Continuing with my Recap series of the fantastic weekend at the Nürburgring, here’s something for your eyes! Enjoy all the pictures from past weekend, when Nokia invited Dani Adassa, Iain Wallace and yours truly to the famous Nürburgring in Germany, to be part of the Peugeot RCZ Nokia Driving Experience! Some great days, great friends, great cars and lots of adrenaline!

Check out the full gallery after the break and on Flickr – enjoy and share!

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Tags: Nokia, Nürburgring, Peugeot, Trip

I am sure you came to my blog, to expect another post of phone impressions or some new rants. If you did, please move on, there’s nothing like this to see here. You may or may not know, but I am also a big car enthusiast, especially tuned cars or sportscars. I have appreciated everything with 4 wheels since i was a little boy, when my uncle (at the time around the same age as I am now), was playing around with his cars back then. With this in mind, i had the absolutely great privilege to drive a Nissan GT-R a few weeks back (see my Flickr gallery here: Riding a Bullet – Nissan GT-R), one of my all time favourite cars. I am not sure if those pictures and my enthusiasm for the car were a factor, when Surya from Nokia contacted me a month ago, asking me if I’d be free at the end of August, to join a few selected Nokia bloggers for a special car/race-related … at the NÜRBURGRING!! But first, I feel like I need to bring you some facts about the Nürburgring and everything that happened there, before I bring you my experiences and thoughts about our weekend!

The Nürburgring – Nordschleife

It is the mekka for every car enthusiast, heaven for some, hell for those without control. 22 kilometres of high-speed straights, tricky bends, blind parts, and of course famous locations like the banked bend called Carousel, or the Airport, where cars could almost completely leave the ground jumping. It’s a wild ride, as i would find out on Sunday. If you love cars, you have to be there at least once in your life!

The Weekend

Peugeot has teamed up with Nokia, to take part in the VLN racing series. The VLN, properly the Veranstaltergemeinschaft Langstreckenpokal Nürburgring (Association of Nürburgring Endurance Cup Organisers) is an organisation of motorsport clubs of which each hosts one event of a ten-race series held on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, the “VLN Langstreckenmeisterschaft Nürburgring” (VLN Endurance Racing Championship Nürburgring). Participants of VLN races range from amateurs in small road legal cars with rollcages and harnesses to professional factory teams racing ex-DTM cars, or Porsche 996 GT3 RSR as in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and similar races. The VLN series is closely associated with the 24 Hours Nürburgring, as it has similar rules (mostly), and mainly the same participants. Find out more about the race series here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veranstaltergemeinschaft_Langstreckenpokal_N%C3%BCrburgring

The Cars

The Peugeot RCZ, a very sporty, cool looking car was beefed up to 200hp in the race version, powered by a 2.0ltr HDi FAP engine and features all the race goodies, like a roll cage, slick tires and more. The Team, a very good mix of veterans, and young up-and-comers has had an incredible successfull season thus far, and well.. it wasn’t the last great race for them, as you will read later on!

The (Nokia) Bloggers

Dani Adassa: I have met Dani at some of the other Nokia events I’ve been to, and she’s always great fun. Female geeks are a rare breed, and Dani represents them with great passion. Dani blogs over at http://dani2xll.com/ and of course http://dailymobile.se/
Iain Wallace: I have met Iain last year at Nokia World, and of course via Twitter. I’ve got to know Iain a lot better this weekend, and he turned out to be a very smart, intelligent guy. Iain blogs at http://doitdifferent.wordpress.com/, a nice little blog, full with useful how-to’s and workarounds! How to upload pictures from a Nokia N8 to an iPad wirelessly? Iain shows you

We were accompanied by Kee Cheng and Jan Bonnevier, both working at Nokia, and Jan’s father. They took very very good care of us, as usual at Nokia’s unique events and I can’t thank them enough for having me! Also with us, was a bunch of Peugeot- und Automobile bloggers from France, who also were invited by Peugeot! All in all, a great bunch of people and fun to hang out with!

But enough with the facts already, check back here this weekend to find out what happened, in my Nürburgring diary!!

Tags: Nokia, Nürburgring, Peugeot, Trip