M758

Touche...

Bull

Exactly. Our club thinks they are doing good when they invite the corner workers to the dinner...with a cash bar. I try to make sure the right ones never reach for cash....and remember my number.

BostonDMD

Bribe......

Probably the oldest form of persuasion.......

kurt M

No that would be Sex. It was used long before we had money or even the clothing with pockets to put the money in.

KRA993tt

That seems to be going around The kinder and gentler rennlist like the old days.

kurt M

Am all for that too. there are plenty of places to go for smack talk and fart jokes. IMO this part of this site has been a good place for real answers to real questions for a long time. Sure there is and allways will be some off thread stuff in tech threads but not to the point of drowning it out.

Veloce Raptor

It still is. But it's nice to see folks finally lightening up a bit & not taking themselves so damned seriously.

KRA993tt

BostonDMD

In my opinion bribe is an all encompassing act......

Sex, money, free rides...... you name it....... are just means to get the bribing accomplished........

Not that I would know anything about it anyway........

Potomac-Greg

I was at a Ferrari club DE (crashing the party in my beater) and the corner workers were invited to the catered lunch. Don't you know some D-head goes up to one of them and starts blasting him for not showing the blue flag enough! He's berating the poor guy while he's trying to get his lunch! The flag man handled it well. Of course, the D-head drives a Ferrari, so he must do OK otherwise.

admc58

One of the things I teach all of my students is to determine if they are off line and take approiate action to correct this before it becomes a major problem. We do this in the low speed sessions and practice, practice, practice. Practicing off line driving is just as important as driving the line.

Watch your helmet and hands in the video...

1:12 - 1:13 The car slips the rear and your head rotates left (I'll bet your eyes flashed to the wall/grass...be honest...) This eye flick allowed the car to stop turning and you were not going to make the turn on pavement.

You still had quite a bit of pavement to work with.

In your case at 1:12.5 you could have straightened the wheel and braked hard in a straight line prior to exiting the track to reduce speed. You would be amazed how much speed you can drop. Most of the time you will slow enough to continue around on pavement.

During the spin watch your head again. The car is rotating clockwise but your head is still looking out the front windscreen. It appears that your hands are following the car and not being led by your eyes.

Keep your eyes looking where you want to go at all times!!!! If you look at something you will go there...good or bad.

Glad you made it back in one piece.

brucegre

Hey Paolo, sorry I didn't make it to LCMT, too busy in my neck of the woods.

Two part answer here,
1st, could you have saved it? Actually, you did, then you threw it away. You were straight in the grass, and the track actually comes back across in front of you at the end of the kink. I, and a few others, have been known to accidentaly use that as a short cut. It's scary, but if you want to go racing, you have to be able to separate scary and car control so the one doesn't affect the other. All you had to do was stay with the throttle and the straight wheel and you would have joined right up again.

2nd, please listen to everything that Brian said about 2 feet in and not releasing the brakes. If the 944 had been any closer to you, it would have been a 2 car incident. I don't mean you should have gone 2 feet in sooner, since I already told you you could have saved it, but once you did, you have to stay on the brakes until you are stopped or absolutely sure you can release without gathering up someone else. That 180 back around took away all the safety zone the following cars would have used - you were spinning to the right, they would have gone left and then all of a sudden you were backing around on the left side of the track. You drive well, as I said when I was in with you at CMP, but racing is more than lapping fast and if you want to go racing, lock this stuff in.

You coming to Rennsport at CMP in September?

jaje

This is advice I've taken (literally) from my instructors and I pass onto students. A lot of this is verbatim that has been said in this thread.

When you want to safely slide straight (the direction the car is going) put both feet in...clutch and brake and lock up the tires (clutch in prevents engine from dying or adding another factor to affect the spin). As said before...don't let up until you are stopped or positive your spin is done. By doing this correctly you won't go left or right just straight and it'll scrub off the speed depending on the terrain you are on...grass or asphalt.. If you don't want to go the direction the car is sliding...well you're pretty much screwed and have to try to save it. I've seen plenty of cars in Turn 10 at Summit drop 2 wheels off on the exit...over correct and when all 4 wheels get grip they turn immediately to the inside pit wall.

When I was first learning at DEs a cagey instructor who used to race in Europe in the Mini Works series told me that the car knows where it wants to go better than the driver - the steering wheel is in essence only a suggestion box...you turn the car you are only make a suggestion and if it's correct it will do it. A big tidbit of advice I got and use too today, is when you find yourself unsure of where the wheels need to be pointed in order to save it (i.e. you are in a slide)...loosen up on your grip on the steering wheel...the tires will go the path of least resistance which is the way the car is sliding.

RJay

+1.

Not trying to beat you up here Paolo, but you were extremely lucky. Early recognition is key to righting mistakes. You didnt need to say it happened in 7, it was obvious from watching the moment you turned in. You were really, really early in a corner, where if you make a mistake it should be turning in too late. I find it doubtful that you could have broke hard there to slow before going off, theres a lot of OC in that corner, but you tried to come back on track way too early rather than riding it out down the grass. My rule of thumb in those situations is until you slow down and are fully in control, as long as it not pointed at anything hard, let the car go where it wants to.

But lets give credit where credit is due. On the plus side, you did make the single most important decision correctly! You drove off rather than trying to fight to stay on the surface. That saved the car. Most drivers who make a similar mistake wind up completely trashed on the inside guard rail. Seen it many times and it never is pretty.

If you really fancy yourself a racer, then I suggest you start trying to think like a winning one. DO YOUR HOMEWORK! Seven is well documented as a difficult and dangerous corner which trashes dozens of cars every year. When you arrive at a track you need to have a plan of how your going to attack each corner, where you can push and where the stakes are too high and MOST importantly, what your going to do if things go wrong. Forewarned is forearmed! IMO, the biggest mistake you made was not spending enough time preparing. Had you done so, instead of having to instantly figure out what to do, you would have already known. Truly glad no harm was done.

kurt M

Side note on both feet in while it is being discused. Just an opinion based on personal observations.
1. Don't stop trying to steer the car even when both feet in and more so if you have anti-lock. Anti-lock will let the wheels continue to turn and direct the skid to some extent.
2. When you know you are going to hit something pull your feet off the pedals at the last second. Hands off the wheel too. No sense in breaking them along with the car.