How to get good at Nurburgring?

  • Thread starter Thread starter TheTaZ
  • 157 comments
  • 13,023 views
orpheusd0wn
I'm Ring Newbie. Not a GT newb, mind you, just the ring. I've been avoiding it and B Spec-ing it, foolishly intimdated (fear of failure). After reading this thread, I decided to throw off the intimidation, buckle down, and learn the track.

I'm using the '62 Lotus Elan, which has 106hp. My first lap was 9'17", and I learned the transmission will have to be replaced, as it can't get to top speed on the straights.

Stock it's a four speed, the Fully Customizable is a five. I moved up the autoset from 4 to 8. This gave the feel of the stock four speed with a fifth gear added at the end, instead of squeezing five gears into the space of four.

With the new transmission in place, my first lap was 9'31, but I drove horribly even for a 'Ring newb. At several places the car was off track and a couple times I had to nearly stop to avoid a wall hit. The second lap, however, was much smoother, and came in at 9'02. Still not a clean lap, but much better.

My goal is to see how far below the 9 minute mark I can get with the Elan. If any 'Ring vets want to the take the car (as described above, completely stock but with a new tranny) and set a benchmark time, I'd appreciate it.

Regardless, I'd like to thank everyone for the tips and advice. Strange how one track could add so much depth to a driving game.
Click to expand...

1st lap, after having to win this car in the Lotus Classics race, I ran a 8'59:310...could 'possibly' get it down to may 8'57:XX WITHOUT having to modify any of the current settings, other then the Auto-Set being adjusted from 4 to 8...

Must say, this is a very nice car to use on the Ring! :D

SimRaceDriver

EDIT: WOW! Using the Elan in stock format...I was able to go back & run a 8'44:717....DEFINITELY a really good car to use on the Ring'.....!
 
Here's a little something on what lines to take and how to set up the car to the corners - the technique shown here works best on 4WD cars (like the one I drive on the vid, a stock '01 Impreza STi, S2 tyres ). *VIDEO THAT I MADE TODAY*

http://s9.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3PXGTR4JZ846S3D95NK7NK88IU

This lap only has one clear error ( a slight slide onto the grass ), and I only miscalculated like 3 corners, and then not by much.. I know this isn't great driving or anything, but this could help people who don't have much practice done on the 'Ring yet.
 
SimRaceDriver
EDIT: WOW! Using the Elan in stock format...I was able to go back & run a 8'44:717....DEFINITELY a really good car to use on the Ring'.....!
Click to expand...

I agree! You almost don't have to brake, handles like on tracks. 8:52.900 on first run with many! unnescessary brakes.
 
These 5 pages probably have cleared it all up for you, but I'll add my directions anyways.

-Learn the track by driving it. You'll never be a good painter by going to a hundred museums. Take the controller, take a car that you're comfortable in, and drive. Use the technical HUD (the one that shows the suggested gear for every turn) and concentrate on that for the first couple laps, then start pushing it a bit faster.
-Seperate the track in your mind into several sections. Each section will have the same style turns, and have the same general speed. Learnig each one seperately will be key. Here is how I broke it down into my mind (click on my signature)

1)Start line through Adenauer Forst. This is some of the easiest sections of the track, mainly fast turns with easy-to-spot entries/apex/exits. Some tough spots include Schwedenkreuz, where you roll over the turn, not seeing it, and going in with too much speed will toss you off the track and screw you up for the next turn (which is key). Take it easy at first, you need a good line for the sharp right coming up next. The second and possibly hardest section on the entire track is at the 5km mark, Adenauer Forst. It's the uphill/blind right into a chicane. Remember the hill, that's what saves me every time. You cannot see any of the turn as you head up the hill, so try to keep in line and brake lightly going up, so when you come over the crest you can accelerate into the right if you don't have enough speed or hammer harder on the brakes when you reach the apex if you're going too quick. Sometimes I hit the apex on that right hander and feel so good that I forget to slow down for the tight, (usually) 2nd gear left-right.

2) Adenauer Forst through Ex-Muhle. This is a sort of fast section, with minimal braking and some nice sweeiping turns. Not too much to note, except the tripple apex right at Wehrseifen, which is fun to get just right, but you gotta ease off a tiny bit. Also a nice easy turn for some drifting. Two sharp left handers that aren't hard at all to get. Late braking is also easy to do if you need to pass.

