A weekend at the Nürburgring

While the Monaco Grand Prix was in full swing, I was sat on the side of the Nordschleife watching everything from a Porsche GT3 R Hybrid to an Audi D11 V8 hammer through the Karussell.

The winning works BMW M3 GT2 of Jörg Müller, Augusto Farfus, Pedro Lamy and Uwe Alzen

The Nürburgring 24 Hour race was nearly over and despite the fact that the Manthey Porsche (which had won the race for the previous four years) had dropped out after seven hours thanks to contact with a back marker, and the vast majority of the Audi R8 LMS customer racers had suffered from similar luck, the racing was superb. As Olly Jarvis – who was in one of the R8s – told me before the race: “I’ll overtake more cars here in a lap than I would in a whole season of DTM”.

The whole weekend at the ‘Ring is quite spectacular as more than 220,000 people turn up and the atmosphere is nothing like any other race. Le Mans comes close, but at the Nürburgring 24 hours you wouldn’t be hard pressed to stroll through the garages of even some of the largest teams during the race. The thought of casually walking up to a Ferrari mechanic during the Monaco Grand Prix and asking how their race is going is, well, ridiculous.

The ironic part was that I made the journey over to Germany in a car that would have been more at home in the Principality than at the Nürburgring 24 Hours: the new Audi R8 Spyder

We were lucky enough to drive the standard R8 V10 last year and were suitably impressed by how easy it was to drive while at the same time, being astonishingly fast. The R8 Spyder is exactly what you’d expect from Audi nowadays. In the real world it’s just as fast – there may be the odd purist who will argue that it doesn’t handle as well, or that it’s not such a good ‘driver’s car’, but quite frankly, that’s a load of old codswallop.

If you buy a convertible version of a supercar you want the experience of driving with the roof down and listening to the noise from the exhaust– which is superb in the R8 by the way, while still being behind the wheel of a car that will make your hair stand on end. Yes, if you’re a professional racing driver and you’re on a circuit then you can argue that the coupé is a better car to drive. But a normal human being? On normal B roads? It is breathtakingly quick.

It’s supercar money, and you’ll need plenty spare to pay for fuel, but to worry about such things when you can afford a car like this is like worrying how much it is to fuel your super-yacht to get to the Monaco Grand Prix.

As weekends go, this was about as good as it gets. Proper racing with a wide variety of cars, a relaxed atmosphere and a proper car to get there in. Next year I strongly recommend a trip to the Nordschleife, and I’d also recommend trying to get your hands on an R8 Spyder…

We’ll be uploading a video of the car and a photo diary of the event as soon as possible so do check back soon.