Gotta be honest with you: this kind of thing scares the hell out of me, and is my primary motivator for trying to learn as much as possible! Jesus that must've been nerve-wracking.


This reminds me of a video I ran across as I was preparing for this past DE: an RX-7 lost brakes going into the Loop and got pretty lucky. Seems like nice driving on his part.




All this talk also reminds me of a quote by Mario Andretti, where he said something to the effect of, "The difference between great drivers and everyone else is that while they all may make similar numbers of mistakes, the great driver is capable of sensing them farther in advance, thereby diminishing the effect the mistake has on the car."

My other favorite Mario quote: "All things come to those who wait...except a cat."

No worry. I wasn't there and I've never seen you drive. Didn't even know what group you were in. Im just bringing up an alternative in a generalized situation. Brian is undoubtedly a really fast drover and a sounds to be a really good instructor too. If hes comfortable w/ your demonstrated skills teaching you something more advanced than thats all good. Learn as much as you can while you have the opportunity. He is the only one w/ the first hand knowledge to make that assessment and judgement. The rest of us, myself included, are playing armchair quarterback. Everyone does it differently. Only Wemple is wrong.

Be very carefull about trying to make the apex at "all costs" I was instructing for the Shelby club last week at Summit main, big cars big motors superchargers, small brakes for the most part. Guywith instructor lost brakes coming into T10, tried to make the apex whilst another car ahead was just about to occupy that Real Estate. Made contact and spun the other car off, luckily both were still driveable and continued next day.
A thought for you, if you have turn in right and track out right, apex will take care of itself. If loosing brakes making a larger radius turn might be the answer for you, as opposed to trying to pinch it in.
Dirk

"All things come to those who wait...except a cat."
^ LIKE! :lol:

Lots of good discussion here. Bottom line, skills are needed to handle the unintended situations. Few are born with it; the rest of us have to learn it. Practice, practice, practice. Little baby steps when trying new stuff makes recovery when you've crossed the line more manageable. Bite off too much and........

Early on, I advocate looking for that "straight" escape route as much as possible. With more practice & experience, you develop those skills to know how to rotate your car in order to help scrub off speed. But do it wrong and.......... The objective is to learn and absorb good stuff. Eventually the skills will end up in your subconscious competence where you'll be able to do it automatically, giving the rest of your brain more time to consider stuff like what's behind & in front of me, how slippery is the grass, and how far is that wall.

FWIW, skidpad training is excellent for developing these skills; it help you train how to move the back of the car with your right foot, and the front of the car with your hands. Autox too, in that it lets you approach the handling limits and feel the car's behavior at speeds where risk is vastly reduced.

When you screw up a corner (or lose brakes), you can scrub a lot of speed through a corner. Normally, you get on the gas hard at or before the apex, and if done perfectly, that gets you to the track-out point with a centimeter to spare, accelerating.

If you're entering the turn in trouble, you don't get on the gas (maybe just enough to prevent a spin), and you scrub a lot of speed during track out, and make a turn you didn't think you could. Your exit speed will stink, but it's better than the alternative.

We definetly talked and worked on this but the context was maintaining the car's balance, not speed. Luckily we didn't have any code brown emergency situations. On occasion he would use abrupt steering to get the car on line when the speeds and turbo boost required more sublte and deliberate inputs; e.g. entering big bend, exiting the hammer, kink after the carousel. He adapted and his steering calmed a lot and was more progressive which gave the car better balance and made his instructor feel a lot SAFER.

Although he was put in green Colin has track and autocross experience but he's been away from it for a few years. He was not your typical green student by any means. And he has a lot better feel than he gives himself credit for because he was able to calmly stay ahead of the car on a few occasions. :cool: He's already a good driver and consisdering how well he adapted and his willingness to try different things he's only going to get better. But I didn't push him. I reeled him in when needed and did my best to make him faster by being safer.

I don't think that's a quote from me. I didn't encourage you to maximize your speed in a botched situation. Instead I encouraged you to not over react when you where off line and risk upsetting the car/spinning. Although on one occasion I did say "that's about as fast as you want to go through this corner" :shock:

We worked on some advanced stuff but maximizing exit speed when you're out of shape wasn't one of them. :)

Again, FWIW, I went through some of the same adjustments driving-wise when I got back into a sports car after a 20-year hiatus. One of my first DE's was at Mid Ohio. I thought I was a good driver based upon my SCCA racing days. So instead of working on smooth, I was trying to go fast, and thought I was impressing my instructor. She finally said "you need to stop that sh!t, unless you want me to take you back to the paddock" :oops: Basically, came to realize that making corrections, even though I knew how, in every corner does not a good driver make.

"Trying" and "pinching" are two different things. The first involves planning ahead. The second is the result of poor planning (or execution), lack of understanding of physics, and often results in poor results and damage.

Nice to meet you this past weekend Collin, and great fun trying to chase you as well.

It was great to be back at the track after a two year hiatus, especially to Shennie where all the little dogs eat. Looked like a 944 show at times! (cue the jokes about how many were still running, etc. please).

Thank you to Seltzer for the instruction and helping me knock all that rust off. I truly enjoyed it!

Steve "Eagle Eye for Short Sleeve Shirts" V was on his game in the staging area.

Skidpad was a hoot. I hope to be doing quite a bit of that at other DEs.

Who was in the black Cayman that did at LEAST two continuous revolutions of the pad in a perfectly controlled skid? Fun to watch......

My third session on Sunday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlG3l...ature=youtu.be