Hi! I want to buy my husband a Nürburgring driving experience package for his next (milestone) birthday, which is coming up in June of next year.
Has anyone here done that? Do you have any tips or insights from your experience? Many thanks in advance, fam!
Do you plan to buy a co-ride or a self-drive package?
Mark - thanks! I do not know! I don’t have a driver’s license, so probably not co-drive?
Took a 20 something family friend there. It’s a great experience but real pricey. Upper end Mercedes are awesome to drive and with a couple laps with a driver and then go yourself it’s fun. Remember if you damage the car or any portion of the track you’ll be on the hook for all damages. Some great views on the course allow for dramatic photos.
Do it!
Co-ride is with a professional driver. I recommend that for anyone who's not experienced with the course, at least for the first time. You have another disadvantage, because, coming from the UK, your driving patterns are conditioned to looking the wrong way. This can be dangerous on a track where speeds exceed 120 MPH. Last, if you're not a driver this is not the place to learn. But it's a great idea of a gift for anyone who likes fast cars.
In your case I recommend to book a co-pilot ride (mitfahren, Beifahrer) with a professional race driver. Due to hilly landscape and its track design Nürburgring is not an easy race track, called also "Green Hell". You will find a lot of videos with crashes. Therefore co-piloting local professional drivers are the safest way for a real speed experience. Btw: Nürburgring was investing millions into security of the race track (article in German language).
Basically you have two tracks: the Nordschleife and the GP track for professional races. The combined track as a whole is very seldomly open to public.
Professional drivers at the N-ring have themselves racked up a long list of fatalities.
Racing Green Magazine: At the Nürburgring "...there are many accidents and several deaths each year during public sessions. It is common for the track to be closed several times a day for cleanup, repair, and medical intervention."
Did he do something wrong?
I know RingTaxi are long established offering rental and accompanied driving on the Nürburgring Touristenfahrten.
Touristfahrten is what Mark refers to. The Nürburgring Touristenfahrten is essentially a German public toll road with no speed limits. Your driving experience would be within one of the managed Touristenfahrten sessions which run daily in season. You'd be mixing with anyone and everyone basically. The GP track is something different, you'd have to be competing to drive on that in most instances.
As far as I know there's several companies doing a similar thing to RingTaxi, based in Nürburg. I don't know enough to compare them, but I know RingTaxi has been around for a long time. Getspeed Racetaxi and RSR Nurburg are another couple Google points me to.
It's a shame Apex Nurburg no longer offer taxis and rental. They ran that business for a few years, but are now focussed on car prep for racing and such things I gather. Run by a Californian called Robert and they have a neat little place in Nürburg. They used to offer a couple of hotel rooms. I saw a lot of them through a vlogger called Misha Charoudin, who used to work for them.
edit: The former Apex Nürburg premises are now owned by Nurblife, doing a similar sort of thing, maybe at the lower end of the scale.
