robmypro

Sorry Craig. That is a tough, expensive lesson to learn. But you are okay. That is ALL that matters. Watching your video, I am pissed that I did not get track insurance the one time I took my GT3 to the track. Thanks to your experience I will not make that mistake again. **** happens in a blink of an eye.

Good luck sorting all this out.

Rob

P.S. sorry to hear about your dad, Jamie. I know how you feel. Take care.

Gofishracing

My car has no nannies. If it did I'd leave them on. Wonder if they would have helped save the spin ?. You were carrying a lot of speed- late entry and tried to turn in? You might have been able to just drive off straight to the right-

lcrain

As much as I would love to drive a nice GT car at the track, I am happy I have learned with and continue to drive either my caged e36 (w/ s54 swap) or my spec miata. Driving these cars at or near the limit as taught me so much about car control. The m3 would suck to wreck, but it can be rebuilt for a fraction of a porsche gt car. The miata is essentially disposable. No insurance required.

Glad you are ok. Sounds like you have learned some valuable lessons.

Reborn996

With all this talk about insurance, who are the recommended go to's for this? California in particular?

GrantG

Don't have it, but this one looks good:

https://www.theopentrack.com/

primecut

Sorry to hear about this, thanks for sharing. At the end of the day, you were able to walk away from it! Your safety is surely worth the price of the car that kept you that way right?

I just recently purchased my GT4 and was planning to track it at some point as well; This is a good reminder of the different factors (i.e. insurance) to consider. Appreciate the insights and hope everything works out for the better!

supercup

Glad you are OK and thanks for sharing so we all can learn. I have been there a few times myself. If you go to the track long enough it is bound to happen.

First time I advised a good friend not to go out at Laguna Seca early one Friday morning as the conditions were cold and damp from rain the night before and marine layer that morning. I then proceeded to go out myself and on the 3rd lap hit water running across the track in middle of turn 6, that flooded over the edge above between lap 2 and 3 - I saw the 2 cars in front of me hit it and get big sideways and survive (we were all on cold slicks) and I hit it a bit higher line and did not fare well, made a left turn and nosed straight into the inside wall. There were tires in front of the wall, but with the slope of the nose of my 996 Cup and the downhill nature of my approach the nose went right under the tires and they ended up on the roof of the car. The car went head on into the wall at about 60 mph. I had full cage, seat, 6 pt belts, but no hans devise. My seatbelts stretched about 2" - my head hit the steering wheel so hard it cracked my helmet.

I was OK, but boy was that a wake up call to safety. From that day forward Hans, fuel cell and full safety gear have been part of my gear whenever I go on track. I have done a few days in my GT4 and other street cars without a cage or fuel cell, so I dial it down a notch to keep a margin of error.

My second time was start of a race at Cal Speed going into turn 2 on the inside, 3 wide, but then you are on the outside on turn 3 very quickly and I got bumped off the outside of the track on turn 3. I was in the dirt and going straight in complete control of the car, so instead of continuing to slow and getting back on track safely after the field had passed I decided since there was "no prize money" to floor it and not lose any positions. As I re-entered the track I hit a hole, spun across and hit the wall on the other side - my first race in my new 997 Cup. Again totally avoidable if the brain was functioning better.

End of the day safety prep is so important to protect yourself and mental prep is just as important. Park your ego at your trailer or pit stall and go out and have fun. The guys that had a track day and go home in the car they came with in the same condition are the winners!

Good luck with finding the best possible financial exit. My experience would suggest to work your way out of that car for as much as possible in the near term, pay down your loan to shorten those 54 remaining payments as much as possible and when you recover financially get back to it!

Don't let one bad corner ruin a life of future fun at the track! Take the lessons learned and apply them and enjoy many years of tracking your cars to come.

hf1

Craig, sorry about the crash and kudos for posting this to maximize learning. The good stuff:

1. You look young and you're unhurt and alive -- this will be nothing more than a good story five years from now.

2. Look at the damage cost as an expensive tuition. Some things to learn:

- Don't track/race a car that you cannot easily leave there, both financially and mentally. Just write it off in your mind even before you crash it. Only then can you relax, advance, and enjoy it.

- Don't track/race a car without a HANS, roll-bar/cage, harness, fire-suit, extinguisher, etc.. Things can turn from fun to awful in a blink, and the wall doesn't care if you were racing or "just" DE-ing. Next time you may not be this lucky.

- Invest time in learning car-control, preferably in a low HP, low grip car. Much more fun and better to learn how to drive a slow car fast, how to straddle the grip peak from both sides (over and under) comfortably and at all times, how to make it your b**ch (so to speak), and only then reward yourself by "graduating" to higher HP & grip. Car control can be practiced on skid-pads, on "safe" turns with a lot of run-off and during sparsely attended track days, on snowed-in empty parking lots, at racing schools, at rally (dirt, snow, ice) driving schools -- anywhere where you can get the car out of shape safely and on purpose by throttle and steering manipulation and learn how to tame it back in line.

Hope this helps, and good luck extracting the most value out of the car's remains. There were some good suggestions posted here.

pfbz

Really sorry for you... Thankfully no injuries or medical bills, which could make the car damage seem insignificant. Glad you posted up your experience, perhaps it will help out others in the future.

I think really the problem is in the combo... Want to run without stability control and without track insurance? Perhaps not in a $100K car.

But you really want to run the GT4 and still don't want to buy track insurance? Maybe keep the magic button engaged.

Of course hind sight is 20/20... Hoping for you the rebuild isn't as expensive as you think it might be.

O5C4R

glad you are ok OP, only advise i can offer to help is these 981's are mostly aluminium and I have met a few people who have tried to rebuild wrecked ones into race cars and apparently they are a pain in the *** as most panels are bonded or glued etc together which complicates the rebuild and should be accounted for in your costings, but it can be done. In Australia where these cars are twice the price your car would be rebuilt for sure

JackOlsen

As others have said, money is just money -- but no one was injured, and that's much more important.

Also notable, you're not making excuses for what happened, blaming others, or dressing it up as something you couldn't have avoided. I only watched the driving part once, but I remember it looking like you were a little early and a little hot on that last corner, you lifted slightly and the rear broke loose. It seemed like the rear was getting progressively looser up until that point. Your tire pressures might have been spiking, and since they were unfamiliar tires, it's possible that you had the wrong pressure in them to start.

But take that with a grain of salt -- those are all the opinions of a driving coach who's too lazy to go back and look at it again.

I will say this. We make big mistakes and small ones, and it's foolish to assume that the consequences of those mistakes will correlate directly to the severity of the error. You made a smallish mistake, and it cost you a car. A lot of time, we luck out and make a big mistake and no walls happen to be in our path. We work to improve our skills in this sport, but (to some extent) we're all still rolling the dice with our bank accounts and our safety.

JackOlsen

Wait. I felt guilty, so I looked again. I don't see much evidence of the rears going away in the turns leading up to the off. Just too-hot and off-line in my opinion. Not a whole lot, but enough so that when you lifted and tried to correct left a little, it was enough to transfer weight to the front and allow the rears to break loose.

One thing's bugging me: did you already know the corner worker? I can't understand why he'd hug you instead of trying to get you to sit down and maybe asking you some questions to see if you'd hit your head.

ipse dixit

I am very sorry to see this, but this post is a very mature and I'm sure in some sense a bit therapeutic.

As others have said, you came away with the most important thing intact: You. And with all of you still functioning.

O5C4R

ha ha yeah, we don't get nice flag marshals like that here either

js997

kudos for posting the video and sharing your experience. it's definitely something many of us who go on track can learn from.