3) Ex-Muhle through the turn before Karussel. Here you can plow through as fast as you want, with one sharp right at Bergwerk. The fast section (most likely in 5th gear) has one turn where you have to slow down a bit (a kink-style left hook). The the turn before the slow hairpin is where you start braking for the actual hairpin. Easy to read when you're out there.

4) Karussel through the finish line. After Karussel, you get some sections that almost always got me in the sand/grass. This windy section BEGS you to drive flat out. It just taunts you to go faster and take every turn WOT. It won't work. You'll learn and everntually figure out at what RPM to hit every turn, and what spots to watch. Near the 'lone tree' at Pflantzgarten, you'll have a high speed, very unstable section. Depending on the car, you might spin. The road is uneven, cambered and twisty. Cars with poor downforce (Caterham Fireblade) always get plowed into the walls here, also cars with no TCS or ASM tend to go astray. Watch your step here. The rest of the track is smooth and easy. The final straight, just floor it all the way through (duh), up the hill (still with tons of speed, 100% gas), through the sweepers and the brake HARD for the right-left-right by the pit entrance. Keeping your speed up til there gives you valuable time on the AI, who brake and let off on those last turns. Again, no TCS is tough, no downforce is worse.

In general, the 'ring wants you to drive fast, and usually you can't. Learn it by driving it a lot. Then, and only then, when you have some difficulties on some sections or don't know the line, download a vid of a real car driving the track and see what they do.
 
"When you're driving around the 'Ring, the faster you go, the less you know, so maybe that's the best thing to do." - Jackie Stewart

Hehehe.

Touring cars are the way to learn it methinks, they're slow enough for learning the racing line, and have enough downforce and speed to show you flat-out corners you could take in a Group C or LMP.

If you're a real maniac, you'll try to learn the 'Ring in an Auto Union Streamliner without driver assists. 👍 Once you're able to do that, you can take anything to the Green Hell. 💡 :sly:

Practicing on the 'Ring is also good because it makes all the other tracks seem smaller and less imtimidating than before.
 
Everyone has good points regarding how to learn the Ring. For myself, as soon as I got myself an M3 CSL, I tackled the Ring head on. Lots of 'deaths' and sweaty butts later, I've come to really love the track. Yes, practice is most definitely rule numero uno.

The bits that I had the most trouble with starting out, and sometimes still, are: 1) the jumps @ Quiddlebacher Hohe and Schwedenkreuz, 2) the dip @ Fuchrohre, 3) the unsettling left-right after Kallenhard, 4) the correct speed @ Klostertal, and the right rhythm for pretty much everything after Hohe Acht. Those jumps are scary enough when you're NOT driving a Porsche...

Mentally, I split the track into the following sections: 1) Start to the Aremberg hairpin, 2) up to Adenauer Forst, 3) up to Bergwerk, 4) up to the right-hander before Schwalbenschwanz. and lastly 5) from Schwalbenschwanz to the finish. Don't ask me why I split it into such strange sections, it was how my brain did it. Also, I didn't have smaller sections split up between Bergwerk and Schwalbenschwanz because I group the whole section together as the least familiarized section for me personally. One of my favorite parts of the Ring is actually the complex of corners starting at Hatzenbach--if you've got the right rhythm, you'll be grinning ear-to-ear!

What you'll find after you've gotten pretty quick with a fast car, is how ridiculously easy that pace car license test is. The Skyline starts to seem hilariously slow--you'll find yourself trying to slow down to not hit it. That 190 Evo Merc is probably the only one I'd ever drive in real life; handles like a dream compared to the pig SLR :P

Hope my personal experience helps :)
 
ck1yiaa
Everyone has good points regarding how to learn the Ring. For myself, as soon as I got myself an M3 CSL, I tackled the Ring head on.
Click to expand...

Funny how everybody seems to have started tackling the 'Ring when they got their first M3 :odd: I did the same for some reason, though I've since found an even better car (IMO) for learning the nuances of the 'Ring, the Mazda RX-8 Type S.

