***This an article I wrote for C! Magazine. It is Continued from the Hockenheim gallery***

So now I'm driving back to my quaint little hotel in Heidelberg, top down, playing the part, trying not to look like a car salesman taking an extended test drive. There's a knack to looking like you own a car like this – first thing is to try to not smile too much. Its hard, but I keep it all in. I'm looking fairly credible as I fiddle with the Satellite navigation system while stuck at the traffic lights and then, all of a sudden, all my composure flies straight out the open top once I realise that I'm less than a full tank of gas away from the only other hallowed ground of motoring nirvana – the Nuerburgring Nordschleife.

I had a full day to spare before my flight – sure it was almost an 800 kilometer detour, but there are just some things in life that transcends all rhyme and reason; it is there to serve a higher purpose than logic. It is a calling. There is no holier stretch of road. If I was six years old, it would be the equivalent of visiting Sesame Street. I pull into the nearest internet cafe and check the opening times. It was an omen. It just happened to be one of those rare days that the track would open to the public from 1:30pm to 7:30pm the following day. I still have the mark on my arm where I pinched myself.

But pilgrimage or no pilgrimage, this detour was still a substantial unforeseen expense and would be a tough sell. We're talking about at least 20,000 pesos worth of fuel and basic accommodation alone. And its not like we haven't already been there before. Carl Cunanan took an Opel Speedster there in 2003 and Kookie Ramirez and I blasted around in a BMW 735i the year after. But you see, back then the effect was slightly lost on me. Sure it was great, but it is sort of like how when you're growing up and you see the pretty little girl next door as nothing more than a friend. Up until you hit puberty. All of a sudden, you start to notice things. It means something. You understand it now. And you want it. Bad.

I typed out a carefully worded SMS. “Ken, I'm ill. The doctors tell me I may not have long to go...” Scratch that, its bad Karma. “Ken, the road to Munich has been closed, there are grave threats to travellers and the rebels are...” That wouldn't fly either, he actually watches CNN. “Ken, I love you. It's not true what Kevin Limjoco says about you...”

I didn't get to sleep that night. Asides from the hunger pangs from skipping dinner so that I could make sure I had enough money for fuel, I kept thinking about the history, the heartbreak, the significance and the sacrifices that were made to create an enigma like the Nuerburgring. There really is no other place on earth like it.

Ken eventually texted back, “Cut the crap. You can go on one condition. You need to get yourself on the M Taxi. We've covered the 'Ring twice, so you need a fresh angle. No taxi, no story. No story, no job. Deal?” Dignity is a powerful currency and I actually feel as if I got a good exchange rate, too. There's only one thing better than driving around the 'Ring, and that is being driven around in BMW's ball-breaking, 509hp, V10, M5 by the 2-time 24-hour Nuerburgring champion, Sabine Schmitz. It is the fastest way around and it will scare the pants of you. A single lap costs a whopping 11,500 pesos and I was given the green light.

The autobahns are loaded up with holidaying Germans. Its a long weekend, and its getting harder and harder to find a gap large enough to give the throttle a good squirt and really stretch the legs of the six. Once I exit the highway, I hook up on the winding ribbons of asphalt that tie its way through the outskirts of the Eifel mountains. I smack that two stage go-go pedal down and it lets out a slap as it hits the plastic stopper on the firewall. Its not long before I end up on the wrong side of the speed limits; I tease the cabrio through the gently cambered corners but I'm careful to not get my fill out here – after all, as breathtakingly sinful and inviting as it all was, it only served as an entree to the fabulous feast that lay ahead at the end of this road.

On the way up there are portions where the race track meets the road. There you will see people hanging off the guard rails cheering on total strangers as if national pride depended on it. You can hear the sounds of tortured rubber and screaming engines as you make your way up to the toll area on the main straight. On any given track day you will find the car park brimming with enough exotics to humble just about any car show on earth. And they have all come here for only one reason. I wedge my Six into a slot that has just been vacated by a Pagani Zonda, and find myself in between a couple of Lambos, an M3 and a tricked out Porsche. For the first time during the trip, I'm actually feeling like the poor relation.

