ProCoach

Camera car is being lapped by the leaders (or at least the cars that qualified in the first few rows) and this is evident (by the blaze of headlights behind him) as early as turning in under the pedestrian bridge at T3.

He tries to "help" in a few areas, specifically starting around T6 and continuing through T10.

His head is absolutely on a swivel, with rapid, uncoordinated movements to try and get a "fix" on where these cars behind him are and how quickly they're closing.

On the run down after T10 to T11, there is a EV with flashing yellow lights (IIRC) on the left before/in the brake zone against the inside armco. It is NOT easy, but you can see flashing yellows on an EV somewhere in the vicinity of the far side of the exit of T11. The first EV does not appear to be with a stricken car, the second is shielding one.

In the braking zone and at the turn-in, he's clearly trying to "let some by" but appears totally preoccupied with assisting the other drivers, always looking to his inside and to the rear of the car.

He maintains space on the inside from a delayed turn-in on so perhaps other cars MAY go through with room.

He turns in late, and as he clears the inside armco at the apex, sees the EV at an early track-out drivers right, target fixates and BANG.

Veloce Raptor

Oh my

Veloce Raptor

By the way, thank you for the play-by-play

ProCoach

You need to look at it, if you can. This is from a one-time run through, with a repeat of the impact, but you can see it developing eight turns in advance…

Veloce Raptor

I will try on my laptop. Couldn't make it work on my phone but it may be a bandwidth issue here at the track

De Jeeper

So a rookie/newbie who has just stared de's question.

im guessing the course was on yellow or at least that area of the track was with ev's on the track, whats the rules for passing? I though its a no passing zone. Im guessing this guy should have been looking more foward and been less concerened with what was around him?

ProCoach

The rollback with the lights on, the first EV, was rolling down the inside of the track from T10 to T11.

AFAI can tell, the first yellow, a WAVING yellow, was present and visible in the video drivers right entering T11.

Waving yellow typically means GREAT caution and you WILL need to alter the normal line to pass safely by the incident. That you can NOT take the normal line.

Perhaps if he had been able to scan left to right better, instead of fixate left, away from the flag, he might have had more warning. So, your last sentence is apt.

I can't say he did or didn't see the flag. The stopped car appears to be on the exit curbing early out of T11, was being covered by the second EV. The second EV had lights on, but was also diagonal across the outer third to outer half width of the track.

Armchair quarterbacking, it's easy to say that this might have been avoided by looking further ahead, being less concerned about what was coming behind, seeing and acknowledging the waving yellow and going slowly enough to have complete control of the car to avoid, as well as not to target fixate, but none of us were driving that car.

I feel bad for the driver, he was mortified. All you have to do is listen to the audio and watch his reaction. A shame...

zmon

i can say the racing at WRL was phenomenal. our team has tons of AER experience and COTA was our second WRL event and it was awesome. i dont think i have had competitive racing like that ever! (started on Saturday and earned every place i got!!) we had a GP1 and GP2 car. we managed 4th in GP2 and 5th in GP1 on Saturday and a 2nd and third on Sunday in GP2 and GP1 respectively. only team out of about 90 that had a double podium!

and i love endurance racing, a 2016 GT4 cayman factory race car finishes 29th overall and an almost 30 year old e36 finished 31st on sat and 24th overall on Sunday

and the vid hitting the EV.... fak they were garaged two down from us and that corner of that toyota is STRONG... feel so bad for the guy, but at the same time don't feel bad at all. WRL preached the entire event about giving the EV room. safety car strategy for the weekend was basically non existent because they would just hot pull everything out there.

daaa nope

I was at the event competing in GP3 and while I was not in the car at the time of the EV incident, fellow drivers told me that the EV had already been parked there for 2 laps before the guy hit it.

Seems to me the driver was very much over-saturated.

daaa nope

I got to see the video of that hit.

I watched it once and did not wish to see it again. It was a BAD hit. Had he hit the Audi 2' further forward it would've been really bad.

Jickel180

I was coming for you on Saturday! We had a puncture/delaminated tire that took us down a couple of laps but got within 2 seconds of you guys by the checkered flag.


Pretty awesome to be that close for an 8 hour race amatuer race. That was my first wheel to wheel race to drive in and I loved every minute of it. Wish we could have raced with you on Sunday but brake issues kept us from competing that day.

conceptDawg

The driver had just gotten in the car after a driver change. It was on his out lap that he hit the EV so he didn't have any previous-lap knowledge of the EV being at the exit of the corner. And T11 was clear for his co-driver on the last lap through before he pitted.

Seth Thomas

Glad to see all of you guys who were there for the weekend had a great time. It sure was a good weekend even if we didn't have the results we were hoping for as a team. Overall I can't wait for more WRL races last year. I love the long race formats because I love the strategy involved with it. 2022 is going to be fun.

Here's the in-car from Sunday's start to add to the desire to get back on track.

zmon

NICE!! yea i was driving in the GP1 car, but you all were coming hard on Saturday!

Rob in VA

Seth, that looked like fun!