Nurburgring Woes

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Use a slow car and do a few laps nowhere near the limits of the car.
Get a faster car but still drive the course normal.
Once you start to get familiar with it push the limits of your car a little.

Just don't hop in a racecar and start blasting down the course.

I'm sure you know every pothole and undulation on your way to work.
If you can memorize a 20 min commute, 7 min on the ring is nothing.
 
I was the same as you in GT4 and the past games that had the Nurburgring in it. I didnt like driving there because of the same reasons as you have, the track is too narrow and I didnt know my way around the track. It was a difficult track to learn.

Keep in mind though, back then I was playing with a controller and I didnt know how to drive yet. I had no understanding of proper driving lanes to take, I didnt know how to properly tackle a curve/corner. BUT now that in real life, after many hours of teaching from my dad and fights :p I can use what I've learned in real life into the game. Also now, that I'm playing with a steering wheel, I could properly apply the real life driving I just couldnt do well with a controller.

Now, I'm IN LOVE WITH THE TRACK! It reminds me so much of open road driving, not highway/motorway/freeway driving. It is my favourite track in the game. If I had followed the racing industry back when I was young and had a GT game, like I've been doing the past few years, I couldve appreciated the track more back then.
 
theignoramus
I used to think this way as well. Hit the track with a Minicooper or a Fiat on racing tire, enable heavy mechanical damage so you have something to fear, turn the driving line off, turn the hud off, and do three or four consecutive laps. Try to beat your ghost in each lap.
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ghost = best way to practice
 
J3SHF
I've posted a video lap I did in an Alfa Romeo 8c with modest power 333bhp per tonne and a lap of the ring, sports soft tyres and done in 7 minutes 18 seconds.

On a few occasions i'm braking over the limit but it's all controllable, watch it anyway as it will show you the lines and where to brake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uorIHPVjsPc
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I dont really think you can learn the lines and braking points from this vid... but fugg me that is a sweet looking and sounding car... nice work !
 
badger_mk2
its all about brake control, theres one corner in particular where the game does not believe you should brake and you have to, at the end of section 1 before the hairpin.
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Does anyone else agree with this? I have a lot of trouble getting through this long bend without lifitng my foot of the gas pedal.

OP, i keep telling my brother to take it on with a slower car at first and perhaps do the AMG challenges a couple of times to build a mental map of the track. I can't say I am a pro at it, not at all. I feel like I am doing some sections of it not exploiting the full potential of the car, rather playing it safe not to get tossed and spitted out of the track by a mistake.
I'm still a noob at it but I got a 7:10min time today at it with the Castrol Tom's Supra [ABS:1 TCS:0 SkidRec: OFF ESP: OFF Tyres: RSoft - STOCK] I know there were sections I could have squeezed the car harder because my cousin then took a run to see if he could do better and he would almost always be ahed of my ghost by a second or so until he would be even noobier than me and at the sight of my headlights on his mirror slide into the grass because he pushed it too hard on a bend.
 
r2nyGT5
Step 1: Take a slow car to the 'ring
Step 2: Do a couple of laps until its torture because you want to go faster.
Step 3: Take a slightly faster car to the 'ring
Step 4: Repeat steps 2-4
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I almost did the exact same process. I tried bombing through with a fully modded mildly tuned japanese monster and ended up doing more landscaping than racing.

Now I prefer taking bone stock.......bone stock cars out on the Nur and try my best with the night/day cycle. Driving in the pitch black add so much more fun and a whole new element to that track (which was the point of PD i know).
 
The Ring is my favorite track. In that track looks like you are really going somewhere. The best way to learn it is to use a car that you really like to drive and that you know how it handle, not a quick car but not a slow car.
 
In sections, I spend as much time off the track as on. But its a very technical track and some of the cars in this game have incredible understeer which just magnifies the issue.
 
1. Think of it as driving on a winding road, not a race track.

2. For that reason, don't over drive, you need to take a different approach to the track and go a little easier than normal

3. Learn it sector at a time, if you do the nurburgring challenges they split the track into various sectors which become much easier to digest.

If you're crashing a lot then you're trying to drive too fast, and at the end of the day it is not called "The Green Hell" because it's easy, if you find the track too challenging and you don't enjoy it then maybe you should give up and do something/drive somewhere you do enjoy.
 
It's the Green Hell. It has chewed up and spit out real drivers who are far better than anyone here online, with many of them not living to tell their tale. Its virtual representation shouldn't be -- and isn't -- any different. It can be brutal. Any difficulty with the track is not the fault of the track or the car.

The Nordschleife has a rhythm and flow, but it's not the kind of course that is going to hold your hand, and tell you what do do and where, unlike some tracks in the game (Laguna Seca comes to mind, with its numbered braking and differently-colored apex markers.). It's something you just feel, and you have to keep doing it until it makes sense, if you want to have any measure of success at a fast lap or race victory.

