I get out of my car and Maro Engel walks up to me and tells me I am in his group because Reinhold Renger (head of AMG Driving Academy) ("Reini") told him I was a "pretty good" driver, which I guess coming from Reini was a compliment. There were 3 other drivers in my group and all of them already had Ring experience and had just come from SPA, so Maro told me to try his group and if I wanted I could stay or switch to Reini's group, which would be a group with less experience. I already knew two of the drivers in that group from COTA and both do a lot of track driving and are quite fast and they were all driving GTRs, not GTCs.
I went out with them for a couple of laps and found that there is a fair amount of difference in driving the GTC versus the GT3 in the sim. The braking points are different in many of the corners and places where you can be flat out in the GT3, you can't in the GTC. After a few laps, I felt like I would slow them down so I asked Maro to switch to Reini's group.
That was a good decision because it gave me more time to adjust to the difference in driving the track IRL and AJ, the head of US AMG Driving Academy was there learning the track in that group so he could instruct next year. I knew him and so with him and Reini in the group, it was just so fun!!!!
The track is just incredible, the elevation changes, the compression in the Foxhole, the amount of braking going into Swiss Cross, how bumpy the Karoussel is, it was just the most challenging track I have driven on but by far, the most fun. We had incredible weather both days and we drove laps one after the other both days in between track walks where we would stop at certain corners to discuss strategy. I would say all and all we probably ran 25 to 30 laps around the Ring. It was exhausting but just so awesome!!!!
Okay, I know, how fast did we go? Well I generally don't look at my speedometer when I am driving the track because I'm focused on it. Most of the time when we came by on the back straight we had to slow down because of other groups entering the track but a couple of times we did get to go flat out through. The one time I did look down, we were at 262 kmph, fastest I've been yet
Track walk with a couple of groups at the Karoussel
I don't have a video yet, I'll post one when AMG sends it to me. I think our lap times got down into the high 7's, so not near Maro's speed, but, hey, you gotta start somewhere
At the end, I said to Reini, next year SPA and he said, no, no, next year Nurburgring and SPA
We'll see.
Tire change at lunch:
So much fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