Stock + oil change, driving aids off, and she's just so nimble and forgiving, and fast too (competitive with an M3). Okay maybe I'm biased because I drive one IRL, but give it a try on the 'Ring if you're still learning (or not) and you'll see what I mean. 👍
 
A reason why I like Le Mans is because even though it is a long course, it's actually easy to learn. I have a lot of experience with this track in games, and since then, I've grown better and better at this course. My only thing I need to adjust on is the 2003 configuration, with the left-right-left complex before heading into Tetre Rouge.

The only reason why I don't really like Nurburgring Nordschleife is because I'm not too experienced at it, so I don't perform as beautifully as I want to. The key word for this course is patience. If you don't stay patient, you won't win. Running excessively long courses goes back to my primary fear of long courses- too easy to screw up one section out of several. Like at Le Mans, you mess up Arnage or the Porsche Curves, goodbye good lap. You won't see me talk about having fun at the Nurburgring Nordschleife a lot, but I said it was like a rally course made for low-level GT cars. If you think about it, it is like a rally course because the roads are completely narrow. Narrow tracks mean that it's easier to go off the track or into a wall. So if you're going to overtake, do it effectively. Keep racing around the track in Arcade Mode. It's available to everyone when you start a new game of Gran Turismo 4. Practice it in a wide variety of cars. You can go from VW Golf to Toyota Supra. Toyota Supra to Chevrolet SSR. Chevy SSR to the Dodge Viper SRT-10. Viper SRT-10 to a JGTC race car of your choice. Just make the pace steady, yet consistent. Try to evaluate your performance at all parts of the track. It's damn near impossible to have a completely perfect lap because you'll never know what turn or turn complex may be coming your way.

Not to make you feel bad, but at least this track is better than GT3's Complex String. While that original course had 40 turns, this one has at least 170. Not everyone will endure through it all and get the best results. So keep trying and keep trying hard. It won't be easy to tackle this course. And just like the license tests in this game, this track is [fairly] easy to learn, difficult to master. If you dig me, do your best!
 
What I do is to use the ring as a place to just drive my cars. Not as a race track, but as a scenic country road. Since I have the JP version, I can watch the replays and listen to the guy talk about the car, the various specs, different versions, and general history of the car while watching whatever car I used slowly make its way around the ring.

I can do fairly good racing on it now, but that's not why I love nurburgring on GT4. I just love driving on it. I don't push it, in fact the opposite is true. It is just a nice place to take a relaxing drive in the country.
 
i learnt the "green hell" by taking a relatively forgiving car and just practicing. i set myself an objective of trying to improve my times. i must have done close to 150 laps. sometimes driving 10 lap continual sessions in practice.

i used a Stock BMW MINI CooperS with no modifications using Sports Soft tires, i got my fastest lap down to close to 8mins. not even the B-spec driver could get close to my times.

another alternative is enter the german manufacturer hall choose VW, buy a LUPO Cup Car and enter into the Lupo Cup, this has a tough 1 lap race at the "green hell", now try and win it without modifying your car at all. u will learn the track the hard way... as you are using a relatively slow car you will find the racing lines easier to stick to and will come of the track very little.
 
i used to hate this track, but after using it as a test track for whatever upgrades I slap on whaterver vehicle I'm trying out (silvia K 13), i found it to be a very interesting track that'll keep you on your toes and alert all the time.

It's fun running an old silvia (with 48,000 kilometers) with all the upgrades and get 7:25 out of it :)

get a fun car and just drive around
 
I don't understand how people could've put off driving this thing. The first day I got GT4, that was all I drove. Got in an Elise in Arcade and drove the track again and again. I've also put in over a hundred laps at this point. Great track.
 
The Nurburgring is sort of like a song you can't remember the words to. But once the song starts playing, you immidiately remember the words.

I can't picture the nurburgring in my head like I can other tracks. But I still "know" the track.

The Elise is good fun on this track. A little skittish during the highspeed stuff, and back-downhill section, though.
 
My first few laps of The Nurburgring were completed using a Citroen Xsara :indiff: and built up from there. Now its the only track I ever race on in the game. The Nurburgring rules!! :bowdown:
 
It's a good song that you know and nobody else does, and at a party, you can start singing the words to it, no matter what state of mind you're in. That's how good I know it ;)
 
Just for fun, it is like a song that you slowly learn the words to. As long as that song isn't that theme song for the Nurburgring Nordschleife that many of us hated (another thread on this)!
 
