My Saturday race coverage (including my failure to follow the pole car’s ‘steady pace car speed’ before the green.) 
In case you want the Cliff’s Notes:
4:30 - passes through the esses
7:20 - rubbin’s racing
14:30 - Turn 1 detour
Hot-Lanta story and video thread
Steve_D
#21
Laszlo
#22
Wow, great video. are you kidding me with the passes between you and Walsh. I hope you will post Sunday as well since my video did not run.
DWalsh
#23
Ok, so here’s the whole story. Its a large file and being processed right now,should be available in an hour or so.
Great weekend otherwise. Congrats to Lako on a good job both days! Thanks also to Steve D for a great race. Being able to trust in the person your racing with allows you to run this close with confidence. Its always a pleasure sir.
BTW I’d like some comments on the crash. Interested in Steves comment about changing the arc. You will see that I had the car at full lock under full braking early on. Not sure anything could have changed in this situation.
New car is already gutted…
FishMan
#24
Great racing! Well, great until the fun stopped… Glad to see you are okay and building another car. I wish I could have been there! Lako looked much faster than I remember and drove an exceptional race.
natblack
#26
Hate seeing bent metal. Glad you walked away.
Good luck with the rebuild. It’s always an opportunity to change those little not quite right things you did the last time…
Steve_D
#29
[quote=“D Walsh” post=58994]Congrats to Lako on a good job both days! Thanks also to Steve D for a great race. Being able to trust in the person your racing with allows you to run this close with confidence. Its always a pleasure sir.[/quote]I’ll add my congrats to Lako as well. Classic battle where he was a little faster in some parts, I was a little faster in others. I had nothing for him until that one little slide in 7. THAT is great spec racing when the fewest mistakes wins.
At the time, I was pretty fired up about the slight dink with Walsh on the back straight when we were coming up on Sellers’ Miata. Seeing it from his car, I obviously left Walsh too much room and should have held him closer to track right to complete the pick.:pinch:
[quote]BTW I’d like some comments on the crash. Interested in Steves comment about changing the arc. You will see that I had the car at full lock under full braking early on. Not sure anything could have changed in this situation.[/quote]I agree. I haven’t had working ABS on my car so I don’t know how it affects things. My experience is that when the car is sliding in an arc once you lock down the brakes the CG of the car literally takes a tangent - an straight line tangential to the arc. I couldn’t tell from your video if the tires were still rotating of course. I don’t know that earlier lock-down would have helped or even been possible.
[quote]New car is already gutted…[/quote]I don’t know whether to :blink: or to :woohoo: . You are insane.
Ranger
#30
[quote=“Steve D” post=59023][quote=“D Walsh” post=58994] My experience is that when the car is sliding in an arc once you lock down the brakes the CG of the car literally takes a tangent - an straight line tangential to the arc. I couldn’t tell from your video if the tires were still rotating of course. I don’t know that earlier lock-down would have helped or even been possible.
[/quote]
This is really important and I don’t think that it’s emphasized enough. If I had been more clever I could have used this to avoid both of my crashes this year. I failed to predict the future and see the “loop” coming. If I had predicted the loop I could have locked up the wheels a bit early and helped the car take a tangent that would have sent it down the track instead of across the track. You can’t just lock up the brakes immed, you have to be more clever than that. You have to predict how the car is going to move and then decide to lock up the brakes just prior to the car going in the desired direction. A half second later the car will be going in the desired direction just as you get the wheels locked up.
Being able to predict what’s going to happen is all about experience. We should wargame this scenario until it becomes part of our automatic reflexes.
csrow
#31
I have wondered about this situation a lot since I have been in a similar slide where the front wheels are at a full lock and sliding and the rear wheels are sliding. In my case, I lost enough momentum for the front wheels to gain the traction back to be able to steer away from the wall at the last minute.
The only possible option that I have thought about doing next time (hopefully there won’t be a next time) is to release the front wheels from the opposite lock and actually steer into the curve to rotate the car 180 degrees quickly and then steer the car backwards. By rotating the car backwards, all four tires will gain traction back and be able to control the car.
At least in my thought simulation, that would be seem to work. Maybe someone with a racing simulator could try it out and see if it will work.
DWalsh
#32
Steve- I would never have considered that you’d get “Fired up” about our race. In fact, until that post, I did’nt know.
