“My First Time at the Nürburgring”

[eli walter racing team]

for me it has 3 stories ...

1. the experience at the track in the early 70s ... I was 8 years old when I was their the first time ... Formula 1 GP at Nürburgring ... nobody talked about Süd- or Nordschleife ... it was "THE RING". it was loud smelly, and it was exited to the max. ... until 1976 when my father decided that motorsport is tooooo dangerous ... after his HERO Niki Lauda almost died in a horrible accident ... that year we could not be there ... our place was AFAIremember Brünnchen ... so we would have not seen it anyway ... but there it ended for me for soooo many years.

3. GT4 ... driving Nordschleife with the RUF whatever ... it was the Boxster ... with a G25 Logitec steering wheel on a more or less big TV with less than 1m distance ... FOV was totally out of reality but I was good or GREAT to be honest ... it made me buy iRacing and until today this track is the one with goosebumps and goosebumps and ... goosebumps!

2. ... yes that is the point it was the REAL thing, so it has to be mentioned last ...
2003 with Timo Glock as instructor on a "Fahrsicherheitstraining am Nürburgring" driving 2 laps with my 2003 986 on the Touristenfahrten ... that made me buy later that year a track tool and drive at several race tracks around Europe frequently until 2014 where I decided to sell the 987 and the mx-5 track tools and drive virtual only from now onwards ...

fact is ... this track will be my favorite forever… no matter what.

 

[123rem]

First time for me was GPL too, around 1999. Thought it was an absolutely mental track. Still do.

 

[Mickdrs]

I've clocked up more laps on this than most due to online multiplayer..it's great fun

 

[Jasko76]

Grand Prix Legends

 

[Lum]

Grand Prix Legends withe the Ferrari. Back then I really tried hard to learn the track. Master it was another thing. Racing online was a game of survival, not going too fast. After that period of time I was away from simracing for almost 10 years, so I forgot almost all about the layout. Driving it again in a modern sim was with AC with a much slower car than a F1 from the sixties. I don't drive it too much now. I know it, but not that well. The first section of the track is the one I know best (for obvious reasons). But I find myself enjoying shorter tracks more than the longer ones.

 

[Btnuker]

First lap was in Shift and most laps in AC. 90% of the time i play on Nordschleife.
I startet trackdays at Hockenheimring but after driving the Nordschleife there is no way back. Now i go there at least one time a year for a trackday and can´t get enough of that track. Fastest lap was 8:30 BTG with an old BMW but I plan to buy a proper Porsche to improve my experience and lap time.

 

[Toonces]

Delete, pls.

 

[cnuk]

Grand Prix Legends ... you had to complete a lap on all of the tracks to get a Rank.
Then, you had to do the same in every car to get a Monster Rank.
You had to finish an out-lap before your timed lap. I remember my legs shaking through the last few turns the first time I was about to finish a clean lap (more than two wheels off invalidated a lap). Many times I screwed up the last chicane after about 15 minutes of driving (out-lap plus timed-lap)!

 

[Damage Inc]

GTR2 for me, mod track but really good, 1st "proper" would have to be GTR Evo. I knew I had it learnt when I did an endurance in Pcars, Nords at night in the wet.....butt clenching stuff!

 

[Mitja Bonca]

Great thread indeed. Thats actually my life story. I could write about it for days
But it all started with GPL where I did countless laps around Green Hell. Great and so challenging track, which just doesn`t let you breath and is constantly reminding you to be focused all the time.

 

[DonatDrifter]

I first drove on the Nordschleife on Need For Speed Shift 2 (definetly not a sim). It was a while ago. I remember that I hated it at first, but as the time went, I started to casually hot lap it.

2 years ago I moved to simracing. My first sim was rFactor 1 (then it was already old and I acctually cracked it).
and one of the first tracks were Nordschleife and Bathurst. As I was new to simracing, I had no skill at all, so my mission was to master these tracks. About two months later I found myself acctually setting decent (still bad) times with AMG GT3 at Nords and 650S at Bathurst.

Last summer I tried Assetto Corsa for the first time. I quite liked it, however I also played rFactor 2 (then also cracked, but not anymore) which made me feel like Assetto Corsa doesn't simulate enough. It was the summer I finally and properly mastered Nordschelife with GT3s. It was one of my stronger tracks.

I went back to cracked rFactor 2 during the autumn. No Nordschleife as I didn't like the modded one. That autumn was a pain. I played almost a year old cracked rFactor 2 with poorly made mods, imagine how bad that was.

I bought rFactor 2 along with the new GT3 Challengers pack on Winter Sale this year. I also bought GT3 Power Pack on Lunar Sale. I can say that I am currently having the fun of my life. I am carefully waiting for Studio 397's updates on laser-scanned Nordschleife. I can't wait for it to be released. I can already see myself doing million laps around it as it is possibly my third favourite track (I've driven most of the world's tracks and third place is really high position).

