It didn’t take much to persuade Patrick, but the workload required to get all the way to the Nurburgring and race a six-hour enduro had him wondering if it was all worth it.

The challenge prior to getting on the plane to Germany had been monumental, and it wasn’t going to get any easier once they touched down.

Five years earlier, Andrie had competed in a handful of VLN races at the Nurburgring, and, being a bucket-list item for Patrick, the two decided to partner for a six-hour race in the NLS Endurance Series. With a friend who knew the European racing landscape and a renowned team to join, Patrick could feel optimistic about this next step in his racing career, but before he could start to think about driving the course, he had to make his way through the long checklist that every eager American must complete before racing at the Ring.

“I’d only driven it on Gran Turismo before. Never on a real simulator,” Patrick said.

Applying for an FIA license as an American requires a calm, patient temperament. As is requested, “ten races completed in the last two years” sounds simple enough initially, but it can get more complicated. For whatever reason, the FIA doesn’t consider NASA a legitimate sanctioning body, so Patrick’s two full seasons of WERC and his two 25 Hours of Thunderhill did not count towards his total—initially, anyways. Luckily, due to the pandemic allowing older races to count, his SCCA Spec Miata races in 2020 could count towards his total. He was granted his FIA license, but he still had to prove himself for the Nurburgring for a separate test, another permit, and a few headaches.

Once at the Nurburgring, Patrick and Andrie linked with their team, Adrenalin Motorsport, and Patrick jumped into the car to drive his first real laps of the Nurburgring.

Patrick partook in the DPN test, which judges drivers on theory first, then has them run eight laps with an instructor, as well as eight laps alone. No passing under yellows, no offs, no holding up faster traffic, and none of the tentative driving that any driver, even a seasoned driver, would exhibit during their first few laps of the track. For the test, Adrenaline lent Patrick a race-prepped F82, which kept him alert. On a push lap, the car jumps and skips over the track, which is much bumpier than any Playstation rendering conveys. “There are a few places where the car is flying through the air,” Patrick laughed. “Narrow, fast, and many blind corners—it’s pretty intimidating in a fast car.”

The car had its issues. Mainly, the windows had to be kept up for the majority of the lap so as not to blow out the rear plexiglass when the car reaches over 250 kph down the Dottinger Hohe front straight. Thankfully, the rolling sauna session didn’t last long, on the third lap, the car lost power and stalled. The vehicle had to be towed back to the paddock.

There, they had an M4 GT4 ready for him, which lifted his spirits a bit. “A factory race car is just a different animal. Going through the compression, it gets sucked to the road by the massive aero. The motorsport ABS is incredible. The F82 was moving around everywhere over the bumps, but the M4 was so stable. It had really good air conditioning, too!” he exclaimed.

After another thirteen restrained laps, he rolled in and reported to DMSB, the licensing unit, and awaited their decision. He’d passed. Now, his DPN B-level permit entitled him to race at the ‘Ring, albeit in a certain range of cars.

With all the different nuances present, Patrick wasn’t certain they would do so well against the local drivers. Between the Nordschliefe and the GP track, there are over 154 corners, and twenty laps is not enough to learn them all. At least he had six hours ahead to learn them all.

CAPTION: To complicate matters, the team engineers expected him to learn the corner names so he could relay data back and forth more easily.

The following morning, they returned to the track, now swarming with a throng of spectators. There were 130 cars on the grid, and a few thousand spectators ambling in between them. During morning practice, the team would stick the interested fan in the passenger seat as Andrie or Patrick got to terms with their new racing car.

Patrick and Andrie would be driving an M240iR in the M240iR Cup class. Friendly, progressive, and a little oversteery, the M240iR, as Patrick said, “drives a lot like an E46 M3, but at factory level performance.” The extra weight and power wasn’t really a hindrance, as the team swapped tires after every 1.5-hour stint.

They threw a set of stickers on before qualifying, which all drivers must participate in. The format is fair and straightforward: they don’t take the averages, they just take the fastest of the two laps every driver is mandated to run. They weren’t too worried about being at the front of the grid, because the Nurburgring always has yellows, but they still pushed the little two-series as quickly as they could.

