Germany. It's the last place we thought we'd be going for a story. What could possibly be interesting in Deutschland? A flag that looks like a stack of ugly Legos? Pass. A tour of the nasty St. Pauli brewery? Barf. Bratwurst? No, we get enough of a sausagefest at the press events we attend here, thanks. However, in our usual fashion, we were quite wrong and on a plane to Frankfurt before we knew it. The reason? German chicks. Well, them and Falken.
A quickly circulating rumor turned into fact when we received a call from Nick the Greek, Falken's performance marketing manager and security staff all in one. He asked if we were busy the week of late May, early June. Of course, we went through the usual list of excuses, like we had to wash our pet hedgehog that weekend, we cut one nail too short and it felt weird, we burned our tongues on a grape Pop-Tart, and so on. We have them all on an Excel spreadsheet. But we stopped short when he mentioned three magic letters: G, T, and R. Falken's Japanese division, Nick said, had a Skyline, a highly badass Skyline, and it's going to rip some BMW and Audi asses new ones in a 24-hour race in Germany at the world-famous Nrburgring. Yeah, that track with all the trees and rainy weather in your favorite racing video games. We'll be spending all day and all night there. Full hospitality. All expenses paid. Wanna go?
Whoa, says we. A Skyline GT-R? In Germany? Suddenly, we had the strongest urge to suit up in black turtlenecks and Lennon glasses, listen to Rammstein, and drink suds for breakfast. All of which, of course, we did as soon as we hopped off our Lufthansa flight.
Ordinarily, on a trip hosted by an outside company, we stay on our best behavior. However, with our freelance photographer, Boyd Jaynes, and Falken's affable cast of characters along for the trip, our outings quickly leaned to the brutal side. Keep in mind this race is 24 hours long. None of us slept on the plane, and nobody slept upon arrival because we landed on Friday night in Koblenz, the university town where our hotel was located. Yeah, German college girls. So we had no choice but to go out. Race starts early afternoon, May 30. Ends the same time, June 1. No sleep 'til June! It was so great.
In our mindset, it's no wonder we skipped out on minor details like who qualified where, what pole position they took, what their names were, and who won. Well, OK, we actually know that Team Opel crossed the finish line in First Place driving an Opel Astra V-8 Coupe (whatever that is), which means that Timo Scheider, Marcel Tiemann, and Volker Strycek got to waste champagne on the crowd. But what do you care? All that matters to you is that the Falken Skyline didn't win. But oh man, it was so close until about 7 a.m. on June 1, the same time Boyd and I hit the 15th Red Bull mark. The GT-R dropped from a steady, glorious Third Place down to a dirty, homely nothingness as an internal engine failure sucked the life out of its lead, causing it to peter on the track. Towed back to the pits, an early morning stop turned into two hours as Falken scrambled to replace the entire motor. Of course, the net result of a torturously long holdover like that was not favorable for the drivers, resulting in 53rd Place overall. However, seeing as though only 165 cars out of a few hundred even finished, it's damn amazing that the Falken team pulled off a placement like that with so many elements working against them. Roland Asch, Dirk Schoysman, Takayuki Kinoshita, and Tetsuya Tanaka, names of drivers well known in both Germany and Japan, were lauded for hammering out a great performance by all Team Falken fans in attendance, including us.