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Road Trip with Jan Coomans: my 21-year quest to conquer the Nurburgring Nordschleife

русская версия | english version

18 февраля 2026

The Nurburgring Nordschleife (Нюрбургринг Нордшляйфе)

Jan Coomans
photographer, mechanical expert and high-speed enthusiast. Mechanics are Jan’s work and hobby at the same time.

On a warm summer day in 2004, I fired up a rudimentary navigation program on my Nokia dumb phone and set the destination to Nurburg. A friend had told me of the “best track in the world” that was located there, and you could just show up and buy a ticket to drive it. Since I had never actually driven on a racetrack before, it seemed like a good place to start. Well, I was 24 after all.

The Green Hell

The fact that I’m writing about it now, nearly 22 years later, is evidence of the addiction which so far shows no signs of easing. Sure, there were times where I took multiple-year long breaks from visiting the Green Hell, but once that place gets under your skin it’s probably there for life. Sooner or later, the urge to go for a 20.8 kilometre lap always returns. We’re talking of the old Nurburgring, the one that was eventually deemed too dangerous for Formula One and where Niki Lauda suffered his terrible crash. While the old track will be 100 years old next year, they also built a much smaller modern GP track right next to it in 1984 and that’s where most races are held these days.

The legendary Nordschleife these days only has a single dedicated racing series on it, and is mostly used for car industry tests and regular driving enthusiasts.

I find it difficult to articulate what makes the place special, maybe it’s something in the air, but as soon as you get there you can feel that you’re in the Mecca of the automotive world. That’s not to say that the place hasn’t changed at all over the two decades that I’ve been making the pilgrimage there. Back in 2004 you could show up at 9 AM on a sunny Saturday morning and simply park in the small parking lot right at the entrance to the track. These days, you’re more likely to get stuck in traffic before you can even see the entrance.

First, there was Top Gear and Jeremy Clarkson who woke up car enthusiasts from all over the world (but mostly the UK) to the existence of the Nurburgring Nordschleife, these days the crowds are drawn in by various influencers. As one might imagine, the “old guard” and locals haven’t necessarily been thrilled by this evolution towards vast crowds of inexperienced and often young drivers descending on the place in vast numbers and occasionally creating a bit of disturbance, but the Nurburgring belongs to everyone and more people visiting means more money for the local economy which depends in no small part on this automotive tourism.

When and how?

Still, if you want to enjoy driving the track in your own car, you’ll probably find that the sessions which are open to the public are now both too busy and too rowdy unless you can find a quiet session on a mid-week evening early or late in the season. All of summer is pretty much a red period and to be avoided at all cost. Unless you enjoy traffic jams, track closures due to constant crashes and over-aggressive drivers trying to make up for lost time I would say that the classic “touristenfahrten” as the public sessions are called in German is no longer fit for the purpose of just enjoying your car and the track.

Privately organised track days, when the track is open exclusively to people who have booked with the organiser, are the best way to drive the ‘ring now. The pricing ranges from expensive to very expensive, but it’s a much safer format with less cars on track and more people who generally know what they’re doing. Trackdays also allow for the entire track to be used, including the long Dotting Hohe straight where the fastest cars can reach well in excess of 300 km/h.

During the public sessions, the straight would be closed off as you have to pay for each individual lap and barriers are used to control access where you have to scan the lap ticket.

Trackdays vary in price because it’s up to the organiser how many cars he will let on track. A trackday that is limited to only 100 cars is obviously more expensive than one where 160 entries are sold. If you’re driving a fast car and know your way around the track, you’ll want to get the most expensive day you can find if you want to have a shot at the holy grail: doing a full 20.8 kilometre lap without encountering any slower traffic. I can count on one hand the occasions where this has happened to me.

The altitude changes can be pretty intense

Nurburgring timing

While I have done some wheel-to-wheel racing, I’m a bit more of a time attack driver where doing a single fast lap matters the most. The Nurburgring Nordschleife is a truly fascinating place for chasing times for several reasons. Firstly there is the fact that it is by far the most quoted track for lap times anywhere in the world. Many car manufacturers will literally print the Nurburgring time of their performance cars in the brochures, and there’s a never ending arms race between car brands to set the fastest ‘ring time not only for bragging rights but also the marketing opportunities now that the entire car world is aware of it being the most challenging track in the world.