Maybe if I had smacked you back over to the left, but to me, I was just refusing to accept your intended pinch. If we touched at all, it was more of a lean, and likely less significant than that of your turn 5 pass. (which by the way was also fun to me) I absolutely love door to door racing, the closer the better to me. I will never intentionally bend metal, but I certainly dont mind little stuff like that. Sounds like your ok now and I’m glad of it. Look forward to doing it again soon!
Steve_D
#33
[quote=“D Walsh” post=59037]Maybe if I had smacked you back over to the left, but to me, I was just refusing to accept your intended pinch. If we touched at all, it was more of a lean, and likely less significant than that of your turn 5 pass. (which by the way was also fun to me)[/quote]I had a door donut from the back straight bump. You can see the bump in my video.
We didn’t touch in 5, did we? It was as close as I’d ever hope to be, but I believe it was a 100% clean pass.
Steve_D
#34
[quote=“csrow” post=59036]The only possible option that I have thought about doing next time (hopefully there won’t be a next time) is to release the front wheels from the opposite lock and actually steer into the curve to rotate the car 180 degrees quickly and then steer the car backwards. By rotating the car backwards, all four tires will gain traction back and be able to control the car.[/quote]No no no no no no no. To give the guys behind you the best chance of not getting taken out by your screw-up, lock all 4 wheels down immediately. Immediately. Not “when you think the trajectory is best” and not “after you’ve fought it a bit”. Immediately. Once the car has pitched that far sideways, you’re not saving it. But you can save other guys’ cars.
Watch Nash’s spin. As soon as the back end came around due to the downshift, he locked it down. He spun in a predictable path. I had to correct a little when his rear tires got to the dirty/off-camber part of the track.
I can’t tell you the number of cars I have seen totaled because a guy fought a slide/spin and came back into traffic.
TrackRat
#35
My comments are only from what I saw in David’s video but here’s another point of view:
Again, only seeing it from David’s camera, I know it’s instinct to want to turn away from the turning Miata and the thought is always “it’s going to pass in front of me”. However, the Miata stayed somewhat in the middle of the track. If you had steered right a little and stayed in it, you would have run through the grass but had good run off area in front of you from that turn. Freezing the video at 18:10 looks like there is good room to run straight and to the right. Maybe that wasn’t the case, but from the camera, it’s what I see.
Having driven a mid-engine car the last several years, with 61% of my weight on the rear axle, I’ve learned to drive off straight or find a way to stay in it through a moment like that. I do agree with Steve though, once the car is pitched that far, lock it up and hope for the best. Having started to avoid the accident, I think it was the best you could hope for. As the Monday morning quarter back, staying in it might have been better.
King_Tut
#36
In both my spins this weekend at the point I knew I wasn’t bringing the car back I locked it down with both feet in. I believe this kept me from going across the track at the exit of turn 1 and into the same wall that claimed Walsh’s car. Does anyone have any video of my spin in turn 1 in Saturday qualifying? I know there were a couple cars somewhat close to behind me.
csrow
#37
[quote=“Steve D” post=59040]No no no no no no no. To give the guys behind you the best chance of not getting taken out by your screw-up, lock all 4 wheels down immediately. Immediately. Not “when you think the trajectory is best” and not “after you’ve fought it a bit”. Immediately. Once the car has pitched that far sideways, you’re not saving it. But you can save other guys’ cars.
[/quote]
Steve, I understand your point and I agree with you.
Two cases where I was sliding toward a wall was both off and out of the way of traffic. (T5 at RRR heading toward the inside flag station and T17 at VIR heading toward the wall at the bottom of the condos.)
In one case, the front of the car was headed toward the contact and the other case was driver side sliding toward the contact. In both instances, the car lost enough momentum to either steer away or to come to a very close stop. I have played both situations many times in my mind and have always wondered if it would be possible to rotate the car further so that I could at least hit the wall with the back of the car.
If the impact seems imminent, what about releasing the brakes and just locking the rear with parking brakes to rotate the car?
kchildre
#38
I can’t say how much fun it was to be back out with the Spec E30 gang again. A little disappointed with the Spec Miata that caught my rear quarter panel exiting 7 in Saturday’s race but had a blast battling with Walsh, Robert, and Chuck on Sunday’s race. Here is rhe video… Definitely need to remember how to start a race.