*VID* Echo spins & tips @ Mosport DDT

[Fobio]

Not my video, but so much can be learned and enjoyed from this video...bring your brass nuts, control the car with you hands, feet and mind...be one with your machine :chuckle I was there but didn't witness it and glad that nothing serious happened as it would've ruined everyone's day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCJLEC_fHeI

Here's a little synopsis from Grant of TPC:
http://www.hondaprelude.to/forums/showthread.php?t=100663


Tell me about it..

If you watch the Video you can see about 85% of what went wrong.. Experience extrapolates the rest..

He came into the corner too hot... realized it and attempted to reduce his speed by lifting off (instinct a more experience driver can resist or adapt to).

This got his rear end loose and started a left hand drift which he started to recover from by counter-steering. He could have almost had it back in control, but lack of experience (and maybe a slow reaction time or ballistic movement of his leg) he was already going for the brakes and hammered them -- this time unweighting the rear again and snapping him into a spin to the right.

By now he was trying to push the brake pedal through the floor so all 4 wheels locked up and with the momentum he was carrying he spun straight off the track.

The grass caught him and with the differences in traction pulled his car around until he direction of travel was perpendicular to the Front/rear axis of the car. By now he had lost enough momentum that the wheels dug in and up he went. (Echos, it would seem, have a high center of gravity).

...and that is a play by play of what most likely happened.

BTW he does have suspension work done (Springs, Shocks, Rear Anti-swaybar)... That probably just amplified the incident.... An example that just adds to the School of "learn the limits of you car stock before modding it".

I have to add that Gabe is a trouper.. He got off the track and took those tires off,took break for a session to think about what happened, put on his street tires and then got right back to lapping to figure out what he did wrong (albeit he took this a bit slower for the rest of the day).. I think most normal people would have just called it a day...

[mleblond]

nice, I wish I was there :(

[Unoriginalusername]

so lucky that it didn't turn over

[Kevin@nextmod]

ahhaha..... all it takes is 2 stronger guys to push that thing back in place....

[rajin929]

Gabe is famous now - he's my new idol LOL

I'd be chicken shit to get back into my car after that hehehe

[Fuman]

Gabe is famous now - he's my new idol LOL

I'd be chicken shit to get back into my car after that hehehe
Nothing to be scared of. Make sure the car is okay, and go back out.
Take it easy on the first few laps, before one starts pushing it again.

Fobio, was he on R compounds?

[Fobio]

Nothing to be scared of. Make sure the car is okay, and go back out.
Take it easy on the first few laps, before one starts pushing it again.

Fobio, was he on R compounds?

I forgot if they were R's, but they were definitely track tires...later on in the day, he put his street tires and went back out...

[Fuman]

I forgot if they were R's, but they were definitely track tires...later on in the day, he put his street tires and went back out...
he said they are all seasons. He said they sucked. Not sure what the street tires were.
I managed pretty well on RS-As, but he was a bit slow on the street tires he had; wonder what they were.
I followed him briefly at the end of the day and noticed he needs to work on his lines. However, I never got the chance to see him in person afterward.

[MajesticBlueNTO]

I recognize that part of the DDT and i believe there's a hump right around there (and the elevation begins to slope down).

Grant's synopsis sums it up. Most likely Gabe was going in too hot (above his comfort zone), felt the car unsettle as he went over the hump, lifted off the throttle to slow the car down .. weight transferred to the front, lightened the back end causing it to lose grip and get skittish ....corrections and over-corrections to the steering wheel...and the result is the echo almost tipping.

nuts! but give him credit for going back out and learning from his encounter.

[MajesticBlueNTO]

he said they are all seasons. He said they sucked. Not sure what the street tires were.
I managed pretty well on RS-As, but he was a bit slow on the street tires he had; wonder what they were.
I followed him briefly at the end of the day and noticed he needs to work on his lines. However, I never got the chance to see him in person afterward.

i think it was his 2nd time at DDT...and either the 2nd or 3rd time out without an instructor as, when he took the school and during the "mixed" (lappers + students) session, he went off track and the same thing happened to 1 or 2 of his tires (grass in between the rim and tire bead).

[Marsh]

R-compounds has pretty much nothing to do with it. If you go off sideways, you will go over. Any tire will dig in, then it's just a matter of height of CG vs width. The problem with Echos is that they're narrow. The first time I saw one I though they looked like a roll-over risk.

BTW every major accident I've seen can be attributed to a rookie not knowing when to give up. The problem is that the driver lost control back in the previous corner. As a result of trying to fix that mistake far past a time when it actually could have been fixed was that he went off the track sideways, instead of just straightening the wheel and going off the left side of the track in a, more or less, straight line.

