Here's how you master the Nürburgring 24 hr race

"You have to get on with your neighbours. There are usually six cars in one pit and you need to arrange when the pitstops will be. I’ve seen it get very messy!"

"Bank up your sleep in the week before the event. I aim to get eight hours sleep per night in the weeks leading up to the N24, that works for me.

"Having somewhere comfortable trackside is also key. In the past we slept in a shipping container in the paddock. Now, we are at the hotel opposite and I’ll head back between stints. You just don’t know when you’ll get the call to get back in the car. Two years ago, they wanted me in the car earlier than planned. In my head I had eight hours of sleep ahead but having that disturbed was disruptive, so I get as much in reserve as I can to help."

"Avoid the caffeine! I never drink coffee on race days. I just don’t like the effect it has on my driving."

"Make sure you get the all-important blue flashing light by qualifying in the top 30. It sits in your front windscreen and warns other drivers that there is a quick car coming up behind you. Last year, an issue in qualifying meant we missed out on a blue light. It just makes it that much harder."

"Take extra care as darkness falls, I think that’s the most dangerous time in the whole race. The amateur racers might slow down by as much as 10 seconds a lap and they become harder to overtake.

"Though if the car is still running at dawn, you do feel like you’ve reached a major milestone..."

"Master the traffic. There are around 160 cars in the race and of course they are all in their battles, not always worried about you, and a bunch of GT3 cars come up fast.. You end up lapping up to 40 cars a lap and you need to get past them as cleanly as you can. Carefully make your decisions when passing. You don’t want to get squeezed into a gap by the chasing cars. That’s when the accidents happen."

"A fastest car isn’t always the best car on the Nordschleife. Of course it’s nice to have loads of power to breeze by that GT4 or Touring Car but I’d much rather have a stable car than one that is always on the ragged edge, especially as the weather is unpredictable. The BMW M6 is really stable, so much so that the section from Bergwerk to the Karussell is basically flat out in it."

"Watch the weather - you can have all four seasons in a lap! Last year we had that crazy situation where a hailstorm meant some of cars were literally beached on the tarmac of the race track! Luckily Falken has spent a lot of time developing some really good wet weather tyres that work on the Nordschleife and they just give you that bit more confidence to push on. Still, you really need your wits about you. A couple of years back we were driving into this wall of white and you’d overtake a car that seemed to appear from nowhere."

"Study the track surface. I’ve heard that there around ten different types of surface in a single lap and that could mean ten different levels of grip. Our tyre engineers have actually gone round a lap and taken casts of the surface to analyse how to get a tyre to work on them. The camber and the trees mean that patches dry out quicker than others and they'll be the bits I’ll be looking for. You have to improvise, corner by corner."