'mild' oversteer on first track day (981)
 

First track day ever at Palmer Motorsports Park. I've been autocrossing for a few years.

I was off line due to the pass on the WRX and carried too much speed into turn 8.
Thought some of you might appreciate it :)

Great, hope you have DE track insurance..

Turn 8 at Palmer is notorious. Maintenance/increasing throttle to keep the rear planted is a must through there.

Nice catch

Club racing in three years :)

Looks like you lifted at the wrong time.

Verus makes some great items to help with your down force including a wing that can produce 700+ lbs in the rear along with a rear diffuser and front splitter.

https://www.verus-engineering.com/porsche-products

Good catch. Your lines seem a bit off, not uncommon for someone new to track. It's hard to tell if you have an instructor with you in that video, but I think you'd find some coaching helpful. Enjoy driving on the track - there's no going back now!

+1

Good advice.

Important to note that often “maintenance throttle” is not good enough, unless the car is “thrust positive” (increasing throttle over the subtraction in speed from scrub due to steering/cornering). Have to see positive longitudinal g forces to make sure the rear has “bite.”

I've been doing some analysis to try and figure out exactly what happened. I still need to figure out how to sync my solo 2 with go pro video to get the data log.

Here is a slow motion video though. It's a little easier to see whats going on.


I had just set my best lap time (1:55) after starting P1 in the session and having open road. I was starting to move through traffic at the very end of the day.

I carried about the same amount of speed into that turn as the last lap even though I was off line. I knew I was a little hot, but you can see by my initial correction that I was expecting a tiny bit of oversteer, not full opposite lock.
I even tried to exit the countersteer way early because I thought it would be small - that definitely made it worse.

I had also just shifted into third and started to lift at turn in, which added to the fun.
Lastly I think there may have been some marbles off line that I didn't account for, adding more to the slip angle.

I'm open to advice if you spot any more mistakes.

I did have DE insurance, though the deductible still would have hurt ;)

No instructor unfortunately (TNIA). I was 100% struggling with the line most of that day. I had only watched a few videos of the track and other than the apex cones on course, I was still trying to figure out my turn in points and the line.

Definitely no going back though. I'm hooked.

You need some tough love:

- You shouldn't be pushing that hard on your first track day ever, putting not only yourself but also others at risk.

- Driving on the track isn't the same as autocross. Some skills translate, but the dynamics are somewhat different at higher track speeds, and consequences of error on the track can be much worse.

- You got somewhat lucky that you caught it - don't just chalk it up to you uber skilz. Make that kind of error repeatedly and I guarantee that it won't be long before you crash. The back of the car won't step out like that unless you make a serious mistake with not reading the track correctly and your inputs.

- Why did you not slow down substantially after that near crash?

Agreed. I eased up after this incident, but I shouldn't have been pushing so hard.

This was a hard way to learn that lesson, but given how massively I misjudged that turn I realize that now.

Understood

I eased up for the rest of the run. I didn't feel like it was necessary to dramatically slow down right afterwards though. Maybe I should have.

I run similar times in my Spec Boxster with street tires. Passing the white car, moving left and entering the corner offline at the same speed definitely didnt help you, lift or no lift. I've been given passes there and either wave them off or enter much slower from inside. From memory, I'm flat coming up the hill on the FAR right in third, at the beginning of the tire barrier on the the white line I lift to half throttle, turn in and immediately progressively slowly add gas the whole way through the corner, I also try not to track out to the very far right as the track really falls off there.

Turn 7 (downhill left), next time try aiming at the flag station/dead tree for what seems like way to long and turn in late when your eyes can pick up the beginning of the white & red curbing which you should be inches from at apex. You can see in your original video you turned in way early and by the time you were adjacent to the white curb the steering wheel was turned 90* and the front pushing hard with the car on the far right of track. When you set up correctly for 7, you should be able to go close to full throttle at the white curb with the wheel starting to unwind.

I would highly suggest next time you go to Palmer it's with a PCA region that have been there a lot; CVR, NER, Metro and run in a instructed class. Your lap time is good but learning the proper lines will take even more time off and be way safer. Palmer is very unforgiving. Have fun!

Find a local PCA event to go to so you can get an instructor to help you out.

Still kind of shaking my head that on your first "Big Track" day you are in an open passing group which is usually for people that have good experience at a big track.

Do you even know what all the flags are because in an autocross you won't see more then 2, yellow or red?

PCA does a great job in teaching you all of these thing, Flags, Racing Line, so on.

Autocross is very fun and a good learning process before going to a big track, but a whole different animal because of the speeds you are going, and cones are a lot more forgiving then walls.

Wait, this was your first track day or first track day at Palmers?