DTM (Deutschen Tourenwagen Masters) RACE at HOCKENHEIMRING

This last Sunday I went to the last DTM race of the season with a couple of Finnish friends of mine. It was about 125km north of Stuttgart at Hockenheimring. We got there pretty early. There were actually three different kinds of races that day, and we got there for the first one at about 10:30. What we didnt know is that there were approximately 65,000 other people with cars who got there that early also. In my webshots page I'll have pictures up of the races. There are some good photos. We had to trek about 30 minutes to get to the Ring, through some forest, which was very different.
The first race was a Porsche race. All the cars were amazing. It was kind of dull though, because they were such good drivers and the racetrack was dry, so no one crashed or anything.
After that there was a Formula 3 race. That was ok. The cars were faster, but again there was nothing exceptional about it.
Then there was about a 1 hour 30 minute intermission complete with awful scandanavian bands. A-ha from Norway (wow, trash) and Anna Johnsson from Sweden. She blew. Then it started to rain. First drizzle, and then a pour. But about 10 minutes before the DTM race was scheduled to begin, it stopped raining and the sun actually came out. So that was really good for the race. It wasn't raining at the time of the race, but the course was nice and wet for some accidents. There were Mercedes, Audis, and Opels racing in there, and right in front of us were 4 accidents during the race. It was really fun to watch. The Finns had a race favorite, Mika Häkkinen, who was a really successful Formula 1 driver a few years ago. That made it more fun, to see them cheering when someone ahead of him got in a wreck, and if he passed the person in front of him.
At the end though due to the wrecks and the need for dry course tire changes, he ended up in 14th place. Not really what we were expecting. At the end though, it was well worth the time and the money for the tickets.

When we were leaving the parking lot (read - FIELD), we and about 100 other people drove through someone's field to get to another road. It took us a while to get back due to the crowd on the Autobahn, but it was nice.

How's that for a story without beer.