Malcolm Edeson, CG-Lock & Brunswick at the ADAC 2007 Nurburgring 24Hrs

 

The biggest race in the world. Yes, LeMans gets more TV coverage (in the UK) but there is no race on earth as big as the Nurburgring 24hrs. Track Length, over 17miles, Entrants, approx 280. Starting Numbers, approx 220, Spectators (conservative estimate) 280,000. The reason they accept up to 280 entries is that they know that 50-60 will not make it into the race, mostly because they will crash and break down terminally before the race start. Once your in the race, your chances of finishing are still not high, Around 40% of the cars that start the race do not finish, again, either because of crashes on circuit or terminal break down. With such poor numbers, why would anyone in their right mind want to enter this race? Partially because of the immense challenge and also, driving the Nordschleife (the old 14+ mile Nurburgring) is a fantastic experience and on every drivers wish list, to race there, in a proper race car is absolutely awesome.

 

CG-Lock/Brunswick Alfa 147 looking good. Me on the grid before race start looking .. well frankly a little rough J

 

.The build up to the race started for my team (Brunswick Motorsport) a week before the race itself. As well as the 24hr race there are also loads of support races, plus a 200+ driver go-kart race. It takes a many hours to get the cars through scrutineering and the admin done. My race weekend started on the Wednesday evening as I arrived at my B&B where the rest of the team were staying. It was 11pm and the team had only just left the circuit. I should point out that they were running 2 cars, the CG-Lock Alfa 147 JTD and a Mazda RX7. The team consisted of about 8 dedicated mechanics and a number of others in key rolls from sorting out all the admin to keeping us all fed and watered. With the other drivers (4 per car) there was just over 20 of us, most of whom I’d just met for the first time.

Thursday was driver sign-on and equipment scrutineering. This meant long queues and it took most of the day. There was still lots to do with the cars, adjustments had to be made to ensure we could all drive comfortably in the car which involved much seat and steering wheel moving.

 

I’d already been for a seat fitting in the UK where I had an insert made using expandable foam (a bit like “no more gaps”) so I was fairly well sorted. Dozens of other small things served to make it a long day again with our evening dinner being on the tail lift of the truck, steak rolls and German saugage

 

QUALIFYING & RACE

 

Qualifying was due to start at 10am on the Friday morning. It was decided that, as the last driver of the car (test day at Silverstone) I would start first. It was going to be a very busy session as no cars had had the time to crash or fail yet and most would be itching to get out on track but I was really looking forward to it. New pads meant an initial tour of the GP circuit to bed them in, then as I was building up speed for the peel off onto the Nordschleife the cabin began to fill with smoke as the engine list power. In seconds it was such that I couldn’t see out of the windscreen as I pulled off onto the side of the track.

 

External Shots of when the Turbo Blew

 

I had no idea what was happening at the time and a German Marshal came over to me waving a fire-extinguisher and said “Driver, are you on fire!” (well he said something in German first, when I replied “English” that’s when he said that. I said “I don’t know, you tell me!” LOL. I was pretty sure my car wasn’t on fire, as soon as I came to a halt the smoke started to dissipate.

 

I radio’d the team that I had stopped with a problem and jumped out of the car and the Marshals pushed my car back off the track to safety. We keep a mobile phone in the car for emergencies so I rang the team (couldn’t use the radio as I’d cut the power in the car). I told them the full story and they said, just get it back and we’ll take a look. The Marshal came back to me and “we have called for the truck, come and have a cold drink with us”. As we now, Marshals are the salt of the earth and I can say categorically that the German Marshals are no exception.

 

After about 10 minutes, the tow truck arrived and took me and the stricken car back to the pits.

 

As part of the preparations I had fitted my Bullet Cam system into the car. The Bulletcam is a 520TVL model which feeds a Mobibox Solid-State Recorder. The microphone had packed up so there is no “actual” sound on the video but that did give the option to add some suitable music J

 

In-Car Video of the moment the Turbo Blew (click to play)

 

Me explaining how much smoke there was…or… alternatively practicing Tai-Chi

At this stage I felt it was probably just an oil-line ruptured of perhaps a turbo pipe blown off.

 

Once we got it back to the pits the Brunswick boys dived under the bonnet to see what the problem was. It was quickly confirmed to be another Turbo failure. The team had been going through a spate of these recently. The Turbos are not race turbo’s but off the shelf units for the bigger Alfa engines.

