Has it really been 10 years since the first 24 hrs of the Nordschleife?

[David O'Reilly]

Just for fun I went to do a few laps of the Nordschleife in an old favourite car from way back when and I noticed that my oldest setup was from 2014.
It was the Nissan GTR GT1 and a lot of memories came flooding back.
It was in fact 10 years ago. I started trying to find some threads to flesh out some facts but they seem to be lost in the sands of time. So I'll do my best from memory.
Organisers
It was spearheaded by Frederic Schornstein, Simon Christman, Ricardo Edelman and others who I'm afraid I don't recall. They did however go on to form the very successful P1 gaming race club.
Track
In the years before an official release of a Nordschleife track a modder called maniac had made the Nordschleife. A group of other community members including Toch, DJC and others spent hours/days getting it to a better standard and joining an existing version of the GP circuit.
Cars
The only quality GT cars available at that time were the official ISI cars; The Nissan GTR GT1, Chevrolet Corvette GT2 and Chevrolet Camaro GT3.
Frederics vision was to mod the GT1 down and the GT3 up so they equalled the GT2 performance. This was done with regular testing and feedback using mainly power and drag adjustments.
There were also lower class cars but I can't recall what they were.
We chose "Godzilla" the Nissan GTR GT1, so named by the Aussie commentators at the Bathurst 1000 years before as it was from Japan and it was a monster.

The race:
It was epic as you would imagine. The sheer sounds being heard from the first time of 40 plus cars leaving the GP circuit for the North Circuit was incredible.
Frederics team had contact on the GP circuit in lap 1 sector 1 and went a lap down as the rules were that any rejoin with a fresh car meant that lap didn't count. They fought back to P2.
My team had dramas and we were last in class and only just ahead of the next class.
We learned many lessons that year and the following year. We would later return in the Porsche 911 to win the P1 Gaming 24 Hrs of the Nordschleife and the VEC Div 3, 24 hrs of Le Mans

Our cars skin;
I took the time to do a skin and still like it. I'll share it here.

There's nothing quite like a 24 hour race in RF2, the challenges and the feeling of performing.

Below are pics of the skin and if you're in the mood, 3 years later is the one we won. Lars Hagemann drove stint 1 and suffered damage when the pace car crashed in the Adenau forest. A second formation lap was completed while damaged cars got repairs and we rejoined back of our class and climbed to the win.