Nurburgring gets world’s fastest rollercoaster

Dan Trent writes:
Want to know what it feels like to accelerate up the pit straight at the Nurburgring in a F1 car? You’ll soon be able to, thanks to the ‘Ring Racer’ rollercoaster being built as part of a huge redevelopment project due to open next June.

We’ve already reported on this of course but earlier this week we met up with a couple of chaps from the Nurburgring to catch up on the latest developments. And with the existing grandstands now demolished the path for the rollercoaster has now been cleared alongside the start/finish straight. The idea is to give visitors a sense of what it’s like to drive round the track in a F1 car and part of this will include accelerating from 0-120mph or so in about 2.5 seconds. And the Ring Racer will pull 3.4g too, the maximum permitted by German law. Cool…

The idea is to supplement the existing attraction of the adjacent Nordschleife with a complex of shops, restaurants, hotels and other facilities to broaden the appeal of the Nurburgring beyond the traditional track-based fun. Somewhere for the wife and kids to go while you try and break the lap record in the family’s S-Max, if we’re going to break it down to traditional gender stereotypes.

But who needs a rollercoaster when you’ve got the Nordschleife next door? This rather tenuous link leads me to the following, an in-car video from the Nissan GT-R setting the 7min 29sec lap that so annoyed the folks at Porsche.

http://www.viddler.com/player/17901a33/

At the wheel is test driver Tochio Suzuki, whom I met earlier in the year on a Nissan event in Portugal. There’s a fair preamble before the action gets going so skip to 3min 40sec if your Japanese isn’t up to scratch. And if you only watch a small segment fast forward to 8min and watch in amazement as Suzuki-san pitches the GT-R into the Karusell sideways AND airborne. I’m sure the Ring Racer will be good. But in the thrill stakes I can’t see how it would come close to sitting in the passenger seat alongside Suzuki-san.

Dan

Links:
Ring developments
Dan geeks out with Suzuki-san
Why Brits love the Nurburgring
Driving a Lotus Exige at the ‘ring

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