 

They have been used for years in Alfa Cup cars and the teams original turbo (same make & model) had done well in excess of 100 hours in many 24hr races inc Nurburgring/Dubai/Bahrain and Silverstone all without a problem. It was only replaced as it got physically damaged in a crash. This one was brand new, fitted just before qualifying and essentially failed within 6 miles, for no explicable reason.

 

I explained to one of my co-drivers, Dean Clements, how I looked out of the rear view mirror and there was this huge plume of smoke behind me.

 

 

On removing the Turbo it appeared that the centre shaft had simply lost it’s retaining nut, very similar to what the team had seen on earlier Turbo failures. This did not go down well with team bosses Giles Groombridge and Dave Ashford who just couldn’t believe it had failed so soon.

 

”Yes boss, I was just driving the thing and then it went BOOOM!”

 

We did have a spare Turbo which was the one we had run on an earlier test session, where it ran faultlessly for around 4 hours, but we were worried that this meant we would have no spare going into the race. Try as they might they could not source another Turbo during Friday so we went into evening qualifying with the spare Turbo fitted.

 

As we had 2 drivers who had never driven the car before, Nick Reynolds and Dean Clements, the team decided to give them their runs first. The plan was to do the minimum requirement of 2 laps of the full 17 miles circuit. The 3rd driver, Dave Smith, had raced with them many times before, in this car, on previous Nurburgring 24hr races and in the other 24hour races they had entered. I’d agreed that he could do his session 3rd and I would therefore do the last session, hopefully before it got too dark.

 

Thankfully the car ran faultlessly and at about 21:30 I went out to complete my 2 laps. By this time is was pretty dark and the Alfa was not blessed with the best lighting. I was certainly having to be very careful in a number of places on the circuit as I just couldn’t see my usual reference points. Line is so, so important on the Nordschleife, get it even slightly wrong at speed and you’ll go off and, as runoff area was not a consideration when this circuit was built there isn’t much .. at all .. so you go off and it goes bang very quickly. This was my first time on track with the now legendary Nordschleife crowd. Most had been camped there all week and many had erected huge and quite sophisticated structures, even complete grandstands. In the busier areas it was like driving through a fairground, they even had fireworks going off. Fantastic atmosphere.

 

Certainly was Dark once I got out onto the old Nordschleife

 

I was fairly pleased with my lap considering the dark and we were all feeling really upbeat that the car had lasted and was running strongly. The session did reveal a few things that needed attention, to both cars so the tail lift again became our dining table. I left around midnight bit the team where still working on the last remaining items on their snag list. The Saturday (race day) would not need to be an early start but the team were keen to have the cars 100% before turning in. As it was they stopped at around 1:30am with just a couple of items to attend to on the Saturday morning.

 

As it was we got to the circuit next day at about 9am. Amazingly, racing had been going on since 07:50 as it in fact had done the day before. There were all manner of cars racing, GT Cars, Classics etc. plus a go-kart race with some 200+ drivers. Even more unusually the ages of the drivers ranged between 6 and 60+ and the go-karts where equally as varied. One go-kart resembled the 6-wheels Tyrell F1 car, with 4 wheels at the front and a massive 600cc Kawasaki Motorbike engine in the rear.

 

6-wheels, 600cc Go-Kart

Budding 6-year old Schumachers prepare for the Ring.

 

Our race was due to start at 15:00. Which meant that we needed to leave for the grid at about 13:00. There are actually 3 grids, just to spread the cars out a little. The reason for the early line-up is the public are allowed to walk onto the start/finish line and view all the cars, take photos, collect autographs etc. Many of the teams also had PR activities and photo-shoots happening. Dave Smith, the teams usual and very experienced driver was due to start and I was up 2nd. The plan was to do about 6 laps (1hr10mins) then pit for fuel and driver change. We could go up to 8 laps but we wanted to have slightly shorter first stints.

 

It was an impressive sight, well over 200 cars, probably 800 drivers, 800 mechanics, another 800 team members and associates etc. plus a couple of thousand or more of the public and press.

 

Last minute checks were being carried out, wheels torqued up, drivers getting ready. The atmosphere was electric.

 

The sheer variety of cars was also impressive, there was the usual BMWs and Porsches of course but there was also Mk11 Toyota MR2s, a Lotus Elise, Clio’s, Seat’s and of course lots of VW Golfs.

