At Easter, myself and mate, Carl, drove my Saxo 700 miles across Europe to the 'Ring. With Dave and Tim in the Scooby, we blasted through France and Belgium at almost legal speeds. Ahem. OK, so we had a little play at 130mph "somewhere" but it's fun, dammit! Despite rumours of the 'Ring being clogged with hundreds of Brits we put in 18 laps each over the three days. This is a record for us, as car's have generally expired after half a dozen laps on previous trips.

My first lap was a nice blend of caution and terror. Coming too fast into Metzgefelt was fun, but worried my underwear as we headed for the Armco. Would have been embarassing to stack it on lap one. This was soon followed by what felt like an enormous power-off over-steer into Breidscheit. However, we survived and I was soon discovering the joys of braking hard into the corners, stepping the back out and planting the throttle for a fast exit. Wonderful! We picked up the pace and put in some fairly fast laps. On the better runs, we got hitting 130 down Schwedenkreuz, 125 in the Fuchsruhe and 120 into Schwalbenschwanz. Not too shabby for a 1600cc!

Because of the start-line cones, we stopped our lap timing at the gantry on the main straight. This meant that the better laps were in the mid tens mark. After a fast lap tailed by a 106 GTI (K&N/Piper combo gave me more top end power - YES!) brought in a 10:08 lap, I gave it the beans and set my PB of 9:56. I'm proud of that one! As expected, the 'Ring was quite punishing and the car suffered from high oil temp, grumbling brakes and a crunchy gearchange. Not that these slowed me down much. What did slow me down (apart from locals refusing to move over for an obviously faster Brit hatchback - take note black 911 driver) was the tread starting to peel off my Conti's. Over 1cm of tread has come off the fronts and it made a noticeable difference to cornering speeds.

After much fiddling and use of gaffer tape, we managed to tape a few laps and get some quite good footage. It never seems to show the real terror of the "moments" though. The merest flick of opposite lock followed by nervous laughter. So, we survived, both cars aren't quite smoking wrecks and our nerves held. We intend to return over the 2001 Easter weekend. If you're around, watch out for a speedy little blue Saxo being driven by a grinning maniac!

DISCLAIMER: I have no idea how to spell the corners correctly. Do not send me emails about this. I'm not German, so sod off. hehehe

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