Onboard with Michael Schumacher on the Nurburgring Nordschleife

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Watch onboard with Michael Schumacher’s car as he laps the Nurburgring Nordschleife.

Schumacher did a lap of the track in a 2011 W02 chassis ahead of the Nurburgring 24 Hours race last week.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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46 comments on “Onboard with Michael Schumacher on the Nurburgring Nordschleife”

  1. Car sounds broken at about half way.

    1. Since W02 can’t go 24km without breaking down Mercedes were forced to use W04 for the Pirelli test :D

      1. Seems legit. :D

  2. Thanks Keith! But Michael was so exruciatingly slow in most parts of the track that it’s actually painful to watch…

    1. Probably to manage the gap to the road cars ahead so he didn’t end up flying into the back of one of them round one of the many blind corners.

      1. @geemac they had the track open during this? I thought it’d be closed for the demonstration…

        1. @vettel1 The other cars were part of the demonstration, fast Mercedes all. They were each given different headstarts according to their speed, from normal SLS to DTM car(driven by Rosberg), so as the F1 car will overtake them just before the finish. THis has been done many times before and is getting very boring indeed

          1. What he said… ;)

      2. @geemac I know it! Doesn’t make it any less painful to watch. Like an eagle in a cage

    2. @montreal95 I believe he was trying to replicate current F1 races

      1. @jleigh I bet his tires were in tip-top condition at the end of the lap. Had MSC figured that out last year he’d be still in F1, but now it’s too late so you might as well floor it Michael!

  3. Rev limiter kicking in way low, almost like its in pit lane mode…

  4. Is it my birthday already? :P

  5. Dunno why they bothered with this because he was speed restricted. Faster than a certain speed and it would have counted as testing.

  6. It felt like it was Spa at some places

  7. I didn’t realise how violent the cars shake on rev limiter… Thanks for the up, but agree with other comments, he didn’t really push it… Looked better from outside

  8. I think Red Bull should put Vettel and Webber on it and let them duel it out!

    1. And one of them (if not both) will get killed. Not a bad idea actually… (kidding)

      1. Nah, F1 cars are too safe for that these days.

    2. They should put Peres and Grosjean on it and let THEM duel it out!

    3. OmarR-Pepper (@)
      28th May 2013, 18:27

      and what about knockout races?:
      round 1: Perez vs Kimi,
      round 2: Maldonado vs Chilton
      round 3: Vettel vs Webber
      round 4: Alonso vs Massa (without team orders)
      round 5: Grosjean vs Ricciardo
      round 6: DiResta vs Sutil (Paul always claims he’s better than everybody else, so let’s see)
      round 7: Rosberg vs Hamilton (to finally see who’s better
      round 8: a remembrance… Schum vs Barrichello (Hungary’s payback?).
      let’s start “destruction derby” :P …

  9. Driving an F1 car at that speed makes it look like he doesn’t know the track…

  10. He’d have probably had more fun doing hot laps of the track on Gran Tourismo 5 than potting around at those speeds!

  11. What an incredible track, and this video made me realise how tight many corners are on the tracks of today’s calendar (and of course, how much they are alike). The Nordschleife has so many fast corners, one flowing into the other, that it would be absolutely spectacular to see an F1 car tackling it in earnest.

    Of course, racing a fast single-seater here is also incredibly dangerous, but still, it would be nice if someone tried to do a lap at 95% (if the tyres can manage that percentage, of course…) in a modern F1 car. Any more tyre tests coming up, Pirelli ;-) ?

  12. I think you can just hear Sabine Schmidtz saying “Ten minutes, I tell you something, I do that lap time in a van”.

    1. Where’s the ‘like’ button?

    2. COTY (comment of the year)

    3. @tricky Well played.

  13. Track reminds me of Spa because of the scenic beauty. Much better race track than Monaco anyday.

  14. Well what an anticlimax. I was really looking forward to this but it seems as though he’s just coasting round off the accelerator for most of it. What was the point of this?

  15. When I saw the first part on the GP circuit with all that oversteer and corrections, I thought, great! But then it just ended up like a cruise in a fast car.
    Fair enough that he can’t go bananas out there, they are on toy car like demonstration tyres and it would be quite an embarrassment to crash. But why does he need to trundle along at snails pace? Relative to the car he is in of cause…

    1. If it’s an oversteery single seater squirming its way round the Nordschleife you want, here’s the video for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_7E91r_iim0
      Enjoy!

  16. Dosappointing, but kind of crazy to see just how fast F1 cars are even when they travel at excruciatingly ‘slow’ speeds…

  17. So much for Schumacher having a stab at Heidfeld’s lap time. I thought Mercedes would give him a “proper” send off!

  18. Can you even imagine what is going on in his head? Conceivably this could be the last time he ever drives a Formula 1 car at a reasonable pace in front of a crowd on a proper track. Watch it again with that in mind and it adds a whole new element to the video…

    1. As long as Schumi breathes he will have the opportunity to drive an F1 car in front of a crowd

  19. Download video, place in Windows Movie Maker, increase speed x2.

  20. Just as well he wasn’t using 2013 Pirelli tyres, they would have gone over the infamous “cliff” before he made it to the Carousel

  21. He didn’t take the racing line through carousel ;)

  22. Audi ads everywhere.

  23. This is the fastest lap with onboard video I could find:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1qmXJrfyC0
    Ferrari 599XX in 0:06:58.16

    1. Scratch that, here is the Zonda R in 0:06:47.5
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPd0ATqvoJM
      Pretty amazing. I wonder what current F1 cars would be able to do if set up to be able to drive this bumpy track. My guess would be around 5:00-5:30.

      Niki Lauda did a 6:58 on the old track, which was 2 km longer, in 1974, and Stefan Bellof did a 6:11 on the current track with a Porsche 956.

  24. Bit disappointed. After the first 1/4 lap he just cruises around.

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