 

Of the more unusual cars there was an original 1970s Mini Cooper and a big old Merc that was only slightly modified for track, running on road tyres and which was a regular entrant. The guy drives it to the track, races it and then drives it home.

The Brunswick 147 Crew, Bob, Mick, Tony & Dave, looking a little pensive on the grid.

 

Suddenly, 20 minutes before the race was due to start we had a tannoy announcement that is was being declared a “Wet Race”. This seemed odd as though a bit overcast it did not look like rain, however, the circuit is so vast that it could well have been pouring down on one part and bright sunshine on another. We switched to wet tyres as they announced the start would be delayed by 30 minutes. By this time the rain was coming down in buckets and from the TV screens dotted around the garaged we could see the conditions on track where very bad.

 

Race Green Flag laps start – Brunswick RX7 shown in the foreground

In all it was delayed well over an hour and started with 2 green flag laps (of the entire 17mile circuit) so it was after 5pm before the race started proper. As I was the next driver I got suited up.

 

As it was about an hour before I’d be in the car I didn’t bother with my race boots, I just had on my normal leather shoes. Hydration is really important in endurance races and I had some special drinks, a before, during and after set. I’d mixed up my before and was planning to mix up my during and fill my “drinks bladder” so I could get s drink in the car. I’d also got my bulletcam fitted to the car and my recorder primed and ready to fit into the car.

 

As the race had just started I knew I had a good hour to get myself mentally prepared for what was surely going to be one hell of an experience.

 

 

Next thing I know the 147 Crew Chief is running up to me “Malc, get ready, you are in the car, Dave’s got cramp and can’t drive, he’ll be here in 1 minute”. Our radio system is only in range when the driver comes back onto the GP circuit so we get 90 secs of warning before a pitstop. I rushed round, got my helmet and gloves, got my intercom in place, grabbed hold of my custom seat cushions and that was it, Dave was in the pits and we did our usual slick changeover. Door slammed, flag up and I’m away, didn’t even have time to get nervous .. then, after about 20 secs I hear my crew chief on the radio “Malc, the lead group have just come by, they will be with you in about 15 seconds”.

 

Now, bear in mind the lead group is about 70 cars, mostly BMW/Viper/Porsche, probably all capable of lapping 2-3 minutes quicker than our car. They were on their 3rd flying lap and used to the conditions, still raining (not hard) but very wet”.

 

This was the 1st time I had ever driven the car on wets or the track in wet conditions. Of course behind the first groups was another group of about 70 cars, all quicker over a lap than our car then the final group of 70 of which some were quicker and all benefiting from a couple of flying laps already. My first lap was, to say the least “fraught”. I would estimate I was overtaken by around 140 cars in the first lap.

 

I would say the most hairy was letting about 20+ 150mph cars by, all racing each other, down the Foxhole. The Karousel came in handy when one particular group were catching me as I just drove around the outide letting them all pass by on the banked inside line.

Yours truly at the wheel of the Alfa, looks like the last lap as grid is pretty much dry

 

By lap two it felt like a normal race, I was being passed by a few cars but much more slowly then as I upped my pace I was also getting past a few cars and actually had some great battles during the session. As I was coming up on the hour the track was showing some dry lines and was very dry on the GP track section. When speaking to the pits I said that I could run on slicks (as I knew where the really wet bits were) but I wouldn’t put a new driver on them yet. As it was silly to come in and do a single lap and changeover we decided to run one more lap on the wets then swap drivers. I have to admit I did not want to get out of the car and think I could have done another hour easily.

 

Again I was amazed by the crowd, I’d not seen much detail in the twilight of quail, in the light you could see the shear scale of things, every time I went through a corner it was like being a celebrity walking into a hotel with flashbulbs going off by the dozen.

 

There were huge multi-platformed grandstands, tents of all shapes and sizes, I even saw some people up a tree in what looked like a treehouse.

 

You could even hear music above the engine noise (which was pretty loud). There must have also been someone with some talk radio or commentary going on as I kept hearing this talking and thought it was coming over my intercom .. in fact .. I think it was, I’m pretty sure there were some people in the crowd actually broadcasting over the in-car radio systems J

 

Seemingly every nook and cranny had a bunch of spectators leaning over the barrier, taking photos etc, there really is nothing like this place anywhere in the world.