It's like a song that when you first hear it you're not sure of it... and you think you might like it but you think you might hate it... and the more you listen the more you like it...

(Glad that there's no radio edit like in PGR2 though?!)

C.
 
I have recently gotten into Nurburgring and the more I race the more fun it becomes. I was wondering what kind of lap times other people were getting with the BMW M3 GTR Race Car, I was able to get under 6'18", how does this compare to other people.
 
neilyoung4life
I have recently gotten into Nurburgring and the more I race the more fun it becomes. I was wondering what kind of lap times other people were getting with the BMW M3 GTR Race Car, I was able to get under 6'18", how does this compare to other people.
Click to expand...

I'll check it out on my system. I'm not sure how I do compared to others either, we'll have to see.

PS - Clapton's better than Neil...
 
I got 6:29 after 5 laps. I didn't crash anywhere and I didn't make any major mistakes. I am on a completely stock M3 GTR Race Car. I can't imagine where you got the 10 second advantage... Odd.
 
I've been able to do a 6:12 with the BMW M3 GTR Race Car (all stock) and I'm not the only one, check the Nurburgring leader board on this site and you'll see plenty of fast times. In response to this topic, like many others have said, practice and practice. Make sure to also drive with the gear indicator off, so that you yourself can set your own pace, rather than having the game tell you where to brake. You'll be able pull faster laptimes by doing so as well.
 
Apparently the full nurb used to be the f1 track for the german grand prix (pre-hockenheim). Problem - with 170 odd bends and corners, no driver could remember a racing line (compares with the 20 or 30 in most f1 tracks these days). Not even Fangio could remember it all.

If Fangio couldn't, there's no way I could. However, congrats to the guys out there who can - it just goes to show that persistence and practice pays off (pardon all the p's)

Keep at it kids...
 
As before, this track doesn't really suit high-level GT2 and GT1 machines, much less GTPs and LMPs. So don't think you can just Nissan R92CP your way through the race. You'll be racing the bigtime race machines here anyhow (damn shame, in my view), but you have to start small. I recommend racing GT machines less than 500hp, the Ford Falcon XR8 (450K Cr.), the Falken*GT-R (450K or 550K Cr.), and just about any rally car (except the Escudo and the 205 Rally Cars. HORRIBLE road racers). The only question I can't answer for you is, if a race requires non-production machines, now you're at a crossroads. One such race series which features no limitations on cars but disallows non-production cars is "1000 Miles!" in the European Events. So, you'll have to think of a car no older than 1970 that can perform. When I return to "1000 Miles!," I'll be using a tuned Toyota 2000GT. That's right. My pretty lady, the Toyota 2000GT, will be dancing around all the courses featured in "1000 Miles!" and try to complete the job my Jaguar XKE didn't really do for me. Remember, since these are the European Events, this series does not require European cars only. As long as it is no older than 1970 and is a production car, you can race it.

Oh, and if you're going to do that race in a vintage car, the Nurburgring Nordschleife event is 25 laps long, meaning over 3 or 4 hours in all. Pick Economy Tires so you can have long-lasting tires for all the events. When I ran the event in B-Spec, I pitted every 3 or 5 laps around Nurburgring Nordschleife. After all, it's called "Green Hell" for a reason.
 
i'm getting more and more familiar with this track... specially with the last long straight! :D heheheh

seriously, i know the first quarter and the last quarter of this track... the middle parts of which, i can't seem to memorize :(
 
For those of you who want to try learning the track, you just missed the WRS this week ! We did the nurb with a Audi TT ABT car ... and the fast guys were getting T9's of 4:33.xxx ... with the weekly races here (se my signature) one learns a track very quickly ! I did not know the nurb at all a week ago ... today I know it off by heart ! Well almost ...
 
The way I became to get better at Nurburgring is get a stock car and try to memorize the dangerous turns you found and keep trying finnish a lap without a disaster, then when you can do a few laps without a disaster, skip for a faster car, and keep doing this.
 

Latest Posts

Back