The subject of so many words, photographs and films now has its own song.

WALTER Rohrl waits in the snowy mountains to train ‘The Chosen One’ to be a better driver around the world’s best-known racing circuit.

That’s part of the gist of ‘The Pineapple King’ aka ‘The TF Song’, a just-released rock track and satire on boy racers and overeager visitors to Germany’s Nurburgring, specifically on the public days (Touristenfahrten, TF in local parlance).

Anyone who knows anything about ‘The Ring’ – not the new circuit, but the full-blown Nordschliefe now used as much for car development as competition - knows it demands respect: 20.8kms, 154 turns, the place Jackie Stewart called ‘The Green Hell’ is never taken lightly, even by those who know it intimately.

So, anyway, Heizer Monkeys, a rock band whose members are motorsport-mad, some of them racers, have written a song.

All about how beginners in motorsport can feel fear. How this fear turns to adrenaline, and gives rise to bravado, and sadly often results in sticky consequences. 

Pineapple King is also a Ring-centric phrase. It’s is a reference to the German phrase ‘Goldene Ananas’ or Golden Pineapple, perhaps the equivalent of the ‘wooden spoon’ in English. It’s a non-existent prize for, has come to be associated with people who treat public ring sessions as a race. You can’t win a prize on public days, except perhaps the metaphorical and far from desirable Pineapple.

The video tells the story of a young would-be Ring warrior who comes to the track with the wrong idea of winning. He is spotted by YouTuber Misha Charoudin’s alter ego Boosted Boris who decides he is in fact ‘The Chosen One’.

 Then, with the help of Rohrl and Olaf Manthey, a German former race car driver, and current owner of Porsche team Manthey Racing, he finds himself retrained, renewed and ready to return to the Ring for a victory of a very different kind.

All a bit strange? Well, watch the video. That’s the reason for today’s story. It’s brilliant, mainly for all the footage of the venue but also because of the people who get involved.

There are also cameo appearances from the first British Nürburgring journalist Dale Lomas, and even former Lamborghini works driver and FIA GT1 World Championships race winner Stefan Rosina.

As well as the human talen, check out rhe many cool cars; most of them are German legends of VLN and motorsport. Nürburgring Regular the Foxtail Manta features, as does ‘Kermit’, the recently rediscovered and restored race Porsche 964 in which Manthey won his very first Porsche Supercup title.

Also in the video are local TF Heroes such as the blaze orange Jagermeister Mk1 VW Golf, The Unicorn E46 M3, and local tuner Valiant Ecosse’s stunning modified Aston Martin Vantage Ringtool. Local leading track experience and rental company Apex Nürburg also make an appearance, along with their Schirmer BMW rental cars.

The Heizer Monkeys hail from Vienna, Manchester and London. Drummer Leo Willert is the current Porsche Challenge Middle East champion. On organ is Christian Eigner, not currently on duty in his other role as drummer in megastar group Depeche Mode. Lead singer Joey wrote the song and is an incurable petrolhead. He has raced a 911 GT3 Cup at the Le Mans Classic. His first love is the Nürburgring, and specifically TF where he hurls an original BMW M3 CSL around the track.

 He says the song is kind of autobiographical: “When I first came 12 years ago I loved the ring from the first stroll around the car park during a TF day, but I really had no clue.

“More specifically, I had no clue about what I didn’t know, and that of course can be dangerous.

“The Ring is such a magical place, the people are so warm, and on a busy Saturday during TF there can sometimes be almost a carnival vibe. But driving fast can be dangerous. If people have serious crashes on the Ring or even worse on the local roads, there’s a risk of bad consequences, not just for the people in the cars, but for TF itself.

“TF is allowed to happen only because people respect the danger. The Nürburgring and TF is allowed to continue to exist but it would be hard to imagine permission for them to be brought in for the first time if they didn’t already exist. 

“I hope the TF Song is enjoyed, but also that it helps people think about how privileged we are to visit this place. The truth is that our attitudes when we visit here can actually influence whether it survives in the future.”

TF Song T-Shirts and other merchandise will be available through the website heizermonkeys.com in the coming days and proceeds go directly to the EifelKind Charity, made up of VLN racers who have been collecting donations for disabled children in the region for more than a decade. 

EifelKind has been at the forefront of disaster relief fundraising and is now fundraising on behalf of the motorsport community for Ukrainian refugees.