So much has been said about this sacred stretch, but Robert Blinkhorn, an historian, summed it up perfectly by saying, “The 'Ring is not a race circuit; it is the setting for an automotive opera.” And nothing has changed. Over the last 78 years, the 'Ring has had a habit of churning out some of the most epic battles in motorsport history; each of the 73 complex corners has its own harrowing tale to tell and weaves together to create the most incredible stories of triumph, bravery and heroism. Just spend a few minutes walking around the car park and you will hear these tales being traded among enthusiasts. There are just as many tales of tragedy, of course, but they are given much less attention; it is in some way an unspoken part of the lure – much like how Blowfish appeals to the Japanese. Here, you're not just lapping a circuit, you're tracing the steps of our automotive ancestry.

I walk up to the ticket booth and pick up a 5-lap pass. It costs sixty Euro, but you effectively get one lap for free. The only catch is you need to consume it all in a single day. No sweat.

With the top still down and the glorious sunshine pouring generously into the black leather trimmed cabin, I line myself up and slot my card in to the toll booth. The barrier lifts and I enter the Green Hell. I flick the 'Sport' switch by the transmission to firm up the suspension and give me an extra handful of revs and then plant the throttle. Hard. The noise is sensational. The beauty of an open-topped car is it comes with an extraordinary original soundtrack from the twin exhaust and a full symphony bellowing under the hood once the Valvetronic starts earning its keep. The engine is so smooth that it snaps away at the rev limiter with every upshift.

I've entered the track about halfway up the main straight and I'm already charging along at an alarming speed, but even with the roof down my hair is not as ruffled as my nerves. I remind myself of the replacement cost and I back off a bit before I come around to the main pit area, where a racing lap would officially begin. It's all too easy to get carried away, and many have, but I kept thinking to myself, “James, there could be two very different endings to this story: the best day of your life, or the last. Your choice. There's nothing to prove, and even if there were, there are no witnesses anyway. So back off and just tell people you didn't.”

But the 'Ring can taunt you. I now understand why many have paid the ultimate price. It is like a demanding mistress that coaxes you into danger. Before you know it, you're back on the limit. There's forbidden pleasure in not knowing what exactly lays around that bend, and lifting off prematurely just leaves you feeling a little less virile. One part of me kept wanting to just hold back and enjoy the magnificence of this place and to soak up all the history. The other part kept screaming for the speed, thrill and glory.

I catch a GTI Golf in my mirrors that seems to know his way around. I veer off the line and tuck in behind him. Now we're dancing through the woods, clipping apexes, brushing painfully close to the Armco barriers, and building up a beautiful rhythm. What you won't feel in the Playstation is the incredible elevation changes that can suck you into a vortex if you enter a downhill pass at the right speed. It just keeps piling on more speed and before you know it, you're clocking in over 220km/h on a stretch of road that is about as dangerous as a scorned lover. I get a windscreen full of brake lights as the Golf locks up his inside front wheel and veers hard left; I'm even harder on the anchors to compensate for my extra heft and send the electronics into chaos. Another wake up call, I let the Golf go his own way.

This was to be one of a number of close calls as I buried the Six's nose into the apex of another series of curves on a deadly downhill pass. I enter the portion between Bergwerk and the Karussell where I'm pretty certain I can flirt with the top speed without too many nasty surprises. This is the section just after the corner of Lauda's famous shunt. Even in pixelised form, on an X-Box or PS2, this is a section where you can easily lose it even while on a relatively straight patch of road. I keep pouring on the speed, keeping an eye out for the tight right hand, double apex coming up that can catch you seriously off guard, especially after spending a great deal of time on full throttle.

As far as my eye can see is clean, deserted asphalt punctuated by mild kinks that can be pretty much straight lined. I've unleashed all 258 angry horses and I'm caning every single one of them as I barrel through one of the faster portions of the track. The Six takes in lung fulls of sweet, sacred mountain air and only runs out of breath at the opposite end of sanity. I'm sure I could have probably squeezed BMW for the 645Ci, but with gas prices in Europe rivalling an inner city studio apartment, you can shove that extra torque in that vast empty hole in your back pocket, thank you very much.

