With just three more weeks until the 2024 Nürburgring Nordschleife season begins, I thought I’d turn my attention to an often-overlooked section of the ‘Ring community; the motorcyclists.
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Those of you ancient enough to remember the very first bridgetogantry.com website, might also remember that I’m a biker too. In fact, I didn’t even drive a proper modded car here (my MX-5) until 2007!
In fact, for 8 years I only ever rode our hallowed 20.8km Nordschleife on a motorcycle. Here’s Brendan Keirle and me, all the way back in 2003, where he tried really hard to pull my lines into something approaching decent. It was a struggle, and I didn’t even go sub-8 until a few years after this!
Of course, the Biker-Friendly days of the ‘Ring are easy to remember with rose-tinted visors firmly in place. When bikes made up a large percentage of the traffic (which we did, all the way through the 90s and deep into the Naughties), they also made up most of the injuries and fatalities on the Nordschleife too. The chilling reality was that several bikers could die in a single month, and that was perfectly normal.
Nowadays access to the Nürburgring Nordschleife for motorcycles is much more difficult. Touristenfahrten sessions are regularly closed to bikes, both pre-emptively around the classic car events (more oil spills) and also reactively (oil spills agains) most days.
With that in mind, I done gone made a video on my motorcycle youtube channel (https://youtube.com/@btgmoto) to cover the three main ways you can ride the 20.8km Nordschleife in 2024.
If a video is not what you want to watch, I will sum up, very briefly, how you can ride the ‘Ring on a motorbike in 2024 right here:
- Public sessions (Touristenfahrten)
- Motorrad Anlassen
- One of two, two-day, motorcycle-only training events
Public sessions, as you might have heard, are pretty sketchy these days. The average pace is faster than ever, and the guys at the ‘front’ are going faster in public sessions than many lesser racecars manage in the big races. It’s an explosive mix, and not one I can recommend to anybody who’s inexperienced in either motorcycling or track work.
Motorrad Anlassen is the exact opposite. It’s free, for a start, and it’s super-duper slow. It’s a big motorcycle event, currently pencilled in for April 28th. Again, watch the video to reveal more.
And finally you have Doc Scholl and Motorrad Action Team trainings. Long gone are the open-pitlane trackdays for motorcycles, so these 2-day training courses are strictly for road-legal motorcycles only. They’re not cheap, but they’re also well worth the expense (IMO).
More details are in the video. Here are some photos from the DEEP archive…
