After last minute repairs at 2mD’s workshop and a small odysee to get the Tüv papers for Charlie up to date, we were ready to drive to the ring.

I picked up Sus@nne at her office and we drove to the Medenbach service station to meet with SebastianS and Bloemche. We got held up by a 12km traffic jam caused by road works on the A3 right between Limburg and Diez.

We made it to the Ring 20 minutes before closing time, which left us time for one lap with a lot of traffic. But at least I got the chance for a shake down to see how the freshly paved parts feel like.

After checking into our B&B with the Görgen Family in Herresbach we continued to the Restaurant Paddock, where we settled all the paper work with Traudl, got our fuel coupons and transponder and had a pleasant meal.

Saturday morning we started to the filling station to top off charlies gas and check the tire pressure and drove to the tourist entry to the Ring for technical inspection. Once we passed that and listened to the driver’s briefing, we finally queued to get on the ring.

The race itself was fun. Charlie was performing well, the other participants were reasonably fair (with one exception: The green/white M3 who tried to pass us in a very tight corner and forced me to slam into the brakes to avoid a collision) and the weather was exceptional.

We experimented with an iPhone for time measurement and were more or less pleased with the outcome, we might use stop watches as backup for the next race though.

In one lap I played with a couple of MINIs down Fuchsröhre and up to Adenauer Forst, but it seems I drove a bit too harsh for Sus@nne, as she was feeling a little sick after that. She needed two laps to recover, which were the pit in and pit out laps, so that was no problem at all.

I noticed a little rubbing in the fenders with the new 215/40R17 tires, so I might need to cut away more plastic from the edges to get more clearance.

We finished 8th in the mini classification and 96th in the general classification, which isn’t bad, but leaves some room for improvement. But the more important is, that we had fun, got charlie home undamaged and were classified.

As the ring was totally crowded afterwards, we decided not to drive in tourist traffic, but head straight home. The trip home was totally uneventful.