'ring Tossed

Before Tackett and I set out, BMW of America Club member McNutt points to a spot on her map of the N�rburgring. "That's where Niki Lauda," she volunteers brightly, "had his barbecue."

Fritz-J�rgen Hahn, a 59-year-old member of an auto club in D�sseldorf, fondly recalls for me the first time he raced on the N�rburgring. "It was in 1963, in a Porsche Spyder," he says. That is the car James Dean died in.

"The track was built in 1927 as the German equivalent of a WPA project," Tackett says, attempting to soothe my nerves with conversation as we wait for a starting flag. "There are 170 turns, and I'm going to alert you to every one of them in advance, not to bore you, but to protect the interior of my car." With that, a flag drops and Tackett accelerates and the world goes by in a blur. I find myself riding a rail-free roller coaster at 125 mph, and I won't have a single coherent recollection—apart from removing my bucket hat and holding it over my mouth—of that first circuit.

"It's just a red fookin' mist out there, innit?" says Tom Thompson, an English motorcyclist we shall meet in a moment. "It is brain out, brick in."

Tackett takes me for two more laps when the course opens to the public. Though he follows the line expertly, the ride is sickening. For most of it I stick my head out the window like a black Lab. Ahead of us Bob Martin rides in the backseat of a convertible, facing backward through 170 turns at up to 140 mph, gamely taking pictures of the cars behind him. His shirt is pulled up over his mouth: At these speeds—and I am as serious as a heart attack here—a shower of vomit on a car windshield may prove fatal to the showeree. Bob had the Wiener schnitzel for lunch.

Bikes and cars flash past on either flank. The N�rburgring is exactly like a Grand Prix video game sprung to life, only instead of getting a GAME OVER message after crashing, you die.

Drivers must exit the circuit after each lap. Following my second shotgun lap with Tackett, one hour into public racing, cars are suddenly forbidden to go out again. The P.A. announcement in German states that the track is being cleared. The ambulance and the flatbed wrecker are dispatched, sirens wailing. Vague reports come back from the last drivers to cross the finish line that a yellow car spun out somewhere in the red fookin' mist. The wrecker truck will take 15 minutes to reach the far side of the track, seven miles away. After 10 minutes, a second ambulance sets out from the starter's chute, followed by a police car. The silence is hideous.

Twenty minutes later, a black Opel GTE crosses the finish line, its driver ashen-faced, evidently having lingered at the site of the accident. He drives through the parking lot and off into the dusk without telling any of us what he witnessed.

Many drivers at the N�rburgring mount video cameras in their cars. A young German who has just recorded his ride cues up the video for a crowd in the parking lot. About halfway through the circuit, as a diabolical turn comes into view, a spot of yellow begins to take shape on the shoulder. We view the tape in super-slow motion until three Zapruder-like frames reveal everything: a yellow Lancia marooned askew on the outside shoulder, its rear left wheel jammed all the way up into its well, the car's driver and passenger standing next to it, miraculously unharmed. The flatbed does not take the wreckage through the main gate, where all the drivers are parked waiting for the track to reopen. The driver of the Lancia is also spirited out some side gate. An announcement is made that the N�rburgring is closed for the night, but it will reopen on Sunday for 10 hours of public racing.

Tonight's public racing lasted 62 minutes before a near-catastrophe occurred. But we will be back on Sunday. We want to see the cars. We want to see the crashes. Reinhard H. Queckenberg was right. It is living theater.