More reasons to be excited for the Nurburgring 24

After you get your LeMans fix this weekend, get ready for the other amazing European 24 hour race right behind it, and we just got some AMAZING news today regarding the 2019 Nurburgring 24:

We'll have LIVE STREAMS of the broadcast feeds of practice, qualifying and the race available on our Facebook, YouTube and web pages. No hunting around for a good race feed, just come to GRM and it's right there.

We've managed to score not only our usual photo pass, but VIDEO permission as well. This is kind of a huge deal, as getting video permission—even as journalists—for that race is very, very difficult. This means we'll have live broadcasts from the track prior to and during the event, as well as recorded video features to post throughout the week.

I can't stress enough what a huge deal this is, and how much effort went in to securing this. So please do us a solid and whenever you're tuning in to any of this coverage on our outlets next weekend, hit that "like" button and that "share" button on whatever outlet you're watching on. The better it goes this year, the more chance we have of doing it again.

I hope to bring you lots of live looks, especially from the Vintage race paddock next Wednesday. Vintage racing in Germany is nuts, and some of the cars will blow your butts out your socks.

I'm excited. Are you excited?

This is REALLY COOL!!!!!

Thank you all so much!!!!

That's awesome!

Coverage is good, but whose eyes it's through is so important, and I'm stoked about being able to virtually tag along with you lot to watch.

Sweet. I will tune in to watch.

I should mention that there are some catches, but that shouldn't keep us from having a good time. We're not allowed to shoot any race or pit action, as that's all handled by the network crews and also a safety issue. But anything in the garages, paddock or infield is fair game, and we should have some pretty awesome access to bring you cool stuff. We're there as guests of Hyundai this year, and we'll be getting some up close looks at their touring car efforts.

We also have to limit our broadcasts to three minutes each. BUT there's no limit on how many we can do, and I figure three minute videos are nice and shareable anyway. 

In any case, I think it'l be a heck of a cool time.

In reply to JG Pasterjak :

So, 480 three minute long videos then? Lol. 

I haven’t looked yet, but is the official race broadcast available in the states? I assume some of the tesms may live stream their in car cameras at the very least. 

What time will the vintage races be broadcast on Wednesday  ?

T.J. said:

In reply to JG Pasterjak :

So, 480 three minute long videos then? Lol. 

I haven’t looked yet, but is the official race broadcast available in the states? I assume some of the tesms may live stream their in car cameras at the very least. 

The feed that we will stream on our website and social media sites will be the official race broadcast. As far as traditional tv outlets, though, I don't think any of th sports networks carry the whole broadcast. I think a couple may have start and finish, though.

Just do the easy thing and hang out here :)

You might want to a bit more specific about exactly what day(s) and times this is happening.  Links would also be helpful.  I suspect this is not the only advertisement you will do for this, but having times as early as possible would make planning to watch easier.

P.S. Make sure to invite everyone you talk to to the challenge....  

Are you flying in/out of FRA?  If so, how much slack do you have, and do you need food recommendations in FRA (I didn’t spend a lot of time in Nuerburg, so I don’t have recommendations for there).

Please use the sms (or what ever the text  notification thing is called) to give is a heads up on things. I like that way better than emails. 

In reply to JG Pasterjak :

Since you are streaming hte offical race broadcast, can you put sub windows in it when you are doing your features?  That way we can just watch one feed- watch the race and your featurettes live.

sleepyhead the buffalo said:

Are you flying in/out of FRA?  If so, how much slack do you have, and do you need food recommendations in FRA (I didn’t spend a lot of time in Nuerburg, so I don’t have recommendations for there).

Um, yes please.

I'm mostly clocked in on this trip, but I have a little time to myself. I always have to pay a visit to this parrot sanctuary that's about half way between the track and FRA that's basically an old castle with several hundred rehomed parrots living in it. It's pretty nuts. But, yeah, I should have a little time to look for some solid grub either before or after the race.

aircooled said:

You might want to a bit more specific about exactly what day(s) and times this is happening.  Links would also be helpful.  I suspect this is not the only advertisement you will do for this, but having times as early as possible would make planning to watch easier.

P.S. Make sure to invite everyone you talk to to the challenge....  

I think my big day for live streams will be Wednesday. That's load-in day for all the teams, and the best chance to catch cars in the paddock. The vintage paddock especially is a sight to behold. 

So that's probably going to be between like 4-8pm 'Ring time, which is like 10am-2pm US eastern time. I'll do my best to use the text alert system and give the subscribers a heads-up as to what I'm doing. So if you're not subscribed to the text system, just text "grmlive" to 31996 and you'l get those updates.

Aside from that, It's going to be kind of a fluid situation. I'm actually there as a guest of Hyundai, and we'll have some insider access to their touring car programs, so we should be getting to take a close look at some of that stuff, too.

alfadriver said:

In reply to JG Pasterjak :

Since you are streaming hte offical race broadcast, can you put sub windows in it when you are doing your features?  That way we can just watch one feed- watch the race and your featurettes live.

Not a bad idea. I'll forward this to the web crew. I think they were going to set up a specific page for the stream, but that's out of my department. 

Oh, one more thing, since this streaming will mostly be phone-based and highly mobile, we can't do a dual stream to Facebook and YouTube. So I'll be bouncing back and forth a bit. So if you're not subscribed to one of the other, this might be a good chance to fix that.

This is awesome news. 

