The Nurburgring, on a good day, can claim victory over the most solid driver in the most capable car, so trying to tackle it on a snowy day is insanity. We don’t even know the kind of person who would even think to attempt it in an open-wheel single seater, but we do know his name.
Andy Gülden is a Chief instructor at the Nurburgring Driving Academy, someone who’s paid to show visitors how to drive around the ‘ring without losing their car (or worse) in the process. In the above video, he takes one of his school’s one-seaters out on a snow-covered lap of the course, struggling to keep his ride pointing in the correct direction most of the time.
The car itself weighs just a little over a thousand pounds and is powered by a 1.2-liter four-cylinder engine, pushing 140 horsepower to the rear. How much of that power actually propelling the car is hard to tell.
Tackling the famous Nurburgring track has long been a benchmark in driving ability. The reason being that the 14-mile loop is as treacherous as it is long, with as many variations on corners as you can imagine, elevation changes and amazing straightaways. Gülden now to also contend with changing surfaces as few parts of the track remain uncovered by snow, and there’s no telling how much of the white stuff is ice or powder. Even down the long Döttinger Höhe straight towards the end of the track, he fights to keep his racer from spinning off.
The course eats cars for breakfast on a regular basis, so you’d have to be pretty crazy to go out there in the snow in any car other than a plow. For the Nurburgring instructors, the drivers who live and breathe the track, crazy is just another day at the office.
