Nordschleife Saab 9-3 Aero onBoard 28.06.2012 -- Lap 1

Car:
Saab 9-3 Aero SC -- 2.8V6 T, everything stock (250BHP)
Continental SportContact 5 225/45/18 tires (What a crap tire... will never buy Continental again!)
Video/Data capture:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ10 (Video and audio)
Samsung Galaxy S2 (GPS and OBDII using ALapRecorder application)
OBDlink MX (OBD data)
ALapRecorder HD for generating overlay graphs
Date/time:
28.06.2012 at 18:34
09:55 lap time (My first lap ever of the Ring!!) :)
Featured cars (in no particular order):
Suzuki Swift rental (2x)
Toyota Avensis Wagon
Shelby Mustang
Ford Focus RS
BMW 3 series
VW Golf GTi
Assorted Bikes
Notes:
This was my 1st lap ever of the Nurburgring
We had not planned to go to the track on that day but we kinda did, as a consequence, the car was not really prepared -- Windshield was obviously very dirty after 700km of Autobahn from Rostock and, the worse, the tire pressure was still over-inflated to suit highway specs and led to the car understeering a lot, poor general grip, and quite a fair bit of tire screeching.
At 1:58, through the jump ~180km/h and again same speed at the bottom of the hill at 3:03
Slow rental Suzuki Swift at 4:15, all over the track, holding me and cutting me off on the corner at 4:53 -- add to slam the brake and lock the wheels to avoid hitting him!
Toyota Avensis at 6:20. Hope you guys are seeing this! :) We met at the gas station later on and there was a brief chat about my "fly-by" on the chase of the Shelby ;)
At 7:19 you can listen to my logging software on the phone crash with a loud and disappointing "beep!" while failing to record anything of that lap :)
At 7:57 quite heavy understeer and some active correction to bring it back -- more of that at 8:20...
At 9:37 you listen to me pissed with myself for totally messing the line for the mini-Carroussel and falling out of it. :)
If you have video footage of my car, please let me know! :)

[@rgRalliart]

That was awesome. You drive pretty darn well. Congrats. I have been thinking of buying a 2009 aero. Looks like a very competent car.

[@neoian94]

That was pretty awesome! where is this track located

[@sultanbekklych9312]

👍👍👍

[@jakubkrcma]

Hi. 9:55 is solid performance for your first lap ever (although the car is fantastic and can do maybe a minute better after some more laps). I just wanted to say that it is a good idea to clean the windshield before any fast drive. It looks better, definitely improves your driving precision, and might even save your life in some situations... Especially on a track where many highly experienced racers have died. :-)

[@Jaco2k]

Hi there. Thank you for the comment and you are absolutely correct. We were not supposed at all to go to the track that day. I had literally just arrived from doing 700km of autobahn across Germany. My friend had bought the tickets for both of us and we ended upgoing for the track cause it was a sunny day and rain was forecast to the weekend. I fully agree with you and you can see the windshield clean on the other lap videos ;) I also agree the car, and maybe even me, could be faster but my number one objective was to drive back home alive and in the same car I came with so, I always took a good safety margin and tried to not push the limits. Pretty sure that if I did the track today I would get 9:30 or even less.

[@jakubkrcma]

***** Yep, the car is wonderful. Always loved it (never owned or even drove it).

[@nazbimamedov2257]

Супер

[@Maody66TV]

Never Conti again? My Tipp: Try the Conti "Force Contact" I bet, you will think your statement over. ;-)

[@zzj80713]

this is definitely not your first lap, i can see you are fairly familiar with the track.

[@Jaco2k]

Read the description... I studied the track for one year, literally and religiously every night I watched 2-3 videos of other laps and I learned the lines. I could probably have been even faster but I was not willing to take risks. I have been karting as a hobby for 23 years now, so I have a bit of experience - it was also my first time on a track with a road going car. Also, during the year it took me to plan the entire thing, I learned the limits of the car quite well and how it would behave. As an advice to anyone planning to do the same thing: I did play the track in computer games before going, but that was only useful for testing the memory and guessing where the track was turning to next. Watching videos of similar cars to yours driven by good drivers and using correct lines is a much better lesson. I think I still have a couple of bookmarked videos from the reference I used - there are 2 particular ones, one from a race pilot, commenting all the lines and how to approach them, there are a few videos from Dale, who knows the track like the palm of his hand and with comments and there is a video from a BMW instructor commenting also the track and corners in detail. Bottom line: You can be sure this WAS my first lap and... I was as surprised as you by how well it went.