This past weekend I got to go down to Mid-Ohio with Vera for the first time for a two-day HPDE, and it was a lot of fun! Well-run event, plenty of track time and instruction, and Vera performed flawlessly. Unfortunately, I didn't perform flawlessly and ended up giving her a black eye...
Crap. I've got video of the incident coming, but basically what happened was this: The incident was completely my fault, but there were a number of factors that lead up to it that I didn't deal with properly.
- It was my first lap out in the last session of the first day, and my tires were still cold since I don't think it even hit 50°F that day. I was specifically going out at the end of the pack since many of the other cars were faster than I was (in B-group) and I didn't want to be getting in their way and causing back-ups.
- My instructor had been pushing me to late-apex just about every corner, some much later than I felt comfortable with... and this incident happened on one of them. Even though the instructor wasn't in the car, I was still trying to follow his lines.
- This corner (turn 14 if you want to look at a map) has a fairly steep uphill stretch leading to the corner, but it flattens out right before the corner and the corner is mostly flat
- The first few cars out caught up to me moving much more quickly than I was shortly before this corner (and already had one lap done, so their tires, brakes etc were warm). I had time to let 2 of the 3 by in the passing zone, but the third one felt so close to the rear of my car coming into this corner I could barely see their lights in my mirror.
Anyhow, trying to drive my instructors line and feeling rushed and nervous about braking with someone that close to the back of my car lead to me accidentally braking a little later and less hard than I should have. This delayed my turn-in point until I was just about cresting the hill, and I was still on the brakes a little bit as I was turning in (you can hear the brakes squealing in the video as I turn in), all of which made the rear of the car very light and caused it to snap out. I caught the initial snap-oversteer, but since my foot had been on the brakes when it happened I didn't get it back to the gas in time and the car snapped back the other way, leaving the track on the outside of the corner, sliding through a gravel trap and very gently bumping a wall on the inside. Overall, I was very lucky that it wasn't worse, and while the front bumper skin, fender, headlight, and a bit of the metal supporting that corner got a little bent & bruised, it didn't damage the oil cooler, wheel, suspension, or really cause any mechanical issues. Again, this was completely preventable, and was a result of my actions and allowing myself to feel pressured into braking later than I should have.
Anyway, I came into the pit after this (you need to after any off-track incident), and the inner wheel arch had come loose and was rubbing, but the car was driving straight and felt fine. I took the wheel off, partially removed the front bumper skin, and bent the inner metal back up and out enough to allow everything to go back into place and fit roughly the way it was supposed to. Everything checked out with the suspension on that corner, the oil cooler, and the headlight function (it wasn't even cracked, surprisingly enough!), so I was able to drive it back to the hotel that night and drive in all 4 sessions the next day before driving her home.
The next day went a lot better after I had the time to think about what went wrong - I was able to keep a cooler head, listen to myself about when I needed to be braking and turning in especially on that and one or two other corners (and definitely picked up some speed in doing so), and the next day went by without incident. I have video of the last two sessions the last day too, where I felt I was doing a lot better. The tail did get loose again on that corner in the very last lap of the last session, but it was on track-out when the throttle was on the floor, so a quick steering correction was all that was required to catch it and continue on. Overall, I was very happy with the weekend and Vera's performance, despite that incident, and I think my best lap time was around 1:55 - about a 3-5 second improvement over the Saab when she was tuned. Most of that was probably down to the better tires; Vera has a bit less HP and a lot less mid-range torque (important since I was running in 3rd the whole lap except the back straight going into 4th for both cars), about the same weight, but much better balance.
Anyhow, videos are coming, but for now some pics! There were some pretty impressive cars there - a viper ACR, lots of Porsches of all vintages (and a number of Turbos, GT3's and GT3-RS's), lots of BMWs, an awesome 70's Trans Am with a heavily worked over big-block Pontiac motor (I want to say it was bigger than 455 cu in from talking to the owner, but I don't remember exactly what), a Cobra with a halo roll bar that sounded mean as hell (that I actually passed in my group!), a Ferrari 458 Challenge (I think) with a whole truck, tire warmers, pneumatic jacking system etc, an R8, an Aston Martin DB9 or Vantage or something), and a number of Mustangs, Camaros, Corvettes, Miatas & FR-S/BR-Z's
And of course, some glamour shots of Vera, post-black-eye