Besides, this all-new unit is the lightest six-cylinder production petrol engine in the world; it uses high-tech items like a composite aluminium and magnesium crankcase, which is 43 per cent lighter than a traditional cast iron unit; a front suspension constructed almost entirely from aluminium, together with a magnesium cylinder head cover and an exhaust manifold that is 2mm thick, compared to 12mm, and weighs in at very taut 1485kg – 30kg less than the 645Ci.

Realistically, the flagship V8 may be a great car, but it’s a point-and-shoot machine; you still need to go in slow and wait for the car to get out of a corner before putting the hammer down to keep that extra heft from dragging the car wide. If you don’t, the electronics will interfere anyway and assume you don’t have the skills to keep it out of the Armco barrier and retards the power as you head for the apex. I know this because I tried one around the Batangas Racing Circuit when it first came out.

The 630i shaves a little less weight from the front end, enabling it to cut into corners sharper, changing the entire attitude of the car. It carries a little more momentum into each bend and, because the front end doesn’t start to slip until it’s pushed much harder, the electronics don't meddle as much and lets the driver maintain more control.

I'm constantly reigning myself in, being more conservative with my braking and turn in points and allowing myself a healthy margin of error. Just in case. Nestled deep into one of the safest and most forgiving casings available on four wheels, I try to imagine what it was like to pull a fast one around the 'Ring during the times of Stewart, Fangio, Clark and Ascari as their skinny ass radial tires grappled for grip on unforgiving sweepers that were guardrailed solely by trees. No matter how hard I try, I can't get my head around Niki Lauda's pole position time of 6:58.6 – a blistering qualifying run set just a day before the tragedy, making him the first driver to ever break the 7 second barrier. To think that back then, a driver would don on his helmet knowing that he had only a one in three chance of making it back alive. It was a time when men were men and even the trees were nervous.
As I come down hard on the stoppers just before the heavily cambered Karussell, I look for the tallest pine tree, grab third and turn in. I hurl myself around the very rough, corrugated surface of the banked turn; its treacherous if you get your line wrong and it can eat through a perfectly good suspension and drivetrain. Coming out of the bank, I keep it tucked in and pull out neatly, carefully avoiding the guardrails on the exit. I have a bit of a 'moment' and I recall Robert Blinkhorn's gripping account of Tazio Nuvolari, a tiny Italian driver in his beaten up old Alfa and I wondered how he must have tackled this very corner knowing that history itself depended on it.
It was 1935 and the Germans were lording it over the 'Ring, totally dominating the Grand Prix series and crushing their Alfa Romeo, Bugatti and Maserati opposition shamelessly from 1934 until the coming of the war. The Nazi-sponsored Mercedes and Auto Unions were already using state-of-the-art technology to develop lighter alloys for the bodywork, allowing them to use bigger, more powerful engines while still remaining within the weight limit for the class.
Tazio lined up his dated little Scuderia Ferrari entered Alfa Romeo P3, with a piddly 3.2 litre bored out engine, just behind the four Mercedes W25s that were produced to go up against the formidable 4.9 litre V12 Auto Unions driven by another four-man German team. There was an insignificant mixture of Maserati, ERA and Bugatti privateers, but they were used primarily as track sweepers and to fill up an otherwise all-German grid.

After trading the top spots among themselves for the first half of the race, the German leaders began arriving in the pits for fuel and fresh tyres. Although Tazio had managed to gain some valuable ground, he was eventually held up by a trademarked, 2-minute Italian pit stop. Race leader, von Brauchitsch, was away in just 47 seconds. He was soon followed out by a handful of German cars. Angered by the handicap, Tazio dished out arguably the finest performance in the entire history of motor racing.

