Scheid: “I started with a BMW 1800. From time to time I drove smaller cars, but since I started driving the BMW M3 E30, I always raced in a BMW and finished in the top five of the overall standings on several occasions.”

Scheid: “Correct. That was our first victory in 1996. Our BMW M3 E36 was mainly white and, in my opinion, looked pretty naked. Sabine Schmitz – still Sabine Reck at the time – was driving the car with us and was a talented artist. I said to her: ‘Come up with something.’ She painted the castle that overlooks the Nürburgring on the side, and the name ‘Eifelblitz’ was born.”

Scheid: “As well as driving and my role as team principal, I was also involved in founding the endurance cup and pretty much introduced organised racing at the Nürburgring. We first met at my house for breakfast, then later again in Cologne, where we decided to form an endurance series. I am also still a member of the presidium at the Deutscher Sportfahrer Kreis DSK. We played an important role in allowing the Nürburgring Endurance Series to be the first series to stage races again after the first phase of the pandemic.”

Scheid: “The modern cars at the end were great. You obviously had far less work to do on them than in the cars that I built myself. Particularly ‘Dicke’, our BMW M3 GTS – actually a BMW M3 GTR, but I could not call it that because of the works car of the same name. That was a nice time too, but the modern BMW M240i Racing was always very reliable and we always had very nice battles in our Cup class.”

Scheid: “First and foremost it was simply becoming harder and harder to cover the costs as a small team with just one car. I would actually have liked to continue driving in the 2020 season, but then along came the pandemic and I said to myself: ‘It’s time to call it a day’.”

Scheid: “I think I will be there. I helped out a team with the preparation of its car and am also involved as a consultant for a few other teams, so I have not left the Nürburgring behind completely.”