TD in DC

Thanks for taking the time, Colin. This is very helpful. Your explanation largely matches my perception. I think that my problems began primarily at/after the apex when I made a mistake in judgment in response to the four wheel drift (i.e., I kept all inputs the same rather than opening the wheel). With respect to your correct observation that you "took a 'longer' apex and am exiting inside of TD's line, maybe by 2 feet," the ONLY reason why this is true is that I had already gone into the drift. The drift pulled me off of the place where I wanted to be, which is exactly the line you took and describe.

Larry Herman

I agree with Colin's assessment, and am glad that he doesn't analyse my videos with the same scrutiny (although may I need it). I also read what John L wrote on the Pelican forum, and it appears pretty convincing. Get someone who knows car setup to drive your car.

TD in DC

Well, any volunteers? Bueller . . . . anyone . . . Bueller?

carreracup21

Interesting post-mortem. I've made mistakes in that corner, but fortunately I have been able to recognize the mistake early enough to open the wheel early and lift a bit so I could get slowed down and still make the corner. If you go in hot and can't hold on to the apex long enough to sense a good track out path, you must accept the mistake early and slow down. Experience lets you know when it just isn't going to work. When I am trying to maximize a corner I try to turn in hard enough to feel the slide on entry then you are in control of the car and have plenty of time to stay with it and adjust. Finding out your speed and line are a problem well past the apex can put you in a pickle because you are much more committed with fewer options. It looks like you recognized the problem, maybe subconsiously, but you tried to tighten the turn slightly rather than drop a couple wheels on exit. BTW dropping 2 on that coner is no bargain either and can still lead to a real big problem if not handled appropriately. I've messed up plenty just like this, so I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. Many great drivers have lost it in that corner and that's why most racers give it a lot of respect.

M758

I have not driven that track so it is hard to say exactly where the apex should be. Remeber that some of these apex differences also have alot do to with car. Sure at the novice level they don't, but when it comes to 6" here or there car and set-up make a differece.

My initial reaction was Todd had been taking the corner well within his limits before this. The lap the car stepped out probably due to changes in track conditions and being in a different spot on the concrete. In any even when the car drifted out TD was late in reacting and correcting it. My "sense" form the video was "Correct" about 1 second before TD did any correction. That one second of reaction time could have saved the car. I probaby woud have lifted for a spit second tring to tuck the nose then gotten back on the power. Seems like it may have been understeering out. Tough to say for sure, but I cearly had one those "we need to correct this thing now or we will crash feelings" a second or so before I sensed any correction. Hard to say if it would have saved the car, but I probabyl would have done at least something alot sooner.

True the cause may have been early apex combined with a different traction. One thing to remember is if you run "off line" the grip may be different so even if the "line" is faster the grip maybe less. Plus any surface change makes this worse.

Beyond that it is hard to say for sure. One thing about old toyos is that they can be really good, but they do heat cycle out. The feeling of a "cycled out" tire is it simply loses grip. This often comes up on track some place where you need to correct the car when did not normally do it before. This may have added to the situation.

BTW... The more I have been instucting the more I see that most novices are late in feeling a sliding car. Thus being late means they have less time to correct. I know you are not a at the novice level, but it did seem to me like you were late in responding to the car. Not sure how much time you spend drifting the car, but the best way to learn when you "just right" and "too late" is by practice and lots of it. I get a feel for when the car is drifing comfortable and when it drifting way off ready to wreck. Clearly the Glen is NOT the place to practice this type of stuff. Really do some local autocrosses. Sounds odd, but there you can practice all you like sliding and drifting the car and tuning your "butt" for situations like this.

If you want to race and race well you need to not just follow the school line. So you will always find yourself in an "opps" moment here or there. The reason is you NEED to push hard to find an extra second. DE you have luxury of following the line and sticking with it. So if you want to race you WILL find yourself in a similar situation. Maybe not at this turn, but you WILL enter a corner too fast, too early, too late, off line, in the marbles, or have to pinch it to avoid another car etc. The ONLY way to survive is learn when you need to react to save the car. True you may need learn to take Turn 10 better, but you also need those quick reacting skills so that you can save if you need to. The ONLY way to learn those is with practice.

RedlineMan

Great screen shots, Colin. Now we can really see something.

This is is my estimation. The reference point I am looking at is the wiper blade relative to the outer seam of the cement. In the Crash Lap pic, you can see that Todd is well inside of where he is on the Non Crash lap, as Colin notes. To me, he has clearly already apexed and his line edictates a path toward an early track out. Whether this is from understeer or lack of recongition of an early apex, we will never know. I think we agree he early apexed. Adding more steering input to try and mitigate this incorrect vector clearly wqould not have worked.

That is where we diverge in opinion. I don't see any way that you can state that this early apex should "must be OK" for Todd's 2600lb skinny tired front engine flat footing 944 relative to a nearly 3200lb tail draggin 911T with fat *** tires and throttle steering HP left to spare. Clearly, that line does not work at all for his car. It is also clear that the car is NOT oversteering... yet, and that it will not hold such a line.

I will state again that in a 944 there are some turns where you can make a long apex of it, and some where you can't, or shouldn't. I feel pretty comfortable saying that, having driven 944s for 15 years, and flat footing it myself through that turn. I don't have a working speedo, but my Turbo box has the tach about pegged in third, which puts me somewhere around 100mph I figure.

