The big green box on the sidebar on the right is kind of hard to miss, so most of you would know that Castrol Malaysia has been running a campaign called the Castrol EDGE Experience Nurburgring over the past few months.

Castrol EDGE is basically having a global campaign where participants from each country will be sent to the Nurburgring track in Germany to undergo an exciting driving program over a few days which includes driving a BMW M3 around the Nurburgring.

Every country runs different campaigns to pick their representatives and Castrol Malaysia decided to pick it’s winners by challenging participants to a series of challenges over a few rounds. The challenge officially opened on the 13th of December 2010 to anyone who wanted to participate.

All one had to do was visit the Castrol EDGE microsite and answer trivia questions on the Nurburgring, which were split into 2 batches. This part was easy – we ran a series of articles on the fabled track and you can find the answers to the questions in our articles. If you got all of them correct, you could proceed to the next round.

Round Two called for participants who successfully made it through Round One to submit an answer to the question – “Why Your Car Needs Castrol EDGE”.

There were many creative and interesting responses and judges selected the 30 best slogans to proceed to Round Three.

In Round Three, all the 30 qualifying participants were given a free lubricant change to Castrol EDGE at a participating Castrol Auto Service outlet. There were quite a diverse number of cars involved from a Proton to a BMW 7-Series and there was even a bonafide E36 M3. After the oil change, participants were required to create a review based on the difference Castrol EDGE has made to their car.

Here are a few examples: Candice Lim, Kevin Lee, Dr Rashidi, Andrew Kuan.

Out of the 30 participants in Round Three, a total of 16 finalists were selected for Round Four, a physical challenge at the Sepang International Circuit to prepare the finalists for the challenge up ahead at The ‘Ring. Based on the performance of the 16 finalists at the Castrol Edge Nurburgring – Sepang Challenge, judges’ will select one Grand Prize Winner for the trip to The Nurburgring in Germany and other prize winners accordingly.

Participants were broken into three groups along with some members of the media and had to undergo three challenges. The challenges were done concurrently and the groups rotated between the challenge areas. Each challenge had an instructor/judge and participants scored points based on how well they performed the challenges as well as how good they were at listening to instructions.

Even Sanjeev Palar of Engine Block was there to join the fun and cover the event. Watch out for the event coverage on an episode of Engine Block soon!

At the Driving Lines challenge, participants were educated on what Driving Lines were and why they are needed to score the best possible lap time around a track. Participants were then judged on how well they followed the Driving Lines on the Sepang Circuit.

In this exercise, speed was not important – it was more of whether the participants understood the concept of driving lines and were able to steer the car around the track following the lines.

There was also an Obstacle Avoidance challenge where participants were taught how to steer around an obstacle. It isn’t as simple as you think – even psychologically you have to understand that if you look right at an obstacle it’s more likely that you hit it.

It’s better to look around it to where you want to go to be able to steer around it properly.

There are also many cars in Malaysia that still do not have ABS brakes as standard so alot of people may not even feel what it is to have ABS kick in and how to use ABS the way it’s supposed to be used.

Don’t be alarmed by the vibration in your brake pedal – that’s just the ABS working. While with normal brakes you have to pump it if it locks, with ABS brakes the system makes sure your brakes do not lock and the vibration is a side effect of its activation.

Participants were taught how to put their fears aside and stomp on the brakes as hard as they can and steer out of the obstacle’s way at the same time. They were then judged on their ability to do this.

The Autokhana Course was definitely the most action packed of all the three challenges. Participants had to steer their car around a low speed route defined by safety cones in the fastest time possible while avoiding hitting any of the cones at the same time.

The 325i was definitely very at home at this challenge – it was like its natural habitat. For many of the participants, this event was the first time they had ever driven a BMW, and there was even one member of the media who had never driven an automatic car before this.

This challenge had the most screeching tyres as well as safety cones that gave their lives for the purpose of fun! All the participants definitely had alot of fun here. Needless to say, all four tyres of the Autokhana BMW had to be changed after the event.

The finalists made new friends thanks to their common love of acceleration, speed and grip. They were all there with one goal – to win a chance to tackle the corners of the Nordschleife.

Things were competitive between the participants but most everyone had fun and even offered tips to each other on how to score well in each challenge.

And of course they all oogled at the BMW M3 Coupe there on display. The performed the exercises using E90 BMW 3-Series Sedans kindly sponsored by BMW Malaysia for the event but the grand prize winner will driving the BMW M3 at the Nordschleife!

At the end of the day, the scores were tabulated and we finally have a winner – thanks to the Castrol EDGE Experience Nurburgring challenge, Khairul Izwan Razali will be traveling on an all expenses paid trip to the Nurburgring in Germany to undergo a comprehensive driving program which includes driving the BMW M3 around the ‘Ring’s famous bends.

Of course, every single one of the finalists were winners – both in the sense that they had made it this far in the competition, and also the fact that everyone went home with a prize of Castrol EDGE lubricants and different Apple products. A big congratulations to you Khairul, we know you’ll have an awesome time at The ‘Ring!