Start small, but there's no need to baby yourself. A car with around 300hp should be plenty fast enough to keep things interesting and tense while you find your pace. Pick something German. Learn some German swear words. Hop to it. Practice makes better. You can do it!

👍
 
The ring is meant to be difficult. It is the only track that I haven't memorized, but I can still recall every turn pretty well. If you need help, use the red gear indicator that tells you what gear you should take the upcoming turn at. Also, if you think time attacks are hard there, wait until you do a full on race there, plus with people who really really want to win.
 
It was the last track I wanted to use in GT4 because I just couldn't memorize all the turns and corners.
I was taking the wrong approach.
After one of the license tests where you had to follow a pace car around it, the thought suddenly hit me that this was just like in real life when I'd drive country lanes I didn't know at all.
I stopped trying to go fast and just focused on getting around it and tried to be as clean through every turn as possible.
If you have every driven a Sunday alone narrow, winding country roads use the same attitude on the 'ring. It is after all just a set of country roads.
After this epiphany I have never looked at the 'ring in the same way. Fell in love and drove it whenever I had free time. I now know it inside out and can put in good time and manage laps without an inch of lawn mowing.

Try a Lupo GTI cup car and just imagine your out on a speedy jaunt through your local woodland.
 
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I enjoy driving the ring but I think it is overrated. I really enjoy the fast flowing sections that you take flat out but overall I enjoy Trial Mountain more. The first third of the ring is great but I find the rest of it boring and just look forward to getting back to the start.

That said I think I would really enjoy driving there in real life.
 
Wish they included AMG Academy way back in GT4, where I learned the Nurb the right way...with a 2 minute wait before every attempt. :crazy: Gradually working farther and farther into the Nordschleife while attempting a lap at the limit where a single mistake costs your 15-year-old life another two minutes of Spongebob generally tends to ram all those German twists and turns into your subconscious well-being.

So many people love the Nurburgring because it is nothing like any other race track in the entire world, with hardly any gravel, a miles-long straight, and no grandstands to muck up the scenery. :sly: As such, it is driven nothing like Laguna Seca, High Speed Ring, or even the characterless Nurburgring GP track that is attached to the Nordschleife at the hip. :grumpy: Have faith in your own driving ability, try different cars, follow a buddy.

The first things I could start to put together were the full-throttle sections, one at a time. There are about six or seven in the course of a lap, but the trick at first is to drive the layout slowly, so you can figure out where they are.


And at the end of the day, just remember that you don't have to like it if you just don't like it, and that alone doesn't make you a freak.
 
Menown
It just feels like a random heap of corners landed in Germany and people started driving on them.

With other tracks I can feel the flow and how one corner relates to the next. Nurburgring just feels random, it's like we are speaking different languages. I just know at some point it will all click, but it's like I'm missing something.
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The Northloop is all about track placement. You need to be on the place on the track for every corner if you want to survive it.

Drive it with the racing line on until you see which corners you require you to be where in order not to oversteer, understeer or skid your way off into the grass.

Once you know the track you can start going fast - it is a track where you have to know what coming so you can prepare for it the way you exited the corner behind you so you are ready for the corner ahead of the one in front of you.

:)

Master the track with a nice neutral car like a stock C5 Z06. It is not to fast and not to badly behaved when things go wrong.

All I drive these days is the Nordschleife in stock cars on Comfort hard and medium tyres.
 
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I think the DTM cars are the most fun way to learn the ring. They are fast enough to be exciting, and handle well enough that you can make big mistakes and not end up in the wall.

Rather than grinding Indy like everyone else seems to want to do all day (aside from the times that they take a break to come on here and whine about grinding indy :p ), try using the german touring car nordschleiffe race as your money-maker for a while. The ai is so pitiful that it is basically just a time trial that pays you for every lap.

Once you learn how the ai behaves in the first 2 turns, they wont affect your lap times significantly, so you can create benchmark times for the race to see how you're progressing. It's somewhere between 10-15 seconds longer than a time trial lap, for comparison. As a baseline for your total race time (soft tires, no hp mods (except oil change), no driving aids (that includes abs =0)), I would suggest that when you are consistently finishing the race in :

< 7:00 = you are getting the hang of it
< 6:55 = you know the track well
< 6:50 = now you're having a lot of fun (this is the time zone I generally finish in)
< 6:45 = this is a lap that would normally end up in the above category, except this time you drove well, and only made one or two stupid mistakes :p
< 6:40 = you are on the edge for the brunt of the lap and narrowly escape disaster more than once (I dont think I've ever finished the race in this bracket with these settings).

