well a good trip, but for all the wrong reasons.
it got off to a bad start when on the chunnel on the way over i realised i had forgotten my year card transponder! F**K!
Friday only manged 4 laps all afternoon - I fitted some Gilles rearsets before I left, bought them second hand. Dont assume that people read instructions correctly - dispite sending me the LHS fully assembled, they hadnt done the shift rod lock nut up correctly. end result, at the end of the lap I am stuck in 4th gear! spent an hour or so sorting that out, got 3 laps in before someone closed it.
Saturday - it was only supposed to be open at 5:30, but it opened late. I was one of the lucky ones who managed to get a lap in before it closed 15 mins later. My other half got through for a second lap, but i was stuck at the barrier
Sunday - was the day of closures. I cant remember the last time thre were so many in one day. only managed about 6 laps. We came on half way round the track to warm up tyres etc, we got to the barrier for our first full lap, my other half comes into hatzenbach 1 (2kms into the lap) and the bike goes sideways - i hav no idea how he kept it upright! my friend and I who were following stick our left hands up into the air and pull off track as quickly as is possible. The boys ran up track to start flagging traffic to get them to slow down - theyre still coming in far too quickly! one car spins and misses my friends bike by about 1m!! In the mean time i am trying to phone the ring office but its engaged, someone must already be ringing. So i start flagging traffic. a marshall turns up soon and the track closes. looking at the track and there is a HUGE oil slick 1m wide right on the line. I can only assume that I managed to get off line quickly enough for it not to affect me. Had a chat with the marshall, the person who has dumped the oil has not stopped and they dont know where the oil slick ends - but it was atleast as far as aremburg (another couple of Kms away). so we did the slowest half lap *ever* completely off line, avoiding anything that looked like it could be oil and we pulled off at breidscheid exit - im sure that I could still see oil!
went up to the main car park, and it emerged that a GT3 had dumped its oil but was denying it and a biker had gone down on it -understandably not very happy. So we went to have a quick chat with the German police, but because we hadnt witnessed anything we werent much help
Fortunately Dale was out on track tacking photos at the time, and had caught the guy with fluids pissing out of the rear of his car
http://www.bridgetogantry.com. The german police were very interested in this!
We then decided to call it a day, loaded the bikes into the van, booked our rooms for easter
and headed off to the pub for something to eat.
good company, gorgeous weather and good beer - lap tally for the year, ca 110. THinking of taking the car over in October
