Thursday, June 23, 2011

Toyota Europe Blog: The air is electrifying in Germany

Re-blog from my post on Toyota Europe's Corporate Blog coverage of the Nürburgring 24 Hour Race.

The excitement is building at that little known circuit nestled in the Eifel Mountains in Germany. I just arrived at the legendary Nürburgring for this weekend’s 24-hour race. Walking through the paddocks, you can just feel that electrifying excitement building in the air.

In the hustle and bustle, engineers are cleaning the wheels and checking the tyres. Just across the busy paddock walkway, members of another team are busy disassembling pieces of the car’s body to make adjustments and repairs.


I still can’t get over my first visit to a Nürburgring pit. There were six cars packed into a regular sized pit garage. A dozen engineers from all teams sharing that garage were all working on their cars at the same time. This is real racing. There are simply no place for fluff and waste. Quite different from when I visited the pits at Spa-Francorchamps a few years ago.

The free practice session finished a little while ago, and I already have some great news to report. GAZOO Racing leads the SP8 Class which it’s racing in, clocking in a fastest lap of 8:53.638, over 1.5 seconds ahead of it’s nearest rival in the same class.

The weather has turned out quite nicely after all. My TME colleague told me how stormy and rainy it was yesterday. Right now, I’m sitting right above the pits and there are slithers of blue sky and the heavy clouds are moving away. Mind you, this is only one minuscule part of the 20.81 kilometre Nordschleife circuit. So it could very well be pouring on the other side…

In a just a few moments, the first qualifying session will begin, and go all the way through until about 23:30. Keep following the Toyota Europe Corporate Blog where we will bring you the latest updates and progress from GAZOO Racing and Lexus throughout the gruelling 2011 Nürburgring 24 Hours race!

Follow the Toyota Europe Corporate Blog for live updates and pictures!

3 comments:

Sasha said...

This is the good blog with good pictures and good details. Please keep on posting the more stuff. I will like to hear more from you.

kryptonzone said...

Thanks Sasha :) will do my best!

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