Examples of the amazing “spectator built” structures

 

Out of the car and about a gallon of water later I went off to get changed, it was at this stage that, bending down to remove my race boots I realised I wasn’t in fact wearing them, I still had on my leather lounge shoes!! In the rush had completely forgotten to change them (wouldn’t have had time anyway I don’t think).

 

The car ran for the next 2hrs+ no problem, Driver 2 & 3 doing a sterling job. Driver 3 had complained of a vibration which turned out to be a front hub problem which actually took quite some time to fix. It was now starting to get dark and Dave Smith went out for his stint. Around 15mins later we got the call we had all dreaded, the Turbo had blown. We heard the message just as we also saw the car on the TV and live internet feed. Also, my eldest son, who was watching the feed in the UK txt’d me to say he’d seen it blow up.

 

The 2 Blown Turbos

 

The car actually blew up just before the turn which takes you onto the Nordschleife part of the circuit, which is just before the pit lane entry, so our driver was able to park up and walk to the pits fairly quickly.

 

We were all pretty sure it was the Turbo again although 4 of the team went down to push the car back into the pits so we could check for sure. This was not quite as spectacular a blow up as earlier in that there was not the same amount of smoke generated but the inside of the turbo (bottom one in the pic on the right) was more severely damaged.

 

When a Turbo goes there is always the possibility that some stray bits of metal have got into the engine itself so the team stripped it all off straight away but couldn’t be sure. Either way this was the end of the race for us.

 

It’s hard to describe the feeling in the garage, dejected just doesn’t seem string enough. Everyone from the team came over to us drivers and said how much they were gutted for us and for a few more minutes I probably wallowed in this emotion before realising that these guys had put even more work into the race than we had, been there a week preparing and it was all over for them also (at least the 147 team) so we shook off the blues and tried to raise everyones spirit.

 

Aftermath of the Turbo Blow

 

It was absolutely awesome whilst it lasted and I’d pretty much already decided I’d be back next year even before the failure.

 

If anything the non-finish would make me even more determined to go back next year and finish. I know from my previous endurance outings that there is a very special feeling when you cross the line after such a marathon event.

 

But it was not to be for 2007, at least not for the Alfa but …. we did still have another car in the race, the RX7 … but for how long?

 

 

Unfortunately at about 1am we heard that it had crashes badly just after Kalenhard, in a section called Miss-Hit-Miss which unfortunately our RX7 re-christened to Miss-Hit-Hit-Hit.

 

We were worried for our driver, in fact one of the directors of Brunswick, Dave Ashford. He had called us by phone (we keep a mobile in the car for emergencies) but seemed dazed, didn’t know where he was, just that he had jumped over a barrier, he thought the car had rolled. After a couple of hours we had Dave and the car back. Dave had a broken tooth and some bruising but was otherwise fine.

 

The car was not so good. Both front wheels were smashed and there was quite a bit of front end damage but last I heard it was repairable.

 

As Dave had no real recollection of what happened we looked at data from the onboard DL1 Data-Logger, coupled with us spotting a light graze on the rear bumper we deduced that he had been tagged at the entry to this section. It’s a very fast section, probably around 90mph with the car heavily weighted and the slightest touch would have sent the car into the barriers (which are about 2-3ft from the edge of the circuit).

 

It was actually quite a grizzly experience watching the data logger trace in slow motion as the g-forces went from side to side and the trace eventually halting.

 

Dejected of course that both cars were out but we were just happy that Dave had emerged from the accident relatively unhurt.

 

The post-crash RX7, doesn’t look too bad here but nasty surprises await

 once the full extent of the damage is known.

 

 

So, it was not what we’d hoped for. The Brunswick boys had done this event 5 times previously and had always finished but the odds start stacking up and I suppose the luck finally ran out for us this time.

 

The Brunswick RX7 in better times earlier in the race.

Yes, I would have loved to have got more time in the race but the event itself was brilliant. Not just the racing side of it.

 

When you do this sort of thing it brings people together, in success or adversity. I went knowing only 2 of the team but I now know them all and count them as very good friends. They did everything they could to make the event a success and worked amazingly hard and I’d like to thank each and every one of them.

 

My thanks also to CG-Lock in the UK for their support, not just financially but for their enthusiasm for the event and ensuring we got some great on-track photographs.

 

 

 

PHOTO CREDITS

 

Andy Mullholland

Jochen (Frozenspeed)