Once you get to know the ring, you will love it. Now that Ive golded all the licenses and special events, I spend the majority of my time doing different races on the ring.

Once you feel comfortable with this one then you can move up a notch or two and start doing the GT All Stars race to practice driving the Ring in group c cars. Your first few times trying to get the 787B around the track cleanly with no traction control and no abs will have you ready to throw the game disc out of a moving vehicle, but once you can do it consistently, you wont want to use the other cars in your garage
 
I found it useful to note the more difficult sections of track on a piece of paper, that way you can memorize those tricky sections. Another handy tip is taking the track in a low powered car to cruise on.

Although memorizing 13-16 miles of track is a bloody pain, the rewards far outweigh the challenge.
 
What I love about the nurburgring is that there are many highspeed corners, and although the turns themselves are very technical and sharp and unexpected at times, majority are taken at higher speeds, it all about control and knowing the limit.

The nurburgring is one of the few tracks where the limit is truly experienced.
 
Menown
It just feels like a random heap of corners landed in Germany and people started driving on them.

With other tracks I can feel the flow and how one corner relates to the next. Nurburgring just feels random, it's like we are speaking different languages. I just know at some point it will all click, but it's like I'm missing something.
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Nonsense. Once you learn it Nurburgring has more flow than any other track in the game. Perhaps in the world?

Once I got a basic idea, the video of Hans Stuck's record lap helped me tremendously. It includes commentary on how to take specific turns, and his lines are perfect throughout the entire track.

Nordschleife starts at 3:15:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2Q4MBAjL7Q
 
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In my opinion the ring is the best track ever to grace the real and gaming world by far,the thing i love the most is the fact it is so long which creates a challenge in it's-self .People that say they have mastered the ring are useing the term "mastered" very loosely imo, I can hold a pretty good pace around the ring and on average i can beat the gold times in the special events by 1-2 seconds and i still find a little something on every lap i do, i don't think i will ever fully "master" the track, i know each corner like the back of my hand but still seem to find improvements , and every car has it's own differences. so DON'T give up because when you gel with the ring it's a very special thing. i can only dream of driving or riding a actual real life lap of the ring in my lifetime, fingers crossed and double crossed.
 
It's the Green Hell

Seasonal Event Nascar Nurburgring. After countless tries I'm half way through the second lap. BAM! Nooooooooooo! I crash in the wall and watch all the cars I worked so hard to pass go by.

I was ready to cry like a little girl. The Green Hell almost broke me. I pulled myself together and turned skid recovery on to get the money.

I couldn't do it :(
 
888 Tuning
I dont really think you can learn the lines and braking points from this vid... but fugg me that is a sweet looking and sounding car... nice work !
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uorIHPVjsPc

Lol, yeah I know you need to be in the car to see where it's braking but I posted so he could see that even in a low power to weight car you can still drive a quick clean lap and that the track does flow from one corner to the next. The lap/ vid ended up being done for a mate to find him a tuning setup as he was struggling to get the 8C to handle, I proved to him that the old lump could wind it'self round the ring in a decent time :)

I'll agree on the sound though, it's got a proper rasping note to the exhaust.

I'm still working on getting a 580hp and 1740kgs Skyline round in under the seven minute barrier, I'm sure it's there
 
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For those saying take a slow car and learn it, I took my Kubelwagen out for a spin on it.

Lap Time - 17:01:765.

Didn't have to touch the breaks once and it is incredibly frustrating going up a hill and watching your speed drop from 50 to 20mph.
 
I am on the way to learn the names of every section! ;)
I love the Nürburgring, its the best track ever!
 
msbe36M3
Couldnt agree more. The ring is the main reason i bought gt5(and 4 copies of gt4). Ive gone so far as to build a sim seat using an M3 seat( of which there are not any e36 m3s in this game). The Ring rocks.

Oh and the only thing i can thank PD for is the Nurburgring type V!!!!!

Now if there was just as many german cars as Japanese cars. Id like 59 versions of m3's And many other german race cars from the past.
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Amen! I wish there were more of the iconic bimmers like the E30 and E36 cars. :grumpy:
 
Just keep going around it until you get it memorized. There are tons of blind corners so memorization is key. It's my favorite track - all I do in GT5 now is buy cars and drive them around it.
 
Menown
I detest every second I spend on this track. Am I alone?

Which leads me to my plea, help me see the light, what am I doing wrong?

I've been driving this thing since GT4 and I still have no idea where anything is, the track is really narrow, it's filled with corners that just throw me onto the grass and then it's all over. I spend more time crashing than I do in control, yet I managed to get all silvers in all of the special events for it.
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Hi mate, more videos below to help you to get to know and drive the Nordschleife...it is known as "The Green Hell" for a reason....difficult to master and very satisfying to nail a perfect lap

Hope following help you see the light.







 

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