He drove like a total lunatic and wrung out every last drop of speed from his underpowered Alfa, using every available inch of road to gain back lost ground. He started passing the Germans as if they were nothing more than pine trees, eventually clinching second place after a late pit stop from one of the leaders. The gap to first was now 1m 27sec with only seven laps remaining. Tazio soldiered on and started eating away at the gap. First it was 1m 17sec, then 1m 3sec, until on lap 21, just thirty seconds separated the two men. The crowd were on their feet.

Yet despite the amazing performance, too much damage had already been done and the gap proved too great for even Tazio to recover. Then fate stepped in. Pressured by Tazio's staggering lap times, von Brauchitsch had begun to push even harder and just seven precious kilometres to the flag his rear tyre burst allowing Tazio to cruise by to collect the honors in front of a stunned 300,000 strong German audience, including Adolf Hitler.

The Germans were so confident of winning that the organizers didn't even have a copy of the Italian national anthem. Luckily, Tazio always carried one as a lucky charm and the strains of Marcia Reale echoed around the grandstand much to the annoyance of the assembled Nazi hierarchy. Blinkhorn described it as“A triumph of human virtues of skill and courage over the science of speed and horsepower” and still acknowledges it as the finest race of Tazio's long and illustrious career. The first Lord of the 'Ring had been born.

As I came up to the end of the lap, just past the 20km post, I had to give way to an aggressively driven GT2 Porsche on an obviously timed lap. After a string of subtle curves, followed by the second banked corner, I buried the pedal deep into the floor and charged down the main straight. 220, 230, 240, 245...Brake, tuck in and enter the parking area. I park up and allow all the contracting metals to cool – there are cracking noises from the heat, and a sweet roasting smell coming from the brakes. The lap was as much physical as it was mental but possibly even more emotional. I couldn't believe how exhausted I was; I felt totally spent.

I took a walk around to allow everything to sink in and to get the blood circulating evenly through every extremity. Over the course of the lap I don't think I released enough of my grip from the steering wheel to allow color to come back to my knuckles. I check my stopwatch – allowing of course for a little bit of extra time to make up for a full lap – and smile: 10 minutes and 22 seconds. Not enough to get etched in any history books, but a new personal record.

I walk up to the BMW taxi office whistling gloriously, mulling Ken's words over in my head. “No taxi, no story. No story, no job.” What kind of a condition is that? I'd call it a blessing, or a gift, or an act of selfless kindness that should be grounds for canonization, but condition? He made it sound like there would be actual effort on my part. God bless him, I thought. I pull the door. Its locked. I shake it, nothing. I cup my hands around my eyes to cut the glare and peer in through the glass. Its closed.

Dazed, I look around for reassurance. I was still in denial and almost literally screamed, “help!” I caught myself in time, but the expression on my face said it all. Strangers walked up to me and asked me if I was okay. I asked how I could book a taxi ride on the M5. “No Taxi, no story”, I told them. They let out this roaring laugh. “Hey Diether,” the man called to his friend, “This guy wants to know how he can catch the 'Ring taxi. He arrived here on the off chance that it would be just idling here waiting for a fare! Ha ha ha”, he boomed. When he eventually stopped laughing he told me that the 'Ring taxi only operates on weekends and is booked one year in advance. I walked over to the bushes and wept silently.

“No story, no job.” I had four laps left on my card, but I couldn't get rid of those words swirling around in my head. I wandered through the parking lot like a stunned mullet until I found a race-prepped Viper from Zakspeed that also offered a co-drive. My spirits lifted; I approached the trailer and very casually asked if they had space for one guy on the co-drive. “Yes, sure!” This was it! Who needs a 'Ring Taxi when you can tear around in a purpose built V10 Viper! Justice has been served. “That'll be 260 Euros, thank you very much”, said the helpful gentleman with the tattered driving shoes. “What! I'm not buying a piece of the car, I just want to ride,” I said. I counted my bills. Now, unless I planned on pushing the Six back to Munich, I had to pass.

I was too heartbroken to drive another lap just yet so I drove around the outskirts of the track and found myself a nice patch alongside the outside of the curve of kilometer 17. I set myself up and started taking some shots of the cars that blasted past. After about an hour of this, I was able to really appreciate the difference in skill and could see the confidence level of each driver based solely on the line they took. Everyone I saw would come down the hill and get caught out by a sudden dip in the braking area, causing them to lose grip and upset their balance into the flat out right that comes at the end. But there was an exception.

