When in a spin ...

[StephanAlfa]

When in a spin ...
Great inboard footage of yours truly spining in it's own coolant when rad hose came off while tracking off turn 12 and applying full power on the straight at NHMS today. All set for another day!

http://s235.photobucket.com/albums/ee51 ... 302012.mp4

[CP]

Interesting camera angle...

[brucesallen]

Looks like you only put one foot in. You had to restart the engine.

[savage217]

Really hard to tell where/what happened with that angle. I suggest mounting it lower in the car. You really cannot see much at all.

[dtlemoine]

Looks like you only put one foot in. You had to restart the engine.

Wondering if it was related to the drop in coolant pressure. During an event with PCA at NH last year, I also had the same rad hose pop off on Nick's E36 325i (worn motor mounts) and the engine died within 2-3 seconds as the coolant pissed out on the grass to the left of T7.

[horizenjob]

You may have been well concious of where you were and taken appropriate measurers. In case no one has every explicitly said this though, it is very important to never ever steer into the skid or try to catch the tail when your up on the big oval or almost any turn with a big cement wall on the outside edge. You really don't want to hit those things and any risk at all along those lines is a very big risk indeed. Up on the oval even a flinch to catch the very start of a tailslide can put you in the wall - even if you catch it.

The point of getting on the brakes early in a loss of control is to make your car's path predictable to the drivers behind you and for you too. You want to either head straight down the track or perhaps towards the inside edge. If you wait too long before locking up the wheels you risk going off sideways and possibly rolling, also a bad result.

So the point is that even if this was the right place to counter steer, it may have been a lost opportunity to really learn to clamp those brakes on right away. It is so important to never make this mistake that it is worth training yourself to do this even if it is not so required in this exact instance.

I thought the video earlier in this series of a Cobra driver that over corrected and then flipped the car as the rear swung the opposite way was very alarming. I don't normally think of cars rolling while in a skid, but that was just scary.

[StephanAlfa]

Interesting camera angle...

I had it so the students could see seat position, etc. and it was the first time trying the angle. Need more links to get outside view properly plus srt the black dot for in/out resolution on the GoPro.
Certainly did not intend to spin on purpose. The top part of the coolant tank is mafe of plastic which became brittle and broke off spewing coolant off the track out of T12 and I spun on my own fluid. Same #@$%* happened again later in the day but I had water instead and gave the poor student (with Nate) on the CObra a bit of a "car wash", sorry!
I must say in 12 years of racing with COM this is my very first incident I caused with a minor dealy in a run group. Aoplogies but given the "record" I think it's pretty good in terms of keeping my nose clean ... and car off the wall.

[StephanAlfa]

Interesting camera angle...

I had it so the students could see seat position, etc. and it was the first time trying the angle. Need more links to get outside view properly plus srt the black dot for in/out resolution on the GoPro.
Certainly did not intend to spin on purpose. The top part of the coolant tank is mafe of plastic which became brittle and broke off spewing coolant off the track out of T12 and I spun on my own fluid. Same #@$%* happened again later in the day but I had water instead and gave the poor student (with Nate) on the CObra a bit of a "car wash", sorry!
I must say in 12 years of racing with COM this is my very first incident I caused with a minor dealy in a run group. Apologies! but given the "record" I think it's pretty good in terms of keeping my nose clean ... and car off the wall.

[horizenjob]

Stephan, sorry if I came across as a dickhead. I knew you spun due to no fault of your own. I received excellent instruction from COM and used to instruct myself. This was less of an issue at the old Bryar track, so it was not emphasized a lot. Later I ran more dangerous places though and sort of learned this on my own. It is part of a circle track racers bible though and we should tell this to students. Maybe we do, I'm sorry it's a very long time since I went to a COM school classroom session.

If you had lost the coolant going twice or maybe more times as fast on the oval turn, you really want to go down towards the inside not up to the wall.

[CP]

But Marcus: the natural thing to do when the back end begins to come around is to counter-steer.

[horizenjob]

But Marcus: the natural thing to do when the back end begins to come around is to counter-steer.

It certainly is. I'm not sure where you draw the line.There are two things here. Not counter steering up on the banked oval and picking predictable or safe path during loss of control of the car.

Stephan I'll apologize again, perhaps I shouldn't post at 3:00 in the morning. I didn't get taught this and probably learned it the hard way - I was lucky, perhaps 50% and it could have gone the other way. So I just wanted to say it for people to think about.

