Alfa Romeo Owners Club of Australia Forum

I am doing it on the 28th Aug!!! WOOOO hOOOOOO!!
in a 3.0L V6.

can you tell i am a bit excited??

Mick, are you serious??  How did all this come about? Where was my invitation?  And more importantly who is crazy enough to lend you their car  :D

I am insanely jealous.

Hey Mick,
I'm glad you decided to follow it up........it sounded there for a while you had put it in the 'some other time' basket.
As I said, everything I've ever read about it has been positive, and in a familiar type of car is a bonus.
Try to have fun (I reckon that won't be hard).

I hope my red mist doesnt take over... will be interesting.. ;)

Vin, yeah I just decided bugger it we might not ever get another chance so seemed like the right thing to do!  We are taking the train to Cologne, and I've booked a hire car from the train station and we are going to (try) drive to the Ring in one piece.. haha.

It is so expensive to do the drive, its 2 hours and about 350€ each, the whole day option was just too expensive, about 700€ EACH! could not do this as we would not have enough money to get home! but at least we are getting out there in a 3.0L with R type tyres on it. cost a bit more for those tyres too.. man everything costs over here!

But all good, we get 2 hours on the ring, which I reckon will tire us out enough.  ;D

What a fantastic experience. Can you video it and give us all a presentation of your drive at a future club meeting?

Mick, what on earth!? Where are you now and when are you back in Australia? We'll have to catch up on all this over a ride some time!

Hey Alex! I've been o/s for a month now, will be back october 16th but have to go straight to Brissy to work, so will be on tour and in and out of melb for the 6 weeks after that, but we will get a ride in by mid november easy, I miss my bike so much. I have been looking into hiring a bike in italy and doing the Stelvio Pass which runs between Verona and Milano, Top Gear declared it best driving road in the world. Look it up its amazing.
Im off to the Nurburgring TODAY! haha! will let you guys know how it goes!! 

I will definately take pics but unfortunately I dont have a video camera, kinda travelling as light as possible since im backpacking. haha.

I DID IT! AND SURVIVED! AND GOT PICS AND VIDEO!

Thats all we get ???

You have just driven the most famous track in the world and all we get is "I did it".......I want more Mick ;D

You clown, now post some details already!! Damn the Stelvio Pass looks fun - it also looks really narrow! DO IT! Also... I may have something to keep up with your R6 now!

75 experience

75 experience

75 experience

What bike did you get alex!!?

oh yeah and some info.. the 75 experience cost simmo and i about €670 all up, included track fees, fuel, r type tyres, the a 75 twinspark with coil overs and full suspension setup for the ring, and instruction, 1 sighting lap with the instructor who drove so freakin fast it scared me, then 2 follow laps where we followed his car with headsets for radio instruction, and then 2 in car instruction laps, which were the hardest, i cannot even explain how scary and difficult this track is!

BUT IT WAS FUN!!!!

oh yeah and i forgot to add, I went to Interlaken, Switzerland, and hired a motorbike and did a whole day ride through the Grimsel Pass and Furka Pass, look these up on google and you will see they are some of the most amazing but scary roads in the world! Will put pics up when i can upload them.

cheers!

Great stuff  ;D ;D ;D

670 euro isnt cheap.....but hey, look at what you got to do, it's pretty good value for all that I rekon.

Amazing! I'd love to do that! - but I'd demand to experience the 'ring' in a 90 ~

I agree!  So it's not true what they say about you Jim, you do have some taste.

I was just reading about the 75 experience recently actually.  Apparently the chap has 40 Tsparks and only 5 V6s for those people that 'insist' on taking the V6.  The V6 is slower, and needs new brake pads every 3 days, as opposed to the TS which will go at least 5 months between changes.    A lap time of 8 minutes 20 seconds is possible in Ron Simons' hands.   That's very fast.

Nice one Mick, I think we're all very jealous.  I'm sure it was well worth it.

