DARREN LANGEVELD

After developing his love of driving in a series of classic French hatches, Darren Langeveld discovered the Nordschleife and founded a trackday company to share his passion for the Ring

- by STEPHEN DOBIE PORTRAIT by ASTON PARROTT

AS SOON AS I PULL OFF THE AUTOBAHN and onto the B258, it just feels like there's a weight lifted off my shoulders. I can't even begin to describe how lovely it is to be there.' You'd think the founder of Destination Nürburgring might have long bored of his slog from Coventry to the Green Hell. If anything, Darren Langeveld savours those last few miles from Barweiler more than ever. When one of his sold-out trackdays draws to a satiating close, that feeling of calm only swells.

'When it gets to half-seven and you're about to jump in the car to drive to dinner, you just stand there for a minute and soak up the silence,' he says. 'In the UK you're never too far from a flight path or a busy road. But that absolute peace you experience in the Eifel is just so priceless to me. It's a lifelong thing now.'

Yet for a man embedded in a certain, especially nerdy corner of German car culture, his taste in cars - and the upbringing that formed it - feels decidedly French. 'My grandad was a motor engineer in South Africa and he moved to the UK in the mid-1950s. He bought a garage in Sussex and set up his business. He arranged for my dad to come to Coventry and do his apprenticeship with Rootes, which morphed from Hillman to Chrysler to Peugeot-Talbot. He retired when it was Peugeot, so while the company around him had changed, he'd worked at the same place his whole life. By retirement he was in charge of technical publications, getting manuals from France and making sure their translations were correct.