I think the problem I'm having is that your start and finish points imply that, on occasions, your lap time will include an excursion through the "control area" bringing back out on to the circuit at the first (left hand) corner. Presumably this means that times are affected by queues in the control area ...

 

The start/finish is half way down the straight, but you always have to come off. So you never get to do a complete lap as such, which is why people talk about the BTG time. Of course if the queue to get off goes back further than the gantry then that'll ruin the time.

The little excursion down the narrow slip road and rejoining before the first left hander, I've never seen except on videos, but again that would make a mess of any attempt to time. As I said at Easter they opened the GP circuit as well, which again made it impossible to time just the Nordschleife.

Timing your laps is a bad idea anyway, I only did it a couple of times out of curiosity. You know if you've done a good lap or not, and it'll take several trips before you really get to know the place well enough for timing to start to give a meaningful comparison. And there's no guarantee of a clean lap. People crash, a lot, so there's a good chance of you having to slow down, and when it's busy you're almost guaranteed to lose time passing other people (and moving out the way so others can pass you).

 

since on a tourist day it basically means nothing.. apart from maybe some bragging rights

however braking a bit too late to try and shave off a few seconds and then sticking your car through some german armco might be more than you bargained for..

 

This is what's been confusing me. Every amateur lap I've seen has shown the car coming off the main straight and rejoining at the first corner.

Sounds like that's atypical so I guess you're saying that normally you would come up through Tiergarten and go across the proper start finish line.

Think I've got it at last ...