“One of the most difficult aspects of this race is that we have to share the track with the faster GT3 and GT4 cars. These factory race cars are so fast in every aspect, when most corners of Nurburging are blind, it’s really hard to see them coming up behind or next to you” Andrie said.

Andrie qualified fifth, and at the start he made it up to third, but it wouldn’t last. Due to an ambient temperature of 90°F and a lack of cooling from following closely behind in the dirty air, the M240i’s turbocharged motor went flat after half a lap.

“I lost power! I lost power!” Andrie screamed over the radio. The team issued orders to short-shift at 5,000 revs, and Andrie obeyed, but fell back to tenth in the process. By the time the car had cooled, he started to charge again and brought the car back to sixth, then handed it off to Patrick, who climbed into fifth and stayed on the same lap with the leader.

After his steady session, Patrick brought it back to the pits, where they lost only one position. Things were starting to look up. The race wasn’t halfway over and the two were starting to feel at home at the neverending circuit.

Andrie got back in for the third stint and started flying; lapping faster than the third and fourth-place cars and dragging it up to fifth. He was eyeing fourth place by the end of his stint.

As the stint progressed, Andrie was making his way towards Fuchsröhre, a steep downhill chicane section with a frightening compression at the very bottom, where they were going over 240kmh. He noticed a dot in his mirrors growing larger. “He’s gonna catch me sometime after the compression,” Andrie assured himself after seeing the GT3 flashing its lights. Andrie focused on the technical section ahead; getting his line right, straightening the car before the bump, and braking hard as he shot uphill, thinking he had more time to handle the GT3.

“I figured he was going to pass me after the corner, but he didn’t. I was startled to see him next to me at the turn-in point. We were both doing about 240 km/h.

When Andrie started to turn, he could see the lights from his peripheral vision – the AMG GT3 driver was already beside him. Andrie wanted to slow the car, but because of the crest, he released the brake and tried to scrub some speed through the middle of the corner. Unfortunately, he was going way too fast at the wrong trajectory, so his front right grazed over the grass. At over 200 km/h, dropping a wheel mid-corner can be costly, and Andrie slid into the barrier. He hit it front-first at about 45 degrees, then the rear contacted, and then he ping-ponged across the track, somehow without flipping.

Shaken but steady enough to walk, Andrie got out of the car himself and walked over to the marshal’s stand, where they called a doctor. The doctor determined that, because Andrie had crashed at over 180 km/h, they would airlift him to the hospital.

At Koblenz, the CT scan showed an uninjured brain, but the doctors were reluctant to let Andrie attend the barbeque he had been invited to. Both parties bickered for a bit, then the doctors capitulated. “You’re free to go as long as you have some friends accompanying you,” they said. He signed the waiver and left to bury his frustrations in pork.

Patrick and Andrie weren’t the only duo which didn’t finish. “I was a real shame — we had a chance of a podium here. At first, we didn’t think we’d do so well against the people with more experience here, but we had a very good team behind us who gave us lots of confidence,” Andrie lamented.

Still, that was a minor ache for all the good that came from this trip. For Patrick, it was a seminal accomplishment. To fly across the Atlantic, earn another license, and leave with podium promise is not something that happens to often.

More than that, it gave him some insight into the world of professional European motorsport. “Getting to meet professional racers, talk, and see how we compared, plus being close to all these big manufacturers—it seemed like a dream. Also, Nurburg is small and filled with people enthusiastic for the sport. You can make friends with other racers in the parking lots, in the restaurants, everywhere!”

For track day hobbyists back in California, sometimes getting to the Nurburgring can seem like a dream, but, as Patrick learned, it’s not too difficult for someone looking to turn a few laps. “There are so many rental agencies around. You can just rent a car and go. It turns out it’s really convenient—you don’t even need to book a trackday on the touristenfahrten days. You just pay for the car, pay for a certain number of laps, and you swipe your card at the gate, and drive as hard as you can.”

When he puts it that way, it makes the journey seem less daunting. It always helps to have someone pave the way for you.