Oil Spill at Salzburgring!

After a nice and necessary 4 week break, we made our way down to Salzburgring in Austria for our 5th Track Day of the 2023 GP Days Season.

With 800km to cover, we always head down one day early to make sure we are well rested once the lights go green and the Track Day starts and have the change to explore the beautiful area around Salzburgring and enjoy some Schnitzel!

With Thursday being a bank holiday, we weren't able to prepare our box the evening before (as we usually do) which meant getting up extremely early on Friday to setup our check in and get everything ready as the first participants usually arrive around 7:00am in the morning.

Check - In went smoothily and at 8:30 the lights went green. 

Between 8:35 - 8:40 the chatter on the race control radio got more frequent and hectic...never a good sign. What started with reports of a car smoking, ended with it being identfied as a technical issue and lots of oil loss resulting in the dreaded message: ABBRUCH ROT ("RED FLAG"). 

THE OIL SPILL...

After we established that no other car has spun due to the oil spill we thought it's not a big deal until we were informed, that the car in questions has not stopped upon noticing the loss of oil but kept on going for around 3/4 of a lap wanting to get back to the pitlane.

Exactly what you're not supposed to do! 

What initially seemed like a quick fix, developed into a bigger problem as we knew the clean up would take more than just 5 minutes. Luckily the team at Salzburgring is extremely reliable and well organised so after a quick discussion about the next steps, I searched for the driver to make sure everything is fine but also to have a word about him literally covering the entire track in oil. 

Despite the Team at Salzburgring doing an amazing job, it still took around 30 minutes to clear the track. Due to the sheer scale of the oil spill - defintiely the longest we've ever seen during any of our Track Days.

BACK TO NORMAL...

After the track was cleared again, oiur Track Day continued and to be honest, we cannot say more other than just what an amazing day it was. We had no more incidents and the Track Day went on perfectly.

For lunch, we had the obligatory Salzburgring Schnitzel and afterwards settled in for an equally relaxed afternoon session until 6 o'clock. We don't exactly know what it is, but all our Track Days at Salzburgring have an extra special vibe being super relaxed and almost feeling like a holiday - it's epic!

After a long day and at about 5:30pm we slowly started packing up our Pitbox. As our Open Pitlane Track Days at Salzburgring run from 8:30am - 12:00pm and 1:30pm - 6:00pm, most of the people were also packing up and the track usually quiets down significantly by around 4:00pm. 

All in all, we could not have wished for a more amazing Track Day and while the journey is always a very long one, we definietly love coming to Salzburgring!

Check out our full Salzburgring Track Day Gallery here: Track Day Gallery

See you on track!