 

[Icky427]

Project Gotham Racing 2 was where it all started for me. Career mode was a long series of races with gradually faster cars. the very last race in career was 2 laps at nords in supercars. the big 3 that i remember were the 911 gt1, clk gtr, and tvr speed 12. you unlocked each of those by beating every race in career at silver, gold, or platinum difficulty respectively (if memory serves). to this day i was never able to unlock that damn tvr (cone challenges GRRRR). but, more to the point, i would jump on pgr2 every single day and run that race a couple times and win it on platinum difficulty every time, by a lot. i must have done thousands of laps on that game alone. since then its been my favorite track no matter the title. I especially love getting on the ever-populated nords track day assetto servers because on a rare occasion youll actually have a good battle with someone and its always epic. one of the best races i ever had there was in pgr3?4? everyone was in the cadillac sixteen lol and it was just a super close battle with a photo finish

 

[Mr Deap]

I learned the track in Gran Turismo 4. Although I learned the track layout much faster in PGR3. IN PGR4 I got addicted driving the bike on the track.

Although Dirt Rally with clutch & all is much more difficult as you have to remember all the jump point. Brake mid air would result engine stall. The Green Hell is now a joke.

 

[Lum]

Grand Prix Legends ... you had to complete a lap on all of the tracks to get a Rank.
Then, you had to do the same in every car to get a Monster Rank.
You had to finish an out-lap before your timed lap. I remember my legs shaking through the last few turns the first time I was about to finish a clean lap (more than two wheels off invalidated a lap). Many times I screwed up the last chicane after about 15 minutes of driving (out-lap plus timed-lap)!

I feel your pain, brother

 

[Janoflitzer]

Gran Turismo 5. There was this thing where you had been given the old Gullwing Mercedes and drive it Sector by Sector just to complete a whole lap afterwards. The same to be repeated with the SLS AMG. But actually never liked driving it back then because it was so freaking hard with only a controller. Same on GT6. Got Assetto Corsa years later and didn't want to spent money on the DLCs, so I always stuck with that mod, Snoopy's Nordschleife it was called. One day in a Steam sale I bought all of the DLCs then and thats when I started on the laserscanned Nordschleife, my first lap then for sure with the Glickenhaus. Love it since then and now every corner by heart. Thats probably the track where I spent my most virtual tracktime on!

Absolutely the same story for me! Such a great path. Now its IRacing where I try to learn the Nordschleife again a little bit better!

 

[birle1]

for me was GPL. i don´t have monster rank because where i used to race online they obligated me to take a slow car. but one summer, don´t rebember when, did some laps with the lotus and almost did a lap under 8 min. it is a hard track, but when you see all the sections, separated by timing, make it easier.

 

[thewarmer]

First heard about the track when I was a teenager in the UK I picked up some budget in-car Video . with all sorts of race and rally footage . it would have been around 84/85 there was short clip taken during practice for the last race their in was it 84 before they started construction on the new track.
Though the old Grid loop sections was already removed.

This however was not the more famous In-Car 956 that I later rented . yes just from that short first few sections I saw in that Video is captivated about this track that I had never heard of at that point of my life.

Though I had been aware of F1 or GP racing since 76 . But the Ring had been dropped before I was aware of it, So I like many only new of the myth of the Green Hell from what I had read in racing books.

When GP Legends dropped in the late 90's I was drooling when I saw it had the Green hell in there, however i could not afford a PC at that time never mind a wheel.

But when I finally owned a PC about 2001 I picked up both GP3 and GPL at budget prices . no wheel my first ever attempts at the ring where all of a joystick ,
Very hard to get any clean laps with that sort of set up.
But I was hooked with the Ring, I did finally get a wheel a few years later but it was still hard in GPL .
From then on I have driven all the versions in the PC forms from the first GPLcopied versions in the ISI F1 games through to the Rfactor and GTR versions .
Then the PlayStation versions .
These days the track is a staple in every big Car based game-

I would too love to see a classical version probably based on the post war version or the last version that was used for F1 racing , still with the big jumps and lack of crash barriers.

After all were have many old versions of classic tracks like Silver Stone or the Monza banking , or the old Spa track , classic Nürbergring is missing.

 

[Jugulador]

(look in the mirrors..)

Ye ye ye... this is practically all I did most of the time there. I called this reflexive device "BWS", or BMW Warring System... I dove kinda fast (not "pro fast" like, but "sometimes it's ok to pedal to the floor" like) but mates with BMW overdo it. I don't use to relate brands or car models with driver profiles, but probably the BMW cars give their driver more confidence than other brands lol.

Btw, grazie mille per un giorno sognando di realizzare questa pista in questo modo.

I did my first laps on the Nordschleife on a Yamaha FZS600 Fazer motorbike back in 2004 which was probably the most intense experience in my life.

I can only do something like it (probably with a 300cc or less) if it's only me, my bike and the track... can't imagine the feeling to ride over there among car drivers... or even other riders lol

 

[Nico]

My first experience on the ring (virtual, because I live way too far from the real ring) wasn't even in a sim. It was using a map mod for GTA IV. I drove tons of car mods on a track that was converted from NFS Shift. I remember it had a very bright asphalt texture, so I darkened it.

I spent quite a lot of time doing that, to the point when I finally encountered the track on a real sim, I had a rather decent idea of where each turn is and how to drive through them.

 

[T_rac3]

Long, long time ago in F1 Challenge 99-02 Sports car Challenge mod. It was love at first sight .
I tried every car I had and was completely amazing