Nurburgring

BMW isn't the only provider of a "ring taxi" service. As you know the Nürburgring is probably the most scenic race cirquit in the world and several car manufacturers test their cars and many racing teams do trainings there. VLN.de is another provider of a ring taxi service. There you'd be doing one loop in a Porsche 911 race edition. Passenger days are always the Fridays prior to their Saturday official events. You're provided with a helmet and fire-proof suit etc. Price is around €300 to €350. If you're interested I can put you in direct contact with their team. Send me a direct message. Best regards, Andreas

We are Top Gear fans and are planning to swing by Nurburgring in June when we're in Luxembourg. What exactly is the Ring Taxi? Is this where you pay to have a 'ride-along' with a professional driver in a nice car? My husband was thinking about renting a car and driving it himself until he started doing some research last week. Most posts were recommending people purchase the video game that has the track on it and practice 50-100 times before they do it for real. Serious stuff vs. a family lark.

I sent Angela a private message earlier, but I'll go public here. My husband drove the Nordschliefe in 2009. He rented a car from RentRaceCar (http://www.rent-racecar.de/index-gb.htm). The car he rented had 2 seats and I could have ridden along with him, but I chose not to so that he could go ahead and get as many laps in as he could before it got dark. I was able to ride around the track with the owner of the business, Theo. He did drive at speed, so I had great fun. The thing is, depending on how many people you want to have a ride and how many laps you need to do that, someone can trade off sitting in the passenger seat each lap. Everyone has to go through the "turnstyle" at the end of each lap, so there's plenty of time to come in, switch passengers, and get back in the line to go around again. My husband did sit in his chair at the computer and pretend he was driving on the track, but he did that through a free website online. He wanted that extra "practice" before he went. Then, he rode in the front passenger seat with Theo on an information run for all the drivers in his group that afternoon. For more info, go to my blog entry about his experience (http://travelswithtrout.blogspot.com/2009/11/nurburgring-ring-and-cars.html). If you want to know more from him about that or about the online practice driving, send me a private message and I will put you in touch with him. If you go to the website for the Nurburgring (http://www.nuerburgring.de) make sure you are seeing info on the Nordschliefe, that's the long "Green Hell" circuit where most people drive or take rides. Be warned, even in English, this website is difficult to navigate. Here's the link to the Ring Taxi mentioned earlier -- http://www.nuerburgring.de/en/angebote/driving-experiences/co-pilot-fahrten/bmw-ring-taxi.html.

There's an unofficial but comprehensive English-language site at http://nurburgring.org.uk/