The Eagle Flies!

Here are some screen shots of the Eagle flying over the humps at three different locations at the Nurburgring. There are several more places each lap where the car gets airborne!

Flugplatz

Flugplatz is in the first third of the lap, about 2 kilometers from the starting line, after the twisty, low speed Hatzenbach section. The track opens up, you begin to hustle the car through some faster sections, and then you crest a blind brow at over 125 mph. Overcook it - or have the car the slightest bit sideways when it launches - and the car snakes out of control on landing. Lift or brake at the wrong moment and the car slams down hard on its front wheels.

Get it just right - brush the brakes, then get back on the power a little before the car lifts off - and you get a beautiful, feather-soft landing on all four simultaneously.

Incidentally, Doug Arnao sent me a replay of his quickest lap at the Ring, an 8:16 in the Lotus. He does not appear to brake here, but only lift slightly going up the hill. He lifts off at over 145 mph, and catches a lot more air than I do!

Meuspath

Dottinger Hohe is near the end of the lap, about 17 kilometers from the starting line, at the end of the final, twisting, downhill section called Schwalbenschwanz (which contains the Kleines Karussel). This is the beginning of the straightaway, almost 2 km long, which completes the final section of the course before the chicane which protects the pit straight.

This long straight is punctuated by rolling hills. Partway down this straight, opposite the village of Meuspath, is a bigger hill, with a dramatic "yump" in which the car gets airborne at roughly 180 mph! It's not too difficult; you simply have to lift off the throttle to avoid zinging the engine to redline, and ease back on the power as the car touches down.

Antoniusbuche

At the end of the long straight is a very fast left-hand sweeper called Antoniusbuche. Steve Smith says this is the fastest corner in Grand Prix Legends. I can't confirm that; so far I haven't gone through it as fast as I've gone through the Masta kink at Spa. It's an intimidating corner, blind, with hedges close by on each side, and the car is at its maximum speed (192 mph in the Eagle*) as you approach it.

What makes it even more exciting is that you are cresting a rise just as you turn in - at over 160 mph! At 120 mph, this rise would be nothing, but at 160 mph it's a different matter. The car lifts off the ground as it enters the corner; if you look closely, you can see that that I'm "catching air" with all four wheels!

Doing even a reasonably quick lap at the Ring is enormously satisfying. One of the engineers at Papyrus said to me recently that a lap under 10 minutes is a real accomplishment. I have to agree. At that point, my best time was well over 10 minutes.

Just the other day, I finally went under 10 minutes, and yesterday I did a 9:29. That is still a long way from being really fast, but at that speed you are starting to be near the limit at a lot of corners, and you must have learned the track well enough to remember where you have to brake, where you have to be careful, and where you can go fast. You are starting to lean on the car in the turns a bit, the tentativeness with which you approached much of the track when you first started learning it has begun to fade, and you are beginning to handle the car with authority, attacking more aggressively, even chucking and hurling here and there.

The feeling is awesome!

*The Eagle will do 200 mph on the Masta straight at Spa, and 195 at Monza, but it does not quite match those speeds at the Ring, perhaps because the final section of the straight is slightly uphill. Doug's Lotus reaches 191 mph here, while it can nearly match the Eagle's top speed at Spa but is 3 mph down at Monza.

Note also that the speed figures I'm quoting are taken from the replay, which displays the car's speed in the upper right-hand corner. This can be configured by the user to display in either MPH or KPH.