Spinning at Buttonwillow (1CW)

[ddeflyer]

Originally Posted by Dezoris

Its hard to say what happened without data logging. But from my view you had traction loss, dropped two wheels and VSC just shifted to rear causing the car to rotate, your reaction was off and so was the car. Obviously in retrospect you can disect it but, I'd say run with all VSC off and back off a bit run 8-9/10ths. Do some karting on the side if you can, rentals even to help improve split second reaction times if you dont do autox.

Thanks for posting something that did not have a nasty ending!

So I just tinkered with Harry's lap timer and got a little bit of information out of it but I don't think it is of sufficient quality to really tell much. The acceleration information is probably going to be off because the mount I had holding it half broke (so it wouldn't come out but it wasn't really steady with the car) earlier in the day. Anyway, the things it exported are here:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?...1E&usp=sharing

[ddeflyer]

Originally Posted by Dezoris

Its hard to say what happened without data logging. But from my view you had traction loss, dropped two wheels and VSC just shifted to rear causing the car to rotate, your reaction was off and so was the car. Obviously in retrospect you can disect it but, I'd say run with all VSC off and back off a bit run 8-9/10ths. Do some karting on the side if you can, rentals even to help improve split second reaction times if you dont do autox.

Thanks for posting something that did not have a nasty ending!

The "not a nasty ending" part is really just thanks to luck!

[renfield90]

My personal opinion is that the VSC breeds bad habits - you are not learning how the car behaves at all, you are learning how the electronics behave. If you rely on the nannies and the nannies are defeated, you have no recourse AND you weren't expecting it.

That said once you're along for the ride, not countersteering might've been the correct call. I've seen cars catch in that situation while pointed straight at the wall and...smash. More preferable to that would've been much faster/earlier countersteer as others have said, or straightening the wheel and putting two off safely. Heck, even four off. I'd much rather go off into the dirt at 100mph in a straight line than off sideways at any speed.

If you have a choice, don't let yourself become a passenger.

[Lalasissyboy]

Its important to learn how to stay in control when you lose control if that makes sense. In your case, if you had countersteered and put both feet in right away you could have sent the car down the track and came to a stop in the road, avoiding the dirt and staying clear of the wall. Obviously thats not always easy but its important to avoid walls lol. When you lock up your tires, whatever direction you car is going in, it will continue to go in a strait line. My first spin i went off to the left. Second spin i came to a stop in the middle of the track. Lesson learned

[fatoni]

Originally Posted by CSG Mike

You got very, very lucky, not hitting that wall.

Do you have a datalog I can look at? Or, a full res video of the in-car?

It doesn't look like the car got loose to me; it looks like you just dropped 2 and hooked across.

this is exactly what it looks like to me.

this is what billy johnson (read fast. like 1:37s fast) had to say about this exact thing: "The most common error for this corner is apexing it and the prior corners too early. Like Turn 13/Lost Hill, many cars go off here with a bad result, hook-spinning and crashing into the inside wall on the left, sometimes even writing off the entire car. This can be avoided by executing the line well and slowly building up the speed without compromising the line. If you find yourself in a situation where you are going to drop tires off on the exit of Turn 20, or any corner for that matter, ride it out. Keep the steering wheel straight since it is perfectly fine to drive with two tires in the dirt and slowly bring the car back onto the track once the car is back under control. Panicing when you drop tires and trying to immediately jerk it back on to the track is a major reason cars hook-spin to the opposite side of the track, and this can be easily avoided by staying calm and riding it out. "

[kurbkilla]

Dang man glad you are ok. Did you flood the car? Sounded like it didnt start after the spin.

[ddeflyer]

Originally Posted by kurbkilla

Dang man glad you are ok. Did you flood the car? Sounded like it didnt start after the spin.

It was a long crank to start it after the spin but it started up and seems to be running fine now. I am guessing that one of two things happened. Either:
1) I was too slow (or hell, maybe I missed the clutch) putting both feet in and the engine either stopped or ran backwards or
2) the car detected "Crazy bad shit happening"(tm) and turned everything off in a sense like the fuel pump cut off impact sensor. I don't know what all triggers such safety/anti-fire mechanisms but this was a flat spin from 100 Mph so the car was subject to quite a bit of force. One of the strange things was I don't think there were any lights on in the car at all when I came to a rest.

[fooddude]

Dang..any after pics of the interior? That looked like a dirt tsunami going inside your car in the 2nd vid. Good u made it out in 1 piece.

[Tt3Sheppard]

Glad you are ok, scary that you couldn't see anything while spinning in the dirt.

[ddeflyer]

Originally Posted by fooddude

Dang..any after pics of the interior? That looked like a dirt tsunami going inside your car in the 2nd vid. Good u made it out in 1 piece.

Outside picture is after removing tape numbers and driving around at 45 Mph to clean the dirt, inside shot is later at a gas station.

Original pictures are at: https://plus.google.com/photos/10923...CLTD-_75r9b-eg

[ddeflyer]

Originally Posted by Tt3Sheppard

Glad you are ok, scary that you couldn't see anything while spinning in the dirt.

I could actually see alot more than you would think and that made it all the more scary. In the video when you see me looking out the window, I saw the wall coming at me at 20 or 30 Mph and it was getting CLOSE! I seriously came only a few feet from impact. I actually rolled away from the wall some before the dust cleared enough to see anything.

[kurbkilla]

What wheels are you running? are you still 17x8? Did you switch to +48 like you were looking at doing or is it still +35?

[ddeflyer]

Originally Posted by kurbkilla

What wheels are you running? are you still 17x8? Did you switch to +48 like you were looking at doing or is it still +35?

Those are the Enkei PF01 18x8.5 +48mm that I was waiting to have delivered when we met.

[orthojoe]

OP, this looks like a pretty straight forward situation to me. This has nothing to do with VSC.

It has everything to do with you still having steering lock applied when you dropped 2 off and immediately came back on track. You hooked the car. This is almost impossible to save. Think about it this way: When you drop 2 off and your steering wheel is still turned in a direction that will take you back on track, the FRONT tires gets back on pavement first and regains traction. However, the rear still doesn't have traction while it's on dirt. Then the rear suddenly gains traction as it comes back onto the pavement, and you still have steering lock. What happens then is major oversteer. The vast majority of cars have been lost on the race track in this fashion. Turn 3 and 4 at Laguna Seca. Turn 15 at Thunderhill.

What you should have done:
a) Realized that you were going too fast through that turn and that you weren't going to make it
b) drive straight off the track. Not just off. Straight off.
c) allow the car to settle and slow down off the track
d) slowly and gently bring the car back onto the track in a fashion where you are gliding back onto to the track with your steering wheel pointed straight forward as you get back on.

All this other talk about countersteer, adding throttle, reacting faster, etc, etc means nothing. As soon as you dropped 2 off, that all went out the window.

BTW, this wasn't a tank slapper. A tank slapper involves the rear end rotating from one direction to another. You only rotated in one direction: counter clockwise.

Glad to see that all you needed was a vacuum cleaner to get back into play.