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Wednesday, August 8th, 2023 - Nurburgring Day Three
Getting our Fill


We let ourselves sleep in a bit on the morning of our third day at the Nurburgring/Nordschleife. While we definitely had plans to attend the evening's Touristenfahrten lapping session, we didn't really have a specific plan for the "day" part of the day. And really, we had been going pretty hard with something-or-other on pretty much every day of our trip, so why not a more relaxed day?
N-Ring Room
Snack-fast
I spent a bit of time finishing up the creation of a GTS Chronicles video clip of our "pit stop in Zuffenhausen", which you can view here: here, or inline below. It was a simple set of scenes from our stopover a few days prior at the Porsche Museum and Factory in Stuttgart, where we did our little "birthplace" photo shoot.

The GTS Chronicles IG Post 090 - A Zuffenhausen Pit Stop


GTS Chronicles at the Nurburgring
Next, we decided to head over to the main Nurburgring complex building. Situated adjacent to the Grand Prix circuit, it is the building that has the big famous red "Nurburgring" lettering. The complex has gift shops, an indoor kart racing facility, a museum, shops, convention center rooms, administrative offices, and so on. We wanted to browse the gift shop and also to see what was up with the various attractions.

Before heading inside, we did a little bit of "action" shooting in front of the big Nurburgring sign. I had Chris drive the Cayman as I had a particular vision for the kind of shots I wanted to capture - dynamic "slice-in-focus" photos that try to portray motion.
Cayman at the 'ring
Cayman at the 'ring
Cayman at the 'ring
GTS Chronicles at the Nurburgring
Magazine-worthy view
GTS Chronicles at the Nurburgring
After doing quite a large number of back-and-forth runs, we parked the GTSes and headed inside. The gift shop ... well, it was kind of underwhelming. As much as we browsed, we simply couldn't find anything that struck our fancy. Not t-shirts, not decals, not hats. There was always something not quite right about them - for example with depictions of the Nordschleife. They were basically impossible to find - instead everything showed the Nordschleife+GP Track combo. But we didn't visit the GP track. We wanted a focus on the Nordschleife.

Coming out of the gift shop empty-handed, we wandered over to the Museum, and spent a fair bit of time there. It had the usual stuff you would expect - various historic race cars that in their day ran on the Nurburgring or the Nordschleife (or even the old Sudschleife), an area dedicated to Formula 1 cars, a section on motorcycles and the ring, an exhibit about the Porsche 919 EVO record-breaking lap, and interactive kid-type exhibits (the "Truck Grand Prix Simulator" or the "Nurbus - crazy ride through the Eifel".)

The indoor Kart racing was on the floor below the museum. We didn't end up visiting the kart track or doing some lapping there, and I can't remember why. Possibly we ran out of time? or maybe it wasn't running.

As the afternoon was starting to draw on, we headed out to complete some photo/video tasks that I still had outstanding on my list of TO-DOs. Primarily these involved some posed shots of the cars with the historic Nurburg Castle in the background and a few remaining ideas I had for the GoPro cameras. And then, we had a relaxing afternoon snack - on a little bench next to a tiny chapel situated in a big field in the countryside inside of the ring. After all, we needed to be well-fed ahead of the evening's Tourist lapping session - the last lapping session of our trip!
Posing with the castle
Posing with the castle
Picnic before tourist-drives
We were ready and waiting in the overflow parking lot when the evening session opened at 5:30. Soon, we were lined up and waiting for our turn at the automated lift-gate. Crewchief Hatko was doing his first laps in the car with Luke, getting some footage of top-down Boxster-on-the-ring driving. Today we weren't making any attempts at staying together, so before long we were far apart from each other, and I focused on trying to extract more out of the Cayman, now that I was getting more comfortable with grip and a general sense of the car's dynamics. Which were, as always, seemingly unflappable.
Luke's Thoughts
[on the final evening of lapping...]
The weather is perfect, cool, and overcast, but not wet. I will get to lap with the top down again. I wish Calabogie would let me do it as it is way more engaging! I have my scanning sorted out on my phone so the QR code for my laps just works and this time I don't hold up the queue. Again, I work up to it slowly, whereas Andrew is just gone. I don't mind though, as I am happy, just feeling the car out around this truly epic track.
At the Wheel of the Boxster GTS
Into the Karussel
Luke in Ex-Mühle
A lap or two in, we came out to the overflow parking area. Luke and I discussed the behavior of our cars' built-in "track precision" app, a function that provides simple-to-use lap-time support. We now had the hang of it and it was proving useful, helping me to identify my progress (or lack thereof) relative to my previous laps.
Inter-lap chat
Chris swapped cars, hopping out of Luke's Boxster and in with me, and we headed out again for another lap. I was again feeling a bit more confident, and I pushed the Cayman yet harder again (still not hitting the edge of the grip envelope anywhere, though). Chris noted that we were going a lot harder and faster than in previous laps, and I think at this point he was starting to get impressed with the performance capabilities of the car (and to be frank, up until now, neither of us had been pushing the cars all that hard).

We came up to and passed Luke just before the Sabine Schmit curve. He was still not pushing his Boxster very hard, and I started to perhaps wonder if he was a bit uncomfortable going harder in the Boxster on this track. I felt that Luke had it in him to go harder, and by now I would have thought he'd have had enough laps under his belt to feel comfortable doing so. The thought occurred to me that perhaps the idea of pranging a brand-new Porsche was weighing on his mind, and therefore lightening the pressure of his foot on the accelerator pedal.
Much Compression
Andrew at Wipperman
Pushin' harder
At the Kleine Karrussell
Hounded
Good Lap Fist Bump
GTS Chronicles at Pflanzgarten
Luke's Thoughts
[on the final evening of lapping, part 2...]
I am enjoying myself. The brakes are powerful, the engine is sublime, and I'm grinning from ear to ear. Mind you, you really do have to keep an eye on your mirrors, though, as the first rule of the Nurburgring is fully evident. Rule #1: you are NOT fast. Cars blast past me at what feels like insane speeds compared to how fast I'm going, and I'm not hanging around. It's about total trust and confidence in your tires, the grip, and the machine underneath you. I can feel myself getting faster and faster, but still nowhere near the limit, and that's just fine by me. It's a hoot.

(to read more of Luke's thoughts from this day, check out his blog post)

By about 7:15pm, we had done three or four laps, each (for me) a bit faster than the last. The track precision app in the car showed us dipping down into the eight-minute band of lap times, significantly better than the very cautious initial laps. If it weren't for the impending 7:30pm session end time, I think I could have done better yet again. I was quite sure that there was an easy fifteen to thirty seconds I could cut from my time, as I was still being pretty cautious in a lot of locations.

But that was that; 7:30pm had rolled around and the track session had ended. The GTS Chronicles Cayman and Boxster motored away from the hallowed pavement of the Nordschleife for the last time. Satisfied but also a little sad. What a wonderful, wonderful place for motor enthusiasts.

We dined at Ventisette for one last time, reliving our track moments and thinking forward to our drive back south to Stuttgart the following day.
Last dinner at 27
To wrap-up our excellent three-day visit to the Nurburgring/Nordschleife, I put together a somewhat whimsical video collage of our experiences, and posted it on our GTS Chronicles Instagram feed. You can watch it on Instagram here, or you can watch a wide-format version of the same collage here below:
The GTS Chronicles IG Post 091 - "A Visit to the Green Hell" (wide version)
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