ofd

Glad nobody got hurt, that's the most important thing. The other thing I'd like to say is thanks for posting this. It takes some guts to do that, and maybe someone can learn something from it.
Hope the car is an easy fix, or on the bright side maybe a nice wide body RSR

mcipseric

Glad your OK. Makes me ponder the track's logic of leaving sandbags directly in the track off area before letting the track go hot.....

Stealth 993

Ken that sucks!!! I hate video it doesn't show how hard you hit the wall, from the rear view it looks more like a kiss.

Did you lift a little & unload the rear on the bump, once the *** was light it just went the direction of travel? Sad part of track days is you can be a awesome hot shoe & still make a mistake. So sorry, but happy you are ok.

race911

THIS is the whole point, and lesson to be learned here. Look at where I am at 56 seconds into the clip. Then at 59 seconds I'm faced with how to react to the sandbags. Another friend, a 996 guy now, but ex-BMWCCA racer with an E36 M3 told me he once had the exact same off. No sandbags, no problem.

No, I think you can plainly see I steered the car gently back on course once I identified the sandbag obstacle. But the car started getting away from me, since I had to put more steering input in than I would have liked. I was 90 degrees right with the wheel as I kissed the sandbags; and at that point it was all over. Still, I pretty much thought "no problem" as the kitty litter everywhere around the track would bring me to a quick halt. Uh, maybe at other points, but not here..............

Martin S.

Ken,

Gutsy pass but doable....you got bitten, so unfortunate. Don't let Kim see this video.

Your thoughts as to how it got loose there?? Not to be a ghoul, but you were the guy that would know....So glad your were not hurt...the car is fixable, indeed.

os993

Very well said!

race911

Where? As I was dancing around on the dirt about a second before the sandbags? Anything's possible..... Clearly I've got some steering input to keep the car from going 4 wheels off--I don't see any positive outcome once that happens there. So I rode it, hoping to rejoin the track up by the T7 worker station. Then the sandbags came into view. I figured hitting those wasn't high percentage move, either. Thus, we're left with a spin halfway up the hill. All this happened in about 4 seconds. And that's at ~70mph!

race911

I would have been ready to hop in a second car, if I had another down there.

I hear you on the cutting back over. But note how I edited the video--we've got a massive amount of unpredictability in the car I was following. Given we're probably dead equal on acceleration, my guess is that he slightly lifted for me off of T5. With my not-so-great rear vision, would it have been wise to swing back over on the entry to T6? Good question. But we regularly run up center track on T5-T6 overtaking. No big deal, just make sure you hit your marks, and at the appropriate speed. Not my case here, and we see the result. I'm a curb hopper/track edge user by nature. Always have been.

Let's consider how this is different from a normal track day. It's a local small group of like-minded racers/track guys (and some girls). Everyone's referred in. So while we aren't all "friends", we all pretty much have one degree of separation. (Our local email list for the group is ~400 strong, with about 50 regular contributors posting an average of 3K messages/month.)

So, the expectation of knowing what the hell is going on around you (situational awareness) is about 10 on a scale of 10 for this group. If you want to practice wheel-to-wheel while you're out there, fine. The Spec Miata contingent regularly does. We normally don't even have run groups, but Laguna has a car capacity limit.

I caught this Spec 911 at about 2 sec/lap. Once I did, I expected him to yield as any backmarker should. He didn't. I took an overtaking-a-backmarker type pass, after there were clear opportunities for him to breathe the gas earlier in the lap. My mistake. And I don't think it's gone unnoticed by our group.

Stealth 993

Oh, didn't see the sandbag, watched it in the little window.

That just SUCKS, as said, it should not have been there!!!! One time out at Spokane Raceway, we had a hot lap going on. Later in the day they were going to run drag races. Well during our hot laps, the drag transporters came in, stopping across the track on a fairly blind corner. Then refused to move. Needless to say a lot of bad words were exchanged, & people started running down the side of the track to stop all the cars form hitting the trucks.

Ed Hughes

Fokk! I'm so sorry to see this.

camlob

My brother had a similar incident two weeks ago in his GT3 RS. He hit the barrier wall and broke his rear toe control arm, so his wheel was pointing elsewhere, broke his rear bumper, rear tail light, from bumper, right headlight, ac condenser.

And he was always cautious in crashing

Here is a vid I took that weekend. He crashed in the last turn before the pits, the one with the Yokohama sign.

Martin S.

Sorry your Bro crashed...glad he wasn't hurt.

Racing around in late model cars, any car for that matter, is a real crap shoot. So far most of us have thrown a 7 or a 11..

Every now and then a "tank slapper" is good to experience to reminding ones's self that we are mortal, not gods. Then we will throttle back on low percentage passes and other such risky behavior:
1. Races are not won in turn 1,
2. Don't take low percentage passes,
3. Have the best safety equipment that money can buy, professionally installed!

race911

I slowed the relevant part down to 20% speed.

osugasman

Wow, that's painful to watch. Much easier to "see" what was going on with the speed reduction. Think I'll stay in the karts for a while more...

race911

Suppose it just depends where you are on the speed/experience scale. I'm fully comfortable doing what I do, at the pace I do it. Never, ever, ever, ever would run a non-prepped car like that--it's boring to hammer on a stock car (my first racing was in a Showroom Stock RX-7), especially if you're just out there lapping.

Not to mention if you're transitioning from a kart, and have the skill (and conditioning!) to run one of those up front, a street car no matter the prep level probably isn't going to be all that.