Just remember this mantra "DON'T LEAVE THE TRACK SIDEWAYS". I can still remember the first roll-over I witnessed. It was a Golf GTI back around 2000~ish. I was the first corner worker on the scene. It was a minor roll, but the car was till totaled (lapping day in a stock golf, no cage) and it was pretty scary to watch. In that incident the driver turned in too late for a blind corner and didn't realize until the middle of double appex when he ran out of track.

Look ahead, think ahead and DON'T LEAVE THE TRACK SIDEWAYS!

[Marsh]

Oh, and for some reason that particular part of the DDT is like GLASS. There is no grip on that straight if you make a mistake exiting the corner before it. That's where I took out the brakes on my old miata earlier this summer. It was also a hairy place for more than one student at a Pfaff group day I was instructing at and I remember getting my Prelude quite sideways there more than once many years ago at an ILR track day many years ago.

[Fuman]

Oh, and for some reason that particular part of the DDT is like GLASS. There is no grip on that straight if you make a mistake exiting the corner before it. That's where I took out the brakes on my old miata earlier this summer. It was also a hairy place for more than one student at a Pfaff group day I was instructing at and I remember getting my Prelude quite sideways there more than once many years ago at an ILR track day many years ago.
the corner where the echo spun? err I grip pretty well there. He was the first person that I ever saw to spin out in that section.

I asked if the Echo was on Rs, because this happened early on in the cold day. It would of been even more slippery for him if he was on Rs because his tires would not be at operating temperature.

Agreed, leaving the track sideways is deadly.

[cereal83]

Wasn't a GTR there also that day? I know I saw a vid of that somewhere

[Marsh]

the corner where the echo spun? err I grip pretty well there. He was the first person that I ever saw to spin out in that section.

I asked if the Echo was on Rs, because this happened early on in the cold day. It would of been even more slippery for him if he was on Rs because his tires would not be at operating temperature.

Agreed, leaving the track sideways is deadly.

I mean the straight between the old kink, that was repaved to a tighter multi-apex tighter corner which is now all they use, to the long sweeper that carries the track down below the grade of the skid pad, the end of which over looks said straight.

That straight and the long carousel/sweeper have been notoriously slippery since the late 90's. It's VERY noticeable in the rain (I lost be brakes by loosing the car momentarily in a slalom on that straight in the rain. A cone passed from the driver's side to the passenger side under the middle of the car and took out a hard-line on it's way) but also in the dry on some tires. The problem is the texture of the asphalt in that section seems to be very smooth. Thus high adhesion tires (like Kumho Victoracer) work very well in the dry, but not at all in the rain. High hysteriesous tires (Kumho V710, Toyo RA1) don't work especially well either wet or dry there, but it's still MUCH more noticeable in the rain. It's the kind of thing that most people (myself included) wouldn't even notice in the dry. You'd just chock it up to "in that corner I have to take it a little more easily then my first try".

But if you ever have the chance to try the track in the rain, you'll notice that section is particularly nasty. I've only done it in the opposite direction in the wet. But during the walk of the first CASC provincial slalom of the year we were joking that it was so slippery there (raining in the morning) that it was treacherous to walk! We would take little runs then slide for a couple of feet, kind of like kids do on ice in the late fall in the school yard.

[Fuman]

http://i33.tinypic.com/30l2ftk.jpg
I'm still lost as to which corner you are talking about?

[Marsh]

3 and the straight between 2B and 3 are the parts I find very slippery. In the video they're using the clockwise version ("morning course"). The Echo made a mistake in 2 causing a slide. The driver kept attempting to save the car down the straight. Finally the tail caught, the pitched around the other direction causing it to go off into the infield north west of 3.

Oh and I find ALL of turn 3 and part of the North Traverse to be pretty slippery too, but that's not relative to the video.

[Fuman]

3 and the straight between 2B and 3 are the parts I find very slippery. In the video they're using the clockwise version ("morning course"). The Echo made a mistake in 2 causing a slide. The driver kept attempting to save the car down the straight. Finally the tail caught, the pitched around the other direction causing it to go off into the infield north west of 3.

Oh and I find ALL of turn 3 and part of the North Traverse to be pretty slippery too, but that's not relative to the video.
agreed, the 2 to 3 area is more slippery than the rest of the track, but I can still manage to go full throttle. But three and onward, i find it has the normal grip.

[bhrm]

my friend is actually in that video, the black prelude that passed the echo while it lost control!

[Videcak]

I would've dropped a few shits before going back on the track... Needless to say, always go straight into the rough. Same with when I do some downhill biking, never try to steer through the rough spots at speed your just gonna bounce around and lose your balance, keep your speed and line and float over whats in your way (within reason, you won't float over a log).