This is the second car Randy has launched off the mountain--he's getting good at it!
I love that this pic is not a photochop:
Ouch, that was a pretty hard hit. And could have been 100% worse given the terrain of Pikes Peak.
Looks like the wing fell off, that's never good when you are airborne
This thread is useless without video.
Toyman01 (Moderately Supportive Dude) said:This thread is useless without video.
I'm sure it will be available at some point. This literally happened a few hours ago.
Apparently there are three Model 3s running the event. Two of them didn't survive today.
And people ask me why I haven't taken a run at Pikes Peak...
Man, glad he’s okay! I really like watching and reading everything he is a part of.
Oof. So glad he's okay!
At least he went off at a better place than last time. I am hoping I can sneak into a spot to watch the hill climb this weekend.
Holy crap! That is not a good place ot go off, I've photographed at that spot many times for GRM back in the old days when it was still all dirt, the last time was when Rod Millen went through there in the SuperTacoma at 132 mph! And it's faster now that it's paved! And although the PR folks will tell you that the dropoff on the other side of that wall is 2000 feet straight down it's really (only!) about 800 feet. Yipe! Randy is a super driver, I hope they get the car repaired, if not, I hope they return next year..
Looks like he didn't stick the landing.
As the car approached a section of high elevation upper track nicknamed “Bottomless Pit,” a small bump became the demise for this Model 3. Pobst, the driver of the Model 3, is familiar with both the car and the bump on the track.
There wouldn't be a bump in the asphalt if it was still dirt there. Just sayin... 
Glad to see he's not only ok, but is openly using this as both a learning and teaching experience. The car looks to have taken the hit pretty well too.
Looks like he overcorrected as it initially lost traction. He's not just some ham fisted hack like me, so that means the car didn't react the way he expected based on the motions he felt. While it could be a shock tuning or suspension geometry/compliance issue, I also have to wonder about how the traction/stability control was tuned and/or disabled. Perhaps the car was simply doubling up on his correction efforts.
Glad he's ok. Despite the moniker on the door sill, I'm pretty sure that one got plugged in to the hill side.
slowbird said:As the car approached a section of high elevation upper track nicknamed “Bottomless Pit,” a small bump became the demise for this Model 3. Pobst, the driver of the Model 3, is familiar with both the car and the bump on the track.
There wouldn't be a bump in the asphalt if it was still dirt there. Just sayin...
This. I know it was paved because of erosion problems and such, but I hate it. I'm glad I got to drive it when it was still dirt (passing RVs in an Audi 80 on the dirt section was entertaining). Just because it makes sense doesn't mean I have to like it.
ultraclyde (Forum Supporter) said:Glad he's ok. Despite the moniker on the door sill, I'm pretty sure that one got plugged in to the hill side.
#dadjokes
Driven5 said:Glad to see he's not only ok, but is openly using this as both a learning and teaching experience. The car looks to have taken the hit pretty well too.
Looks like he overcorrected as it initially lost traction. He's not just some ham fisted hack like me, so that means the car didn't react the way he expected based on the motions he felt. While it could be a shock tuning or suspension geometry/compliance issue, I also have to wonder about how the traction/stability control was tuned and/or disabled. Perhaps the car was simply doubling up on his correction efforts.
I really enjoyed the video too, Randy seems like a fun guy to just BS about cars with.
I tend to agree on the suspension tuning, I wonder if they had it tuned in to be awesome on the bottom part and it was just too stiff for the bumpy top section. Also, the way it snaps to the side, part of me wonders if he broke/bent a suspension link hitting that bump and it made it pop to the side. Maybe rear toe?
Also, completely unrelated, is anyone else surprised that they kept the glass roof? I would think they'd pop that thing off and put a CF panel in there, if for no other reason than to block the sun a bit.
They were looking to beat 10 minutes, so this was a team and driver that weren't just noodling around for fun. I also wonder about the tuning - setting up suspension for the real world is a lot harder than for the track, and maybe the car got squirrely when it got into the bumpstops on a big, high-speed hit. If you look at the pictures of the car flying, there's very little droop. And the coilovers that Unplugged sell are two-piece, which inherently have less travel than a properly designed coilover do.
So my theory is: big bump, car runs out of travel on the rebound, all the weight comes off the rear wheels, whee.
If your goal is just to block the sun a bit, it seems to me that tint would be a lot easier than a ginormous chunk of CF and all the production and installation hassles that would go along with that :)
All the correction in the world won't help when the wheels are off the ground!
Here's the car at rest.
Full droop. If you look at the series of photos, this is pretty constant while he's airborne.
Yeah, that's not a whole lot of droop travel for going maximum attack on a real road. What's that, an inch?
By comparison, here's the amount of droop in a WRC car set up for tarmac.
The car just 4 wheel washed off the road..............not a fun feeling.
In light of the severity of the bump/yump the entry speed was probably 1-2mph more than the car could cope with....simple as that.
Took me a while to realize the video didn't have the sound turned off in the car.
Tom1200 said:The car just 4 wheel washed off the road..............not a fun feeling.
In light of the severity of the bump/yump the entry speed was probably 1-2mph more than the car could cope with....simple as that.
Well, if you're not going within 1-2 mph of the limit, you're not going to win your race :) The tricky part is staying on the appropriate side of the limit, and the car needs to be on your side with no weird edge behaviors.
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