DrJupeman

Ouch, car to car.

RedlineMan

DrJupeman

Wow, was everyone ok? Are the two drivers going their own way on repairs and covering costs?

38D

Must have been someone else, cause I had not dropped off before the, er, "incident".

Ouch on that 930.

RedlineMan

Jupe -

My buddy had a pretty sore ankle the next day. I don't think the other car is repairable either. He hit the tirewall R/F and then got t-boned. The other guy helped my buddy get this car on the trailer, so it doesn't appear there is ill will... One can only hope.

Pesky -

You can beat yourself up or second guess yourself, but at least you can't say that you were a bonehead and tried to make something out of nothing. It just happened. Could happen to any of us. THAT should be some comfort.

Al P.

I'm surprised he didn't break something his car looks worse than Walszack's

38D

Yeah, once I realized I was going off, there was probably little I could have done. Still, it's a bitter pill to swallow. The real key is recognizing the situation sooner, so the off never happens in the first place. Time to get back to some therapy...

richard glickel

Well at least you know what you did "wrong". I've yet to figure out how I lost it on the downhill turn. I was flying around the track. I late apexed, as I intended. I do know that I let the car track out too far and got the left wheels over the white "rumples", but I did not attempt to jerk the car to the right. Instead, I thought the car would just ride back to where all four wheels were back on and heading down the straight -- - NOT!

The car shot across the track, plunging head-on into the tire wall on the right side of the straight. A Lime Rock worker witnessed my accident and estimated my speed at 95-105 mph. Another Lime Rock employee stated that he had never seen a car embedded so deeply into that tire wall (a rather ignominious distinction I'd say).

I have no in car video, which might help me understand where I screwed up. Over confidence perhaps, but I've never taken a cavalier approach to track driving, and by no means do I consider myself an accomplished (i.e., expert) driver. I always remember that I am an amateur with tons of room for improvement.

Anyway, this was one (painful) experience I don't care to repeat - ever.

Richard

carreracup21

Sorry to hear that Richard. I was watching the Speed GT WC race from Limerock and saw Gilotti go off with all 4 wheels in a full power 4 wheel drift and he just rocketed back onto the track without missing a beat or even a place. There must be a technique to getting back on the track without losing it, but I've never tried. I usually just go straight, slow down and come back on with help from a corner worker. I've never taken that turn at Limerock, but there is a corner at Roebling ( infamous turn 9 ) that has a similar speed and a concrete retaining wall on the inside. Last event I did down there, that wall collected a very nice Z06 and utterly destroyed it.

38D

I can't remember ever hitting the candycane on the outside of the downhill, but the candycane on the outside of the esses are super slippery. Just a thought.

Larry Herman

I have seen this type of accident happen a lot. A woman in our club wrote off a boxster at the Jefferson Circuit that way. She went wide on the exit of turn 5 and dropped the rear wheel off the track. The car immediately rotated and shot her across to the inside where a concrete barrier was waiting. She did not try to "bring it back" onto the track, as was commonly thought. But she did not realize that the car, still under cornering load, would rotate like that due to the reduced traction. Whenever you drop a wheel off, or maybe just slide onto a slippery surface like the turtles, you must turn OUT to stop the cornering forces so that the car will go straight. Some refer to this as "taking the car off". Years ago I, like Gilotti, went off at the bottom of the downhill at Lime Rock (but in my 914) and kept it together and got back on half way down the track. Sorry that you weren't as fortunate, Richard.

RedlineMan

I was there, Richard;

I waited - interminably - for your cleanup. Nasty little biff, that one. I didn't see it happen, but I don't have to. I knew what you did (wrong?) right away.

As Larry said, all it takes is one wheel, and worst the rear, to rotate you significantly. You did not free the car up from side load when the tire dropped and/or you hit the paint. There is also a typical nasty drop off just outside the curb. If you hook one of these with any side load, you're toast.

There is a point when you are approaching the edge of the track when you have to make the decisive decision to remove as much side load from the car as possible. Just as you may steer a little left when cresting the Climbing Turn, you need to counter the side load and impending weight shift that will hook spin you. Throwing weight to the INSIDE rear wheel or steering TOWARD the wall may seem like a foggy & freightening concept in a hard turn, but it can be done, and NEEDS to be done!

Go out there and walk that corner next time you are there, and think about what I said. Also walk the exit of Big Bend for the same reason. I think you will see why you bonked. I'm glad you are OK. I saw your car, and you might not have been!

PMS993

Since Roebling is "home track" for me, I know turn 9 well. It's interesting to note though that there is a turn like that on every track I've been to. One of those that you don't even think about trying to get back on the track. You will lose body parts.

Watching NASCAR this past weekend, I don't remember which driver it was but an accident happened coming off of turn 4 at Charlotte. He dropped way off the track and down onto the grassy area between the pits and the stands doing around 160MPH. He proceeded to keep the car straight and under control and eased it down, still doing in excess of 100 MPH, onto the pit road then back onto the track without spinning. I was really impressed with that performance.

DrJupeman

Been there done that on dropping a wheel and experiencing an "insta spin". Let's just say that wasn't Pesky's 914's first encounter with a Lime Rock tire wall...

Richard, I rode with a Black Run Group driver during that Lime Rock event and he did exactly what you did (getting in the turtles on the outside) and his Boxster shot back across the track. Although I think he could have saved it differently, let's just say PSM helped us avoid bending metal...

Brian P

Sorry, a little late to the thread here, but being that Black Run Group driver that the good Dr. is speaking of, his story is basically 100% accurate. For most of the event, I was trying to build up to taking the downhill flat out and that was one of the times that I actually had no traffic in front of me (rare on a short track like Lime Rock). I early apexed a bit (ok, after looking at the video, it was a lot ), thought that I would also touch the rumble strips and be able to ease it back onto the straight. Looking back, the right thing to do would have been to modulate the throttle a bit to give me just the tiniest bit more turn-in to keep me fully on track.

Anyhow, I hit the rumbles, shot across the track, and thought for sure that I was going into the tire wall at 100 MPH+. I straightened the car, tapped the brakes, and the PSM settled the car down hugely and allowed me to stay on track.

That incident was a huge wakeup call for me. It's certainly going to change the focus of what I work on this year.