Damn, looks like you found the tire barrier on that one. How did the car fare?

 

Not sure how to measure the amount of seat material, but I figure enough to make me some new underwear. Hitting the gravel was loud and the car caught some air in the process. The seemingly remote wall was suddenly too close for comfort.

C4S also didn't live up to its fame as the original Cayenne since I couldn't get out of the gravel without a tow.

 

Also, Watkins Glen, back in 2005. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAHGrne7f9s

Oh Snap

 

I'm sitting here, enjoying the drive... BAM. Totally unexpected. Beats my pucker moment by tenfold :0

 

Oh snap indeed! glad you appeared to be okay, you really had nowhere to go.

you and the 48 car were having a good run, I'm assuming you had a 993RS?

thanks for sharing

 

That was extremely painful to watch, I can't imagine how painful it was to be driving.

I hope you got out of that OK.

 

Oil/coolant spill at VIR turn 6. Spun and ended up on wet grass. BMW in the picture also followed my path few seconds later, barely missed.

Here's a picture of me looking into the rear view mirror, trying to grab the steering wheel as hard as I could.



Since this is only in Porsche, I won't say about my Nurburgring accident which was even uglier.

 

i bet you where thinking, what else could I have done today :-) glad he missed you, it looks like your spin is concluded -- unless whomever snapped the shot had a really fast camera

so where you a sitting duck at this point?

tell me about your nurburgring and I'll tell you about my off in 10 in the wet at infineon!

 

Here's my spin in progress.



I can drive off slowly but the ground was really slippery because of the rain and my brake ducts were filled with all sorts of mud and grass, making weird noises so I was taking it slowly. But, as soon as I saw him in my mirror, I just stopped and had to hope that he didn't follow me (which he did anyway). But, he saved it pretty well.

Oh, yea....the ring, green hell. Bikers totally made me lose my concentration. Went into Brennchen too fast and hit the wall. It was a big hit. I had a neck pain for following few days. Happened also in the damn rain.

 

Wow, good story, he was probably looking at you and said to himself, "I don't want to hit him" and with target fixation being what it is, he naturally followed you. Glad he didn't hit you, looks like the other cars managed to miss you also -- thats good.

The 'ring looks like a hard hit, the BMW's are pretty stout and that one looks a lot shorter now.

So I'm at Sears Point, before it was reconfigured and became Infineon, on day 2 of a 2 day event -- this was about 10 yrs ago when I had a mitsubishi eclipse GSX 2nd gen. Day one was full rain and fully wet,I worked on the wet line, car control etc.; so things went well that day

Sunday started cloudy, then the sun came out, track started to dry -- then a full dry line appeared, offline was only damp at this point.

I come around turn 10 -- apex too early and drop the left wheels off track, now I have 2 on and 2 off in the wet puddle filled grass; okay, not a problem, I'm calm I'll just let the car stabilize, scrub off speed, get the car back underneath me and enjoy the rest of my day.

That plan was working great until I realized the wall to the left of me curved back towards the track. Since I really was not in the mood for a helicopter ride I figured I would need to get all four wheels back on the track sooner rather than later.

So, I gradually turned the car back on-track, the moment I had 3 wheels on (remember there is still one wheel in the muck and goo), the car instantly snap rotated (spun) to the right.

My passenger started screaming at this point -- that was distracting.

I recall looking over to my right and seeing the retaining wall that separated the track from the dragstrip staging area. I recall thinking, "It would be really nice not to hit that wall, I've got a busy day at work on Monday."

I need to mention that at this point I had completely run out of talent; I was nothing more than a real life physics experiment.

Luckily the speed at which we where traveling and the rotation of the car had us miss the wall completely. I shot into the drag strip staging area backwards amid tire smoke and howling tires at about 80 mph or so.

Luckily again at this point there was nothing to hit and I did have the wherewithal to go 2 feet in and straighten the wheel, the car did about a 225 degree rotation from the original direction of travel.

The session got yellow flagged, car stalled, they towed me in.

I guess ignorance is a good thing, I didn't know then that 10 is the one place you never, ever want to go off at Sears Point. It was funny looking back on it, all of the racers/really experienced drivers kept telling me they wanted some of my luck.

To this day that turn is still weird for me. And I must have done a thousand laps since then.

 

#1 When my brakes failed at Talladega Gran Prix and I went straight off going 70 mph or so. Went across some grass, through a smal ditch which launched me and my passenger friend into the air. Just new the whole car was broken, but amazingly, nothing was broken at all, just had to replace the plastic stuff at the bottom. BY FAR my scariest moment.

#2 At Road Atlanta in the rain, I was about to pit and a rear tire caught the gator and the car starting going towards the edge of the track until I was almost completely sideways, I was able to correct and gather in just enough time to get my hand out the window and play it off before I pitted. A certain LOL moment, got too laxed.

 

thanks heavychevy -- on #2 did you say "I meant to do that!"

 

Not in a Porsche, but my oh snap moment was on a CBR600 at the old Bridgehampton racetrack on LI. I vaguely remember the instructor (Mike Baldwin, for you old timers) telling us that at the end of the day a crosswind picks up and goes straight across turn 13 (last turn before the mile long front straightaway). Well, I got pretty good at getting a good head of steam out of that corner and did a lot of passing on the straight because I would get a better drive off then anyone else. It got toward the end of the day, and I pushed it pretty good, and drifted.... Right off the track! The wind definitely pushed me about 3 or 4 ft further than where I had planned on ending up. The edge of the pavement there was very uneven, so my tires were going over gravel, then track, then gravel then track. To this day, I have no idea how I didn't go down. Of course, I was in full view of everyone that wasn't out riding on the track, so there was no hiding it... As I passed the start/finish line (slowly!), I got red flagged, and I thought my day was done, but it turns out that someone else had just wrecked, so they were getting us all off the track. Gave me time to collect myself, check my shorts and make a mental note to give myself more room at the exit of turn 13.

 

Ahhh The Bridge!! How we miss that track!

I had a really bad "moment" there in the early '90's.

Lost the drivers rear wheel on my Mustang in turn 3 . (Note to self: The stock 4 Lug Mustang axles were not meant to hold much larger, and heavier, wheels and tires. Should have done that 5-lug conversion much earlier )

Now that was a really ugly day!

 

Wasn't my wreck, but the 1st track course I had ever taken. We were sitting in the bleachers going over some things & one of the instructors showed up. The head instructor waved him on, told him to check out the track, he had his windows down waved and off he went.

He was driving an M3, wound it up down the front stretch and right off corner one.

Most of us hadn't been on a track before & the instructor just went off at about 200km/hr with his windows open...off the track is wet & slough...mud & water arced as he hit the grass & filled his car.

He had to get towed out, went home. It was a good 1st lesson though, serious.