Further, there are turns where the long apex is mandatory to decrease nasty situations at turn in. Making a long apex is how you carry more speed through the turn than you could if you used a late turn in DE approach. However, I feel that in a turn such as 10, with a car such as we drive that is going much slower, taking an early turn in is SLOWER. Our turn in speed is limited by speed itself, not by grip. Thus to hold a long apex actually slows our cars by scrubbing earlier -vs- a later, more decisive turn in with a short steering motion and less side loading.

Clearly Todd turned early, and also did so in a meandering fashion in my opinion. Clearly his car would not hold that line. It is possible that it could be made to handle such a long apex, but I don't believe there is ANY advantage to doing so in that turn.

Your opinions and results may vary.

RJay

My $0.02. Strikes me as having all the symptoms of the classic failure to correct for understeer with the throttle as opposed to steering. You mentioned earlier you stayed flat for fear of the rear end coming around. You seem to have more lock in the wheel then is necessary and experienced the front end washing out, hence I'd guess the problem lay in being early, trying to input to much correction rather than slow a tad, the front end plows, now you add a little more correction, the front end ultimately grabs, the car goes around.

M758

I would happily drive your car, we could swap too... too bad I am 2800 miles away.

TD in DC

Same result, different impulse, at least on my part. I think that John Luetjen nailed the issue on the head. My car was understeering (albeit not sliding) everywhere all the time. My steering input during the wreck was nearly identical to my steering input every time I went through the corner, even when I wasn't close to the limit.

e911

TD -

Sorry to see this ! This month is the 5 year anniv of my "incident" at the very same turn at the Glen . It brings back ugly memories!! Glad you are OK and your car was able to be back on track!!!
I understand your pain and feel with you.

Others here, whom I respect, have analyzed your errors, but I have a question about this turn. Remember all I hit the wall here simliar to TD and totalled my car so I am , shall I say, "influenced by past expriences".

Many take this turn with no brake just a lift and go. Not me - see prevoius comments. Even with my my confidence stab/tap on the brakes, the speed thru this turn is very high. To the point where, many times my track out is over the rummble strips making it more diffcult to set for the next turn, which is much more important , since it leads to the front staright. Sometimes so bad that I clearly loss speed into turn 11 and the straight. I started to back off just a bit at turn 10 so to better set for the straight - is this just me? and my "past experiences with turn 10"?

kurt M

Where O where is G.R. when you need him?

M758

AS I look at these photos I get a better sense of what I saw in the video.

As you turned in the car took a set. Then for some reason stepped out sideways. It was a understeering side step out. What I mean is they the car seems to have shifted about 3 feet to the outside with little change in angle of the car to the track. So if you look straight out from the crash vs non-crash lap you can how not only is the car farther to rigth, but it is angled more to the outside of the track. At this point the need actually is lift off the throttle to get the back end to rotate. At the same time give it some right turn of the wheel to correct for the impending oversteer. Once this occurs get back on the gas to set the rear end of the car. Done right and the nose turns in a bit thus pointing you down the track, but the wheel turn right correction combined with throttle should catch the back end.

Was the turn in too early? Well with out the side step may be not, but once the car stepped sideways you NEED to rotate the nose to keep it on track.

PS... my local track has a corner where I do this type of thing every lap. It is decreasing radius turn and the procedure is get the back end to step out so the car is pointed in the right direction then apply power with some opposite steering correcion keep it from spinning. The rotation is mostly to change the angle of the car to the track and done right it feels like the is about to spin each and every lap. Not doing so results in understeering off track. Fortunaltly for me there is plenty of run off room for me to pratice this. Now I am not saying that this is the "right way" to take Turn 10, but that technique may have saved the car if done at the right time.

TD in DC

Joe, you are right that I am late correcting. 100%. The problem wasn't in that I failed to sense it early enough. Rather, the problem was an error in judgment on my part. Since the car was drifting neutrally (i.e., the rear was not rotating yet), I decided not to do anything. THAT was my error. I should have opened the wheel up right then, breathed off the throttle just a little, and addressed the issue immediately. I catch the car all the time. Usually because I react immediately. The extra speed here led me to "overthink" the thing (I am sure most of you will have an extremely hard time believing that ), which caused me to make a bad decision. Oh well, at least I learned something.

Larry Herman

I think that part of the problem too is that Todd "waited" for the car to hookup again. The absolute instant that my car is sliding any more than I want it to, I am applying techniques to regain control. That could range from breathing out of the throttle, quick off/on stabs on the throttle, quick and decisive flicks of the wheel, and other things that I probably don't even think about anymore. My reaction is to make it regain traction. In order to be in control, you have to stay in control, or at least regain it as fast as you can when you feel it slipping away.

Oops, just read your response Todd. Didn't mean to beat the issue to death.

TD in DC

I agree with this 100%. My line wasn't any different than the line I had taken dozens of times before. I slid off my line. I can see now that it was a little bit of an understeer drift, but, at that moment, it felt really neutral. I consciously did NOT breathe off the throttle because I was afraid that the rear end would snap around very quickly, which my car has a tendency to do. I thought my car would do X, but it instead did Y. I was caught off-guard like a bad goalee during a penalty kick. Now I know.