Rumbling in the distance, I heard an angry roar reverberating through the woods. By this stage I had heard probably a hundred different engines coming down the same path, yet for some reason, this one frightened me. I peered through my 200 mm lens on my trusty old Canon then I saw it. Bulging arches, big, fat, sticky tires with the most intimidating stance I think I've seen on a production car. I froze for a moment. I watched in awe as it came thundering towards me, in full 'M' battle gear. To the uninitiated, it would appear as a decorated M3, but to any self respecting car nut, it was something special; the most coveted of them all – the M3 CSL. The ring master.

I fired off a burst of 3 shots. All of them were blurry. I had been psyched out – this little red, white and blue bastard had managed to slip through the crack. We have a saying here in the magazine trade: if you didn't get the picture, it never happened. And I'll be damned if I didn't come back with one. So I waited. And waited. A lap around the 'Ring can be anything from 8 minutes to 15 minutes and then you have to allow them time to pit, chat, have a drink, check tire pressures, read a book... damn, I could be here for weeks. What if he doesn't come back? Then it started to rain.

I stood there in the rain with my camera wrapped up in a plastic jacket for an hour and 15 minutes. Then I heard it again; the same unmistakeable angry growl from the finely tuned, 3.2 liter Bavarian 6 with a modified airbox spitting out its spent gasses out from an upgraded Bastuck exhaust system. It sounded like Ah-nold clearing his pipes after a nasty Indian dinner. I locked him in to my focusing points and -snap-snap-snap- I check my preview screen – I nailed the sucker. Not perfectly, but in frame.

I jump back in the Six and headed to the car park. There' was a small crowd gathered around the CSL. I pushed my way through to get a look at it. It was a cocky little bastard alright. Its owner, a young Swiss fellow who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jenson Button, stood nearby smiling proudly and looking almost poised to sign autographs on behalf of his vain machine.

I walk straight up to him and asked him if it was like a 'Ring taxi, and if could I ride in it if I offered to pay. Without so much as a flinch, he says, “Its never about the money around here. You wanna ride? Jump in. Simple.” As easy as that. I even offered to pay for the lap. He declined. “Just buckle up and tell me if you stop feeling comfortable. I won't be on the limit, but I'll take you close enough to it.” Now, good sense would tell me to back out and run a quarter mile the other way, but thats not how it works in these circles. Yes, I know I risked life and limb hopping on board a stupidly powerful car on one of the most dangerous stretches of road with a guy whom I never met and one whose name I don't even know, so thats why I introduced myself. “I'm James.” “Hi, James, I'm Martin.”, he said. Alright, guess were good to go now.

As the barriers lifted up, I comforted myself with the fact that even if this guy doesn't value my life, my insurance here is, I know he values his car. So long as I remain on the climate-controlled side of it, I'll be safe. As soon as we clear the safety cones which choke your exit from the toll booth, Martin rifles through the SMG box. The surge of power is incredible and I can't stop smiling. Its not from pleasure, its just plain G-force. Physics. Approaching turn one, the CSL remains firmly planted and impeccably balanced through the complex combination of turns.

We ride the bumps and there's always pressure on some part of my body. Its either accelerating, braking or lateral loads, but there are no neutral moments as we carve a line through turn one through to Hatzenbach. This is a technical section and now Martin avoids the bumps wisely. I've been told if you damage anything here it could let go at any point in the circuit. Thankfully, he's been told the same thing.

It is so unlike the lap I took earlier; there are some familiar cues but it is hard to tell because everything is just whizzing past a lot, lot, quicker. Corners seem to appear out of nowhere, trees that I never gave a second thought about are now close enough to trigger the series of images of my life that kept constantly flashing before my eyes. I phantom braked so hard at one curve I really think I wore a hole in the carpet of my foot well.