Mic that's freaking incredible, can't believe you almost passed up the opportunity! I'll definitely have to see the vid you got - was it in car or something? Definitely expensive, but for what you get, that's pretty sweet! Love the pics. So how long did it take you to lap the circuit? Many cars at any one time on the circuit? And the pic with all the Alfas belongs to the "75 experience"? That's a lot of 75s. So many questions... I'll have to wait till you get back!

Oh my god. You are a luck man - Grimsel Pass/Furka Pass looks absolutely incredible. View alone would be worth it let alone the roads... Was it cold? and what bike did you hire? 1098?!

Also, I'm the proud owner of a GSXR600 ;D
Suddenly the weekend isn't getting here quick enough. See you when you get back mate.

Well done Gumby!

heya alex, it was a BMW 650RS, easy bike to ride and plenty of grunt and comfortable for 6 hours easy with 2 people on it.

I am so jealous of you with your GSXR600.. those things are so fast! Cant wait to go for a ride when I get back! YEAH!

I think im gonna go back to Interlaken after Italy for another ride! it was THAT good!

And sheldon, I met Ron he is a really nice guy, he wasnt my instructor though an american guy called Ed was, and he was an incredible driver! He scared the crap out of me! there were probably 10 V6s or even more, heaps. but we chose the TS because i know they handle better. and we were keeping up with the V6 anyways, they are all flogged so much! the gearbox had literally NO syncros left, i had to force it into gear, and the limo was ROOTED!
oh yeah, but the suspension was out of this world, they were the most forgiving cars ever, i mean.. i went into a slide at about 160 kmh and got out of it alive... just! argh!

Hey Mick whats the go with the ticket machine that the lotus drive is feeding?
Is that your timing card? if so give us your time.

Hey Gary, no its not a timing card its the card you have charged with credit to enter the track each time. the straight is not full, it forces you to slow down and exit the track to re-enter using a card which has credit on it, very clever but annoying as you hit about 200kmh and have to slow down to exit the track.... we were given unlimited cards since we payed for the alfa 75 experience tuition! yay!
it is so hard to even convey just how scary and amazing that racetrack is, that day changed my life!!!!

Hi Everyone!

Mick has already told you how great the whole experience was so no point in me repeating what he as already wrote! But i did take some photos of the front suspension set up while one of the cars was on a hoist. Its pretty cool how they still use the standard torsion bars but have incorporated coil overs and a massive sway bar on the front! The rear was untouched but just had springs and a sway bar i believe!

Overall the car was the best handling alfa i have driven..it was so responsive and sat so flat through corners.

hey guys, heres some pics from the swiss alps ride i did on a BMW 650RS. Im going back there in a few weeks to do some more riding! Enjoy!

Grimsel Pass + Furka Pass

last pic

Wow, that's spectacular. Is it not too expensive to hire the bike + gear? I'm going to have to see some more of those photos when you get back. Like the suspension shots there Simmo, good reporting.
See you guys when you get back!

I detect an article for the magazine ... just so you can gloat to the non-web enabled members  :)

I have a DVD they gave me which is a lap of the track from a 75 roof camera with corner names and which gear to be in, its pretty cool watching the 75 fly past a Lotus Elise and a Porsche Carrera! Ron Simmons is driving though so its not really suprising.

Mick,

How did the coil-over suspension handle compared to a well sorted 116/160 chassis with conventional set-up? A lot of guys on the Alfa BB forum really talk up Ron's gear.

Cheers,

Brent

It's a bit hard to compare since I wasn't driving a familiar track on which I know how a conventional setup handles. But I'd say it was definately more responsive and less tail happy than a car with hard springs and fat bars with an uprated rear sway bar, which I know on my car makes it oversteer a fair bit.  I think they had only done most of the work to the front end so that the cars will understeer before they oversteer making it easier for inexperienced drivers to correct a muck up.  I know it saved my ass a couple times.  They handle bloody well though, I guess its just more a purists thing to uprate what is already on the car ie. torsion bars and springs and swaybars, instead of welding and adding the coil overs, each to their own!