my buddy Jason went for his NASA schooling, was telling me there were some heavy hits in the HPDE classes...
GT-R hits after the kink, BIG HIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y7X5ohy5w4&feature=player_embedded
WRX going off in 3, BIG HIT: http://vimeo.com/23181852
Bad things happen so quickly on track. It's a shame to see it happen to anyone.
it was surreal. the first three sunday sessions each had a wreck requiring a tire wall repair. i dont know what it was, but i promise it wasnt the track. i was having the run of my life in session three when it was red flagged.
Double ouch.
Ouch indeed... 
That said, there's something odd to me about the "Tea Party Race car" being... well... imported...
It always amazes me how quickly those GTRs shift...
runoff is good, in these cases green teflon not so good
well.. in one case.. one less ugly car.
Glad it was all done safely and aside from being sore in body and wallet.. both drivers walked way.
VIR is also not without its share of carnage:
Result?
Internet pissing contest:
Inter-tards, form of a porcupine!
Luckily everyone walked away and seems to be fine after some checking by medical staff.
92CelicaHalfTrac wrote: It always amazes me how quickly those GTRs shift...
Twin-clutch transmissions are neat.
Oh wow . . . my very first day at CMP, the instructors warned us about the turn 3 and the kink.
Did that WRX accelerate after he went off? Wrong pedal?
For the WRX, doesn't NASA teach you "don't save it, just stop it? In a spin, both feet in? I literally kicked my wall trying to brake for him.
A Corvette will come through the kink at 130+. I'm guessing the GTR was close to that. Grass at that speed is never a good thing. There used to be a stand of trees where that tire wall is. I'm glad they are gone. That would have been a serious crash with trees involved.
The straight after turn three is fairly narrow. The guard rails aren't very far off the track so there isn't much room for error. And almost no room to recover it after hitting the dirt.
We had a GTI total it in turn three at a PDX earlier in the year. He went off the other side of the track and into the guard rail. It wouldn't have made a good engine donor.
If I had to guess turn three and the kink is why lemons runs on the short course.
I'm glad everyone is walking away from these.
It's always sad to see those kinds of things happen, but it's always good to go back and analyze and see what could have been done better. The thread on Bimmerforums was pretty good, the discussion on the flags/meanings, etc. was insightful. Always good to know what the other guys on the track are thinking.
Here's to learning HPDE in inexpensive momentum cars.
I like how the Tea Party Race Car doesnt mention at all that the car is imported.
What a fake. That was just karma pushing him a little too hard.
I was an interesting weekend, I was glad to see the drivers walk away with just soreness, and busted cars. They all seemed to have to right attitude and were making plans for repairs and return to the track. Sadly we were pretty busy doing damage control on the schedule and track repairs all Sunday morning so even when these events happened right in front of me, I didn't see any of them, just the errie silence that can only mean Red Flag. Never a good sign.
If I had about 10 more feet of track on the left, I think I could have saved it.
Yes! And if my aunt had a wang, she'd be my uncle! Glad everyone was okay. The GT-R was particularly terrifying.
From the video of the GT-R it looked and sounded to me that he was off the gas through the Kink. When you apex the Kink at CMP that right foot needs to be PLANTED - FLAT - FLOORED!!!!!!!!
I tell every student that I'm going to keep repeating 2 things all day for sure, and possibly 2 more depending on how the first session goes:
...and if they're as hesitant and tentative as most newbies are:
In both cases, going both feet in when controlling the vehicle was no longer an option would have greatly helped matters for the drivers of both the GT-R and the WRX in the videos. Also - it looks like the grass was wet. I don't believe I've been in an HPDE classroom session that didn't mention and caution about wet runoff conditions if they were present.
I've spent a lot of time on track on motorcycles and in karts and cars - not a lot scares me - but a few years ago I followed a WRX - freshly soloed - into T10 at VIR. The driver went in a little hotter than he'd been doing, panicked and lifted as he began to run wide. T10 loses elevation after the apex, and I believe the camber isn't favorable off line to the outside. When the inevitable happened and he put 2 off I was saying in my helmet "brakes...Brakes...BRAKES...BRAKES!!!" but he kept trying to save it and he spun back across the track onto the long, wet downhill where he eventually walloped the tire wall and ended up backwards and upside down on the OTHER SIDE of the wall.
His stock seat folded back at about a 45 degree angle and he was very fortunate to have been retained by his stock 2-point harness. The car (and it's bazillion dollars worth of mods) was a write-off.
It was the last event of the season and before the beginning of the next my car had a roll bar, fixed back seats, 6 point harnesses and I was wearing a HANS.
I had never spun a car on track 'til doing SCCA race school this spring at Summit at which I spun the Radical in T5 twice and T3 once. I didn't stall it, and in the case of a tiny car on big Hoosier bias slicks the spin isn't a thing that you see coming a mile away. One second you're railing into the turn, the next you're waiting for the smoke/dirt/grass cloud to subside and for your internal gyro to reset so you can remember which way the cars will be coming from.
DukeOfUndersteer wrote: GT-R hits after the kink, BIG HIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y7X5ohy5w4&feature=player_embedded
What was the sound at 1:33-1:34? (The one that occurred before he went off to the left....)
bimmerforums is now officially the most pathetic forum i can remember having been to.
The track sub-forum at bimmerforums has a lot of good information from people who are the real deal. And like any forum barring perhaps this one, its share of asshats and douchetards.
Wanna see something seriously funny? Look in the M3 - E36 sub-forum there. There the answer is "Seafoam" vs. here where it's 'Miata".
PHeller wrote: I like how the Tea Party Race Car doesnt mention at all that the car is imported.
I thought that was ironic too, they should have used a Corvette or Mustang at least!
Their livery is super ugly!
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