Rob Bell has never raced on the Nurburgring Nordschleife, but the Eifel region still holds some special memories for the British sportscar ace. The Nurburgring Grand Prix circuit is often viewed as the poor relation to the 12.944-mile motor racing Mecca that countless drivers (including Yvan Muller) have cited as their favourite, and has come in for plenty of criticism since it was introduced in 1984.
But for McLaren factory driver Bell it was the launchpad for his sportscar career after taking a class win on his GT racing debut in 2005, and the scene of several significant triumphs since then.
“Every time I go there, I just feel comfortable,” he explains. And that’s not surprising given his three Le Mans Series class victories and two outright successes in the series today known as GT World Challenge Europe.
The Newcastle racer had finished fifth in the 2004 Formula Renault V6 championship, but the funds weren’t there to continue his career and Bell “kind of thought my career was a bit over”. That was until an “out of the blue” phone call from a representative of Cirtek Racing to see whether the out-of-work racer, then making ends meet by instructing at Bedford Autodrome, would be available to drive its Aston Martin DBR9 GT1 at the Nurburgring in that weekend’s six-hour Le Mans Series round.
Bell admits that “I had no clue what GT racing was, or sportscar racing really” but a little white lie helped to push open the door.
He recalls: “The guy rang me up and said ‘do you know Nurburgring’ and I thought ‘I’ve never been, I’ve seen it on telly’. So I wasn’t lying when I said, ‘yeah, I know Nurburgring’ because he didn’t specifically say ‘had I driven it’!
“And he said, ‘that’s good. Have you ever driven a GT car?’ Which I hadn’t. But I drove on a trackday at Bedford - they had Porsches that you used to instruct in. So I said, ‘yeah, of course I’ve driven a GT car’. Obviously it was a bit of a white lie. Anyway, he’s like, ‘deal is done, fly here tomorrow’. I can safely say it was dropping me in at the deep end.”
Source: Autosport