the track, you are in this
(41:31):
little town. You know, if you're going to the gas
station or wherever. I think this is where that they're
talking about is like, you know, you've got all that
energy from the track and you're still are kind of
at the track, you know, because you're in that area.
Don't keep driving like you're on the track when you're
in the town. I mean, the Jones people don't want
to deal with that. They would have to deal with
that every day all day if that was the case,
and I can imagine that would be infuriating. So, uh,
(41:53):
they don't drive like a maniac. Thing makes more sense
when you understand that, Yeah, there's this community there and
you're really disrupting the community if you drive like that
through there. You should just leave the track situation on
the track and then realize that you're on a public
road after that. Well, what I find about all of
these rules is they are generally just rules of the
(42:15):
common sense. All Right, So I have a one, one
quick question for you before we wrap up, and I
think we already talked about this, but um, would you
go and drive this track knowing what you know about
it and seeing what you've seen? Um in your own
personal car? Now, of course, rental cars if you rent
a car from anywhere other than um a place called
Big Grudge, which is right in that area. You can
(42:35):
rent a sports car and go there, very expensive. You
can do it. If you rent a car like an
Avis or Hurts or whoever. You will be banned forever
from renting a car from them if you take it
on the Nurburgring track. So, and we do have a
listener from car stuff that that happened to. He showed
me the letter um so and he showed it's probably courage,
(42:55):
you know, yeah he did. He was he was happy,
he knew, he knew the consequences. But would you take
your own personal vehicle on the Nerve Ring and drive it?
Knowing what you know? Now? It would be fun to
go out there and and just tool around a little bit.
Would you be a little bit, just just a little
bit afraid of some yahoo that's gonna, you know, try
to like they're trying to break a lap record or something.
You know that they're gonna cause you to to wreck.
(43:18):
Because I know you can control yourself, of course, but
what about the the the part of it that you
don't have control over a little bit? But I mean,
I feel as if you should have that fear in general,
so it's easier just not to think about the other people.
And then from what I can tell, there's a healthy
mix of people just out there having fun, and then
there's some people that are taking it a little too serious.
(43:40):
It's yeah, and this this is not an event to
go out there and try to break a track record,
because first of all, you're not going to there's no
way you're gonna get even close to the six minutes
and forty five second time of the Lamborghini, of course
not probably not even gonna get under ten minutes. Probably not.
So if anyone's planning to go out there, just take
it easy and have fun with the experience. Good advice. Now,
(44:02):
I one one little caveat that I want to mention
here because I think it's worth worth mentioning, is that
you know, when you're on the track, I would assume
that insurance doesn't play a factor in this. Will like,
I think that insurance is probably off. They're not gonna
They're not gonna cover anything that happens on that track,
I think, So that might be the only difference between
you know, like the risk that you assume when you're
(44:24):
on the highway, and I know there's still a physical
danger and there's still you know, property damage danger and
all that. I get it, But I do think that
you're financially risking a little bit more when you go
on this track, and it's worthwhile to look into that
before you go and before you do this, because you know,
again I don't have all the details here about this obviously.
I'm just kind of, you know, giving you an overview,
and I want listeners to go out and really investigate
(44:46):
all this and find out what's what's happening there, because
I think there's some I think there's some fun to
be had there. Of course, there's a lot of fun
to be had there. Yeah, So Scott, would you do? Do? Oh?
What I do? This is what everyone wants you. I
think I think that, you know, I might. I would
probably rent a car. I know it's expensive, but if
I were going to do it, I don't think i'd
(45:06):
risk my own car out there. Um. I think that
I would rent a car from this this place that
I mentioned, this Big Grudge that if you go to
want to go to a website and check out the prices,
it's Big Grudge dot d E and you can check
out what they've got there. They've got all kinds of
sports cars and they're expensive. They're not cheap, you know,
and you pay for like two laps or twelve laps
or you know whatever. It's like different rates. But I
(45:28):
would assume that insurance comes along with that. You're probably
still paying quite a bit if you wreck it, but
I bet there's a limit to it. But anyways, it's
it's a worthwhile thing to check into. So look up
the nervebourg Ring and these tourist days and and you
know what you can do, what you can't do, But
it seems like it's kind of a fun destination. Maybe
a bucket list in your episode. This is one of
those things that all you car enthusiasts should put on
(45:50):
your bucket list. It seems like a really great experience.
Why not. I'd love to get over there to do it.
And you know, in the meantime, if you want, you
can contact us and tell us if you have done
this or if you want to go over and do this.
On social media, you can reach us on Facebook and
Instagram where we are the Fast Track Show, or on
Twitter where we are the fast Track Pot And if
you want to check out our show's website where it's
(46:13):
a brand new website really, but it's not many podcasts
there yet, but there will be. You can go to
the fast Track show dot com and check us out there,
and of course you can leave reviews on Apple podcasts
or on the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you
happen to listen to your podcasts. And if you like
what you're hearing, if you like listening to Kurt and
I talked about all this stuff, and I think you
have a friend that might be interested in this kind
of thing, let them know as well. Tell your friends
(46:35):
and you know, we're happy to have you as a listener,
and we're always trying to gain new ones, so we
appreciate it. Thanks a lot, guys. Thanks. The fast Track
is a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
The Fast Track News
Host
Scott Benjamin
Show Links
AboutPopular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.