Actions do speak louder than words. Interesting insight. I'll admittedly be a bit more self-conscious with an instructor around. 
Photo by Chris Tropea
Aside from the spectacle and excitement of the race itself, my favorite part of my semi-annual trip to the Nürburgring 24 Hours is the week after. Since I’m already in a beautiful foreign country, I usually take the week off, bring my wife over for some R&R, and see the sights a bit.
And, of course, I always get back to the track a bit.
Not only do I love the fact that I can rent a car and turn a few laps on one of the world’s greatest racing circuits, but I love the culture around the track. The sprawling circuit surrounds three villages, and another half dozen or more sit in the Eifel National Park within a few minutes’ drive. And all of them are largely dedicated to life around the track.
The best comparison is probably to a ski or surf town–small towns that wouldn’t exist except to service the enjoyment of a valuable natural resource, in this case 20-plus kilometers of the most exciting asphalt on earth. The Hauptstraßen–main streets–of all the towns are lined with businesses catering to track junkies and racers.
In the lovely village of Adenau, bordering the Breidscheid corner complex, there’s a lovely café where you can get an amazing cup of coffee and some delicious German pastries right next to a shop where you can buy your choice of Pagid brake pad compounds. That’s my kind of mall.
There are also the instructors. Much like the grizzled, sun-bleached surf gurus in ’80s movies who quit their Wall Street jobs to move to the North Shore and ride the waves with a near-religious passion, the Nürburgring is surrounded by veteran Nordschleife pilots who will gladly trade their knowledge for a few euros.
On my recent trip, I rented an F30 BMW 3 Series–instantly familiar as I’m greatly enjoying tracking our 435i project car–from the good folks at Ringfreaks. The crew there introduced me to Thomas Brügmann–easily findable online as RingStruktor–who daily drives a BMW M2 with a full cage and a wing big enough to lift a Citation business jet.
At this point, after a decade-plus of trips and a bunch of instructed laps during my Nürburgring permit class, I feel like I’m getting a decent handle on the flow of the track. Of course, the racer/journalist side of me couldn’t resist a few questions about Thomas’ unique perspective on helping people go fast.
How does he assess someone’s abilities and limits so quickly and adjust his instruction to make sure everyone is safe and has a good time not involving hospitals or tow trucks? Thomas took a few beats to consider the question before taking a deep breath and unleashing his truth bomb: “Well, if you are shitty, we are going to slow down.”
Boom.
Aside from desperately wanting that on a T-shirt for my next instructing gig, I did allow Thomas to elaborate a bit on his approach. “Really, you can tell if someone knows what they’re doing within the first couple corners,” he said, “or even before that sometimes. How they sit. How they address the wheel and pedals. Do they know how to put on and adjust the belts? How comfortable they look in general can tell you a lot about someone’s overall skill level.”
From there it’s just matching the instruction to the student. Tourists get the survival version, mostly warnings of what’s over the next blind crest or around the next blind corner. Intermediates with some skill get a more performance-focused line talk.
My big impression from this encounter that I’ll carry with me on all my subsequent coaching excursions is Thomas’ assessment of someone’s skills. Nowhere in his process did he ever mention asking a student how good of a driver they were. Even with me, he simply asked how many laps I had at the track (my sub-100 total is still basically a goose egg in the grand scheme of track knowledge at this irreducibly complex facility) but never really inquired about my overall experience level. He gleaned all of that from context, attitude, and those first two corners where I like to think I wasn’t shitty because we didn’t slow down.
So, my next right-seating gig or even some trackside data analysis probably won’t include a student self-evaluation before those first laps. I feel like assessing someone’s attitude and actions may be a more honest, less fakeable window into their actual skill and comfort level. If things start going awry, I can always point at my “If you are shitty, we’re going to slow down” T-shirt to remind them to reel it in a bit.
Actions do speak louder than words. Interesting insight. I'll admittedly be a bit more self-conscious with an instructor around.
Let me know when you make that shirt, because I NEED one as well!
Great article!
LOL, awesome quote!
I pretty much already do this.
I do ask what experience someone has and then watch what they do for the first few corners.
I think it's important to ask about experience because sometimes you get very experience people who have terrible habits. It's often an indicator that they haven't been listening to their instructor.
1. Hands should be smooth until counter-steer is necessary, then fast.
2. How far ahead do they look, judged by how much later they react to something I see.
While a novice usually slows more than necessary, its also a sign of being cautious. What is difficult to assess before its too late is if they SHOULD slow more but are just barreling into a turn blindly because they know thats what fast drivers do. This is the biggest thing that scares me first time riding with a new student is if their skill matches their speed because some want to be Mario right out the gate.
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