Sunday, October 16, 2011

Another day at The Green Hell

Masked FT-86 getting ready to go
I went to cover the VLN9 race yesterday at the Nürburgring. Before I headed out from Brussels, I was told that the temperature at The Ring was a tad frozen. When the teams rocked up at 07:00, they had to spend quite a long time scraping frost off the cars, even though they were mostly wrapped and stored in the team's work tents in the paddocks.



Still, it turned out to be a wonderful day in Germany. The sun was shining, and no hint of clouds, for mid-October. It couldn't have been more ideal. The only problem was that the temperature was indeed a little chilly, so heavy jackets and lots of warm clothes was the right call.

GAZOO Racing LFA driven by Morizo following IS F
The VLN9 race is a 4-hour endurance race. However, due to some collisions early on, the race was red flagged for something like 45 min or more after just over an hour of running. All 200 or so cars had to come into the pits until the track was safe for running again. One of the cars "injured", sadly, was one of the Aston Martins from their works team. The driver was quite furious when he got into the pits I can tell you.

The general atmosphere was a lot more calm than for the 24-hour race. It felt a lot more like a relaxed weekend's race for most people. Like them going on a track day, but with full pit support, catering, VIP treatment, etc.

Here's a vid of Morizo taking the GAZOO Racing prepared Lexus LFA out of the pits following a race prepped Lexus IS F CCS-R (go to about 00:19 for the amazing and intoxicating V10 roar!):


2 comments:

Steve H said...

"Morizo" is just plain awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w97AHxsoDZs

Also, so is this guy who takes the Camry for a spin ;).

Keep up the blog.

kryptonzone said...

Thanks Steve. Love the vid of Morizo having a go with NASCAR Camry :)