ProCoach

Not sure what video you're watching. Driver lost control of the car which caused him to leave the track. Not only that, but his control inputs, vision performance deficit and lack of appropriate, proper response caused his continued loss of control without doing anything to save it. Yes, he had room and time, but he panicked, fixated and froze. Seen it about a thousand times in the last thirty-five years.

No opinion here. Just facts. He locked them up due to a misjudgment, too much pedal pressure too quickly and never released them to allow the front wheels to roll and to regain steering. Happens in the snow all the time. A shame.

ProCoach

True dat!

mark kibort

actually, its really about vibration absorbsion...and it might make the engine a little noisier, but the speed of revs up and down is desirable for track use. (if you have a heavy, large diameter flywheel or clutch. the shifting becomes more precise with the lighter stuff,to a point.

i tend to agree with you here. i think you stay off line as you are, and then just brake more than you normally would to turn in speed. this takes practice. in this example......something else coould have been going on , such as lost brakes. the video seems to say this in the titles. however, the fact that he was not in gear for the downshifts, reduced his braking forces tremendously, and could have saved the car. coasting is a death sentence for lost brakes.
(or you end up in the public roads by smashing through gates and things! )

this is a great example of the "Brake straight" technique , every single student or novice should practice.. there are so much force available with the brakes in a straight line, that even if you miss your braking point, the worst that should happen is that you are off line on the apex. However, there is a suspicioun that the car lost its brakes . its really hard to tell on the video. he started jerking the wheel in a panic. If so, we owe him a little more slack, but i still criticize on not having the car in gear for the decel.

this is most important. i would be motioning first and then screaming if someone went that deep without brakes. the instructor has to be more involved from the start. hand signals are very important that the driver can see. .... pushing motion for brakes... pointing for direction change....thumbs up for positive reinforcement.

Mike.... you might be right on all counts.. i remember my brake failure... thats the first thing i thought of was my non-working e-brake!

could be!
thats what it seems like.. sans a brake failure.

TXE36

Shrug. I dunno. He is on pavement the entire time. Motor is at idle. He has a lot of speed and eventually has the wheel cranked.

Riddle me this: If he has the brakes locked up, how come it doesn't look like the car is slowing down much? Is that all pavement out there or a gravel trap? I've never been to WGI.

Maybe it is just the perspective of the video. Another way to look at it: if this isn't brake failure, what would brake failure at this point look like?

-Mike

996AE

Sorry coach, he had time to make adjustments and try to save it. While on the track and still conscious you always fight to save it until the very end! He didnt. Only when on the marbles was all lost.

Had he released brake and attempted to drive the car through the corner with skills he might have made it. Worse thing is he would have scrub off more speed and spun and may have kept it off they wall. Best case is he makes the turn.

But hey, I appreciate your opinion.

Manifold

I watched the video again.

My guess is that the driver had some red mist after the pass, didn't fully remember the specifics of what the next corner entailed, focused on getting a downshift done, then freaked out when he finally realized he was way too hot to make the corner and resorted to locking up the brakes while also trying to turn.

I'm somewhat doubtful that he could have made a decent recovery at the point - not enough room to work with at that speed once he realized the error. Maybe they would have stood a chance if the instructor got him on the brakes around 250+.

will968

Maybe one, or both, front brakes failed and that got the car off balance.
Personally, I would have gone straight until it was under control. The car behind would have seen what was going on and would have had time and space to react.
Watkins Glen DEs are almost all multi-day events and I've seen more than one driver run out of pad before the end. Because of this, I started checking my student's front pad thickness before I get in for every session there. People share cars and you don't know what kind of compound is being used.

1990nein

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Dr.Bill

Back to the original observation - putting your feet on the dash seems like a good way to get a posterior hip dislocation +/- an acetabular fracture. Not sure where they teach that maneuver!

Veloce Raptor

Yep. Very unwise...

Der ABT

Hug yourself and tuck your feet in.....I took a breath, held it, and did a blue angel keep blood in brain grunt in my flight......not sure why but it made sense in that 4 minute approach to doom
Easy to say to do....but there really is no practice


So........
Has anyone else wondered if the gravel trap that was replaced would have prevented this?
Been worse since he didn't go off straight?
I like the pavement but in certain situations I can see it not helping


Also speaks to the importance of using auditory and visual instructions
I usually talk and give hand gestures, with a brightly colored glove in their line of sight to grab their attention in any way

Otherwise good discussion, but man alot of you musta only taken level 1 .....doug.....great post

John H

If the motor was at idle, that's a pretty good sign his brakes were locked and he had the clutch pedal down. Or, he just had the clutch pedal down thinking it was the brake pedal.

stownsen914

The video almost makes it appear he lost his brakes, but more likely ...
1. Took a late pass
2. Got a little lost and missed the brake zone markers because they were obscured by the car he'd just passed.
3. Said "oh sh*t, I need to brake!" and locked them up. At that point he wasn't slowing effectively and couldn't steer either. The rest is apparent.

The 200 marker at that turn is probably a bit late for that car to be braking (especially for a novice), but it's not ridiculously late. Unless he really had reduced braking effectiveness for some reason, this should have been saveable. Unfortunate way to learn such a lesson. I hope the driver and instructor are both OK.

Perhaps on a related point, I drove an E30 BMW for the first time this past weekend at an AER race. Fun car to drive on track, but one thing that stood out is how sensitive the car was to inside front wheel lockup under trail-braking, followed by neither stopping nor turning! Not sure that had anything to do with the incident since he seems to have locked up while straight, but it may have been a contributing factor.

Scott

dan212

I've watched this many times and just can't make sense of it. Every crash is divided into two aspects:
(1) What started it
(2) What to do when things go awry.

So debate about the driver only addresses issue #1 all you want.

I am loath to criticize when I do not know all circumstances. I just can't quite believe the instructor just bracing himself with his feet and going for a ride.

I for one, regardless of the rules have absolutely no interest in just riding a car into the wall. Why didn't he intervene? Who cares about protocol? Does everyone really think that there was nothing to be done?

It would be my *** taking a nose dive into a wall and I am not going to just sit there (or squat I guess). Someone opined that the driver may have panicked. But there is a reason an instructor is in there.

An awful lot of belts flying around in there and those seats look like some kind of track oriented seat. Was the car a Frankenstein?

If that car had only a 3 point, I would hate to think what his back felt like after impact. I assume he didn't think there were air bags or else his ***** would have taken a pounding.

Rules:

• 3 point harness is designed to work in concert with air bags.
• The alternative is a nice robust roll bar, decent seat and proper belts. Me wearing a HANS
• No airbags with 3 point and no roll bar and safety harness? No Dan in the car. And I might question the sanity of the car owner.

The rules as I understand them at least with PCA is equal restraints in the car, but not equal inadequate restraints.

Veloce Raptor

IMO, had the brakes failed, that about of sudden initial steering input would have caused some amount of oversteer in that car...