Actually, I wanted to do RCN this year. However, since this didn't work out for various reasons, I took part in my first open pitlane track day as a new member of the club on 19 August.

With an e-learning course completed and having checked in the evening before, I took up position at 7:30 a.m. for the guided laps with my son as co-driver and my Suzuki Swift Sport (136 hp). With my small ‘non-Porsche’, I immediately got into a conversation with a BMW driver, who with his standard 5 Series also represented a minority in the field.

After five fairly relaxed and guided laps, I went to the abbreviated drivers' briefing while the first big cars did their first laps. When they passed the Döttinger Höhe at more than 250 km/h for the first time, our respect for being on the track with them soon grew.

Even with 136 hp, it's great fun to drive on a race track.

It quickly became clear that the Pistenclub concept is really very good. The rules for overtaking are different from what I was used to on tourist rides or GLP. The other participants were also very fair to each other. There was no jostling and I didn't notice anyone flashing their lights to stress out the driver in front.

Of course, I knew that I would always have to keep an eye on the rear-view mirror with my engine power. But because the cars were well distributed, the indicator was occasionally off – in contrast to tourist trips at the weekend.

Once the track day was interrupted because a BMW 3 Series had to be cleared away, and once there were yellow flags after an engine blew up. I used the short red phase to take a shower at the hotel. When I got back to the entrance, everyone had spread out again so there was no increased traffic anywhere. After 18 accident- and stress-free laps, we called it a day and didn't exhaust the track day to the last minute.

We met some nice people (greetings to the club employee from Schieder and the BMW driver from TT) and were thrilled by how smoothly the event went. Next, I'll test at the Pistenclub to see if 136 hp is also enough for Bilster Berg.