If we miss it live will we be able to watch it later on YouTube ?

californiamilleghia said:

If we miss it live will we be able to watch it later on YouTube ?

 

The race or my stuff?

For the race, I'm not sure. I know that there's at least a highlight package that the producer puts up within a week or so after the race. For my stuff, all of our live videos by default persist on both Youtube and Facebook, so all you'll have to do is scroll down our timeline to find them. I'll try and tag or organize them in some sort of easy to find fashion.

Of course, all of this hinges on a good data signal at the track. In the past, there's been suitable coverage for livestreaming, but wireless signals are noting if not unpredictable. Fingers crossed for good service next week.

JG Pasterjak said:

sleepyhead the buffalo said:

Are you flying in/out of FRA?  If so, how much slack do you have, and do you need food recommendations in FRA (I didn’t spend a lot of time in Nuerburg, so I don’t have recommendations for there).

Um, yes please.

I'm mostly clocked in on this trip, but I have a little time to myself. I always have to pay a visit to this parrot sanctuary that's about half way between the track and FRA that's basically an old castle with several hundred rehomed parrots living in it. It's pretty nuts. But, yeah, I should have a little time to look for some solid grub either before or after the race.

So, one idea to consider is dropping by the Bernd Rosemeyer memorial to where he passed.  It's just south of the airport on the Southbound A5, at a "rest area" marked as "Bornbruch".  Your GPS is going to try and carry you down onto 42, and around the airport.  I suggest you ignore it.

The stretch of A5 between Darmstadt and Frankfurt is some of the fastest there is, when the traffic is right.  There are active speed signs, but heading north, outside of the evening rush hour (3-6pm) it's frequently de-restricted.  After the memorial, have fun pulling the two cloverleafs at 42 (but don't go past, because it's difficult to turn around after that for a few miles) and head north and just wheel it out.  There's 4-5 lanes, and as long as the traffic isn't 'heavy' it moves.  There's nothing like watching 4 lanes of Autobahn 'work', and doing {ahem} 175km/hr*.  I'd take it all the way up past the river, and then take A66 west.  Maybe you add 30mins.  If the northbound traffic looks heavy, wave it off, and venture out around the airport.

* I think I've mentioned it before, but "de-restricted" doesn't mean "no speed limit", it means "go as fast as you, the car, and the conditions allow"... functionally this means that any accident at a speed greater than 175kph means you violated one or several of those stipulations and you are therefore automatically at fault.  YMMV, Caveat Speedor.

JG Pasterjak said:

We're there as guests of Hyundai this year, and we'll be getting some up close looks at their touring car efforts.

 

WHAT!?!?!? AND YOU DIDN'T INVITE ME! I'm hurt..... really hurt. 

JG Pasterjak said:

Oh, one more thing, since this streaming will mostly be phone-based and highly mobile, we can't do a dual stream to Facebook and YouTube. So I'll be bouncing back and forth a bit. So if you're not subscribed to one of the other, this might be a good chance to fix that.

Can you clarify what this means?

I would like to have some shots of old BMW 328s and Veritas ,

Plus  whatever the oldest Porsches that show up   and other air-cooled stuff  from Tatras to Fiat 500 Abarths....

And if you can find out , what does it take to get a " pit pass" for the average Joe !

Have fun 

Toebra said:

JG Pasterjak said:

Oh, one more thing, since this streaming will mostly be phone-based and highly mobile, we can't do a dual stream to Facebook and YouTube. So I'll be bouncing back and forth a bit. So if you're not subscribed to one of the other, this might be a good chance to fix that.

Can you clarify what this means?

If you subscribe to our Youtube channel, and turn notifications on, you can be alerted every time we start a live video. Same with Facebook (except there it's "Like our page" instead of "subscribe").

Regardless, the videos will all be public and not limited to viewing by subscribers or our Facebook fans. They can be harder to find in those cases, though.

californiamilleghia said:

I would like to have some shots of old BMW 328s and Veritas ,

Plus  whatever the oldest Porsches that show up   and other air-cooled stuff  from Tatras to Fiat 500 Abarths....

And if you can find out , what does it take to get a " pit pass" for the average Joe !

Have fun 

There's a 928 that runs there most years that is absolutely one of the most awesome track cars I've ever seen. Oddly enough, the '60s stuff isn't too common, and the '70s stuff tends to be 911s and 914s. I'd say a good portion of the field is late-'70s to mid '80s.

As for getting a pit pass, the general admission ticket is actually really strong there. Any ticket gets you into the paddock and into any of the viewing areas around the entire track. I think there's some reserved grandstand seats on the front straight, but mostly it's open to anyone with a ticket. If you want to go any further than that (garages, hot pits, trackside, etc.) you have to be credentialed somehow. Even after having gone to that race for over a decade, I still have to submit a LOT of documentation with my application each year. Proofs of publication, photo samples, previous coverage, etc. Even for media, there's way more demand than there is supply. 

There are some VIP hospitality villages scattered around, and I'm assuming that getting in to one of those is about the same as getting in to one in the US: Be a good ($$$) customer of the local AMG/Porsche/BMW dealership, sponsor something, or eat the most crickets in some sort of morning zoo radio contest. 

But, really, the GA ticket is like $65 and it gets you into a ton of areas with some great viewing. I even shoot a lot of photos from the spectator areas. Of course, it's also nice to be able to legally slip through the fence and shoot from trackside, but in many spots it's more a luxury than a necessity.