The approach to Schwedenkreuz is blidingly quick and is one section where cars can hit their top speeds. A Porsche 997 will usually kiss 240km/h before going airborne. We get awfully close to that, but don't lose contact with the road, thankfully. “Last week, an M3 driver killed himself here.” Martin says with a tone of respect in his voice for a fallen brother. The line into Schwedenkreuz is flat out in fifth before a hard braking, third gear corner. Martin keeps a clean line and avoids any big steering inputs mentioning casually that this would not be an area where you want to make any corrections. I nod in total compliance. Actually, there's nothing he could say that could engage me to disagree with him. I think I might have even started calling him sir, just from fear.

Somewhere up ahead is Adenauer–Forst, a corner that catches most drivers out. I had my first big moment there last year with Kookie in the Seven series. I remember it well because I've had bladder problems ever since. Even the mere mention of the name makes me feel like taking a whiz. Martin reassures me that he knows its coming - “Don't worry”, he says “Most people go off there. There's usually people waiting around just taking pictures of it. Its a popular place for spills.” He had just finished a CSL driver's training on the 'Ring with the BMW Fahrer Training group the day before and was feeling very comfortable with the lap. At least that made one of us.

The sound inside the car is even more glorious than the one I fell in love with outside the soggy corner of kilometer 17. It sent shivers down my spine with every upshift. Compared to the CSL, the garden variety M3 seems so common. Power has been bumped up to 360hp from 343hp, but more importantly, the CSL weighs in 243 pounds lighter. Alright, so by taking me on board it eats up into that whole advantage, but you can still see why it is so special. And if anyone can claim birth rights to the 'Ring, this is it. Honed, tuned, and raised on the northern loop. It spent its formative years here; it plans to raise a family of its own here one day and it is part of a very elite group of production vehicles that can claim to have broken the eight-minute sound barrier.

We're riding on 19-inch rubber with an upgraded, fully adjustable KW Coilover Suspension Variant III and are flying under a canopy of trees with incredible stability and traction out of the corners. We're approaching another exposed section of track where the public are waiting to cheer and wave the cars on, taunting each of them to put on a show. Martin resists the temptation and keeps it clean through the corner but lets out an unnecessary snarl from the throttle on the up shift causing the tail to kick out slightly. The crowd reacts. He smiles as he tosses up a glance into his rear vision mirror to gauge the reaction he elicited.

During the development stage of the CSL, BMW M engineers relied directly on Formula One technology to nourish their engines, CPUs, gearboxes and other performance goodies. The transfer of technology is now virtually instant and there's no other area where you can feel this more than on the down shifts. Coming into a tight hairpin after spending the best part of ten seconds on full throttle, Martin dives on the brakes and punches us down from sixth to second almost as fast as you could say it – all with the luscious note of a perfectly blipped throttle lining each gear change. The SMG/Drivelogic transmission nails each gearshift in just 0.08 seconds on all six gears, providing a direct and consistent flow of power at all engine speeds.

We clean up the last few corners, passing a few slower cars, like Porsches and Type R Hondas and come down the home straight. I didn't mention it to Martin, but I had timed our run. As soon as we hit the braking area for the entry into the toll area, I stop the clock. 8 minutes and 34 seconds. Including tax.

All of a sudden, the penny dropped; as much as I hate to admit it, Ken had finally started to make sense. I flashed back to our conversation in the conference room and began to feel the real weight of his words – except for the Northern Angola bit.

For a car enthusiast, this is a spiritual experience – one that transcends race, sex, color or religion. Though separated by several hundred miles, the parking lot of the Nuerburgring and the grandstands of Hockenheimring are connected by one common bond: the passion of motoring. These are hallowed grounds and should be a mandatory step for anyone with a 98 octane rating in their blood. As I pulled away from the parking lot and caught a final glimpse of the 'Ring in my mirrors, glowing in the delicate hues of the evening sun, I only mourned for one thing. If this is the summit, where do I go from here? I mean, could their really be anything else left to better this? What's left? Where in the world could you go to find a greater motoring thrill? Try this: https://pbase.com/cmanaginged/my_first_f1_drive