On the banked oval you are at high speed in a very long and narrow corner. Because of your speed you are basically at the limit on a long narrow ribbon of pavement. If you need to do a correction that requires any real counter steering, you have likely made an appointment with the wall. Maybe it's a combination of the 180 degrees, which makes for a lot of wall, and the higher speed. If your going twice as fast, you slide four times as far and/or hit four times as hard. There's a lot going against you.

If we get to drive the South oval configuration again it's something to think about. Counter steering is a bad instinct there.

The other thing is getting on the brakes soon and getting on a predictable or safe path. Both feet in basically right away. You want your car on a predictable path. There are other people on the track, if they can't tell where your car is going things get worse. If the car is sliding right and then sliding left, imagine all the traffic behind dodging one way then the other.

This doesn't mean you can't work the wheel, trying to balance the car. You can be on the edge and catch it. I think the oval track mantra is "Never turn right".

So I can't see or tell that anything wrong was done here because I can't see out of the cars windows in the video. But thought I would bring this up for discussion.

[StephanAlfa]

I would agree at South Oval you'd want to be inside and not counter-steer towards the wall. THis was treacking out of T12 and the coolant hit the tires. In a flash I thought about the Porsche who hit the wall last year (on the inside) and I made a quick mental note (and checked) that - thankfully - I had the traction control and abs disconnected). instict took over. Although it looks like I only stepped on the brakes, I actually had both feet in. The car stalled and I cannot tell why. This is not a spin because I overdrove the car out of control but rather something "interfered" with the "racing surface"
Bottom line is had it been on the oval I'd point it to the inside for sure. Hope this never happens again (not that I 'enjoyed" the sequence), but I'd rather not have mech failures with this "U-boat".

[CP]

Let's not get people thinking that counter-steering to catch a slide in the oval is a bad/wrong thing to do. For the last 4 years the only configuration that I've driven at NHMS is the south oval and it's a scary corner in a street car. However locking all four wheels up in the oval is asking for a visit to the outside wall so I don't think that the general consensus in this thread should be to lock up your wheels if your car begins to slide in the oval because you can probably catch the slide by counter-steering before a total loss of control occurs.

The white car locks them up and slides into the wall. The maroon car stays online but doesn't get his car stopped and almost collects me as he rolls backwards:

[horizenjob]

Let's not get people thinking that counter-steering to catch a slide in the oval is a bad/wrong thing to do.

I didn't invent this idea or something. It's possibly a much bigger mistake for a NASCAR, Indy car or other faster cars. I suppose the pavement seems a lot narrower at 160 or so.

You took the video so you may know better what you're seeing there, but I think it supports what I was trying to say. I can't see the beginning of the incident. It may well be that the white car started to counter steer and that's why his path is heading up to the wall. It is clear his car is on a predictable path. The red car may not have effectively counter steered. It's hard to imagine why the red car is not on the brakes. You mentioned he almost hit you. As a driver that was there, which car seemed to threaten you more? The driver in the red car also put himself at risk. The other side of the coin would have someone hitting him in the door.

If you measure how long the turn is compared to how wide the pavement is, you have a lot less room for counter steering then you would on other corners on the track. If you add in that your energy is going by the square of your speed and your human reaction times are not twice as fast when the car is going twice as fast - it seems like what I'm saying is reasonable.

I'm not saying don't use your steering wheel, but chasing oversteer when your going over a hundred MPH is a bad situation. Being willing to realize and admit you've made a mistake or something went wrong with the car and let the car spin down on to the apron with the brakes locked is a good thing to do.

I couldn't find a really good example of this advice but found this clip with Google from 1990's: "A J Foyt, who is one of only three men to win the Indianapolis 500 on four occasions, chides Mansell, 'Don't turn right.' Mansell found out Foyt was not joking when he failed to heed the same advice from his team-mate, Mario Andretti. During practice for his first oval race at Phoenix in April, Mansell instinctively corrected for understeer in a corner by tweaking the wheel to the right and ended with a session under the surgeon's knife for his trouble."

[brucesallen]

If your rear comes out in an oval you can turn left hard, pull a 360 and keep going. Ask "Spin and Win" Danny Sullivan who did it on the last lap of the Indy 500.