But driving the Nurburgring is also a bit like playing golf in that perfection is impossible. You never stop learning, and the perfect lap simply does not exist. Not for anyone.

On a modern Formula One track perfection may not be possible either, but at least you can very close to it. On the Green Hell, one must maintain more margin for error. You pretty much need to know every bump and imperfection over every centimeter of the nearly 21-kilometer track. And those bumps will change over the course of months and years. It is a never ending chase to get as close as possible to the limit without ever going over it. This chase of perfection costs you fuel, tires, brake pads and significant wear and tear on the car you’re driving. I suspect grey hair may also be involved, but I have no direct proof of that.

Ring tool

Of course, one also wants to keep upgrading their tools. “Ring tool” is actually the chosen moniker for the cars that have been modified specifically for amateur Nurburgring use. When you’ve reached the point where you can’t set a faster lap time, the obvious temptation is to fit upgrades or simply buy a faster car and restart the journey of gradually setting the best possible lap time you can in that one. It is a slippery slope, and generally every ‘ring addict will gradually progress to own the fastest car that they can afford to run. Back in 2004, I was in a Volvo 850 Turbo which gradually evolved into a stripped out ring tool with twice the original power until it was time to get something else. As I recall, I dabbled in Audi RS cars for a few years before reaching what everyone is the final stage of chasing Nurburgring times: getting a Porsche.

The Audi B7 RS4 I drove in Moscow also made the
long pilgrimage twice

More specifically, a 911 GT3. The GT3 and GT3 RS variants have been pretty much designed from the ground up to drive the Nurburgring, and there simply is no other car that is better suited for this track. You can buy a GT3, drive it straight to the Nurburgring, do 30 laps in it in a day and it will ask for nothing except fuel. Then you just drive it home. There’s not much else that can do that. Porsche also have a large presence right next to the race track as they have a service centre three minutes driving from the track entrance, and they have a majority stake in the Manthey racing team which operates it. There, you can have your car set up to perfection and buy suspension and aerodynamic modifications for select models all while keeping your precious warranty intact.

So now that I have a 911 GT3, somewhat questionably specced with a manual gearbox since I am also a stubborn bastard, what is next? I keep asking myself the same thing. My initial goal was to get a “manual” GT3 below 7 minutes but that turned out to be a bit easier than expected as already on the second trackday the car turned a 6:48 “BTG”. The BTG time literally means the time it takes to get from the bridge just past the start to the gantry that runs over the track near the end. It’s the way most amateur lap times are done since on many of the public days you can’t go full throttle down the long straight in between these two points.

Every second matters

Next up, I figured an ambitious goal would be to try and beat the original time set by a Porsche professional driver back when my generation of GT3 was launched back in 2017. That time corresponded to a 6:54, and I did manage to go more than a second under that time the following year. I did have to use slightly better tires for it than the original car did, and the track itself is definitely faster than it was back then, but I can’t pretend to be anywhere near as fast as the legend that was named Lars Kern anyway so give me a break!

Did that mean then that it’s now time to relax and bask in the very limited internet glory that comes with obscure achievements such as this? Not really. The track is a living thing, it keeps evolving and it keeps throwing up new challenging. Plus, there is still the GT3 RS.. a quicker car than mine. And then the kit that Manthey Racing sells to make that even quicker. And so on and so forth. At this stage, the whole thing should probably qualify as a disease since “addiction” doesn’t seem a strong enough word.

Most addictions certainly aren’th this expensive.

Even so, I would still recommend to any driving enthusiast to visit the Nurburgring at least once in their life. It’s a magical place steeped in history and full of people who have gasoline running through their veins. Just be aware that there’s a chance that you become hooked, and there is no known cure for it if you do.

My fastest lap to date.. with some room left to
improve

18 февраля 2026

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