There are varying degrees of danger on the Nürburgring and few are more unnerving than what the drivers had to endure during this year’s edition of the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring. From the hail storm to the fog and rain as light was slowly retreating on Saturday evening, to any lap in the darkness of the Eifel, injury or worse is always just one mistake away. How close you can get to the edge and walk away unscathed was charted by Dennis Trebing in the early hours of Sunday morning when he nearly lost his GetSpeed Performance Porsche 991 GT3 Cup at the high-speed Tiergarten corner.
“I went sideways at 270 kilometres per hour at Tiergarten, coming out of Döttinger Höhe,” the young American remembers his midnight near-shunt. “I was passing another car and hit the curbing in a wrong way. 270 at 2:30 in the morning, I will never forget that one, I definitely needed to change my underwear after that one.
“It was definitely an eye-opening experience and I do not want to repeat it, but I survived it and the car was one.”
Just one year ago, during practice for the disastrous 2015 VLN season opener, Niclas Kentenich went off at the same corner and ended up in the hospital with multiple broken bones. Having been in that same race, Trebing realises it could all have gone horribly wrong.
“That was definitely the one thing: Doing 270, it’s one of those scenarios where the best situation happened to come out of that, because it could have gone so much worse, I’ve seen it gone so much worse, and I’m glad that the car ended up going straight at the end of the thing and all was good.”
Despite surviving this scare, it all still ended with a hit in the wall for the number 63 Porsche.
“Sadly, my team mate hit oil in the early morning and crashed. It wasn’t really his fault, and everyone is OK. It’s sad that we didn’t get to finish the race.”
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