Ouch - c6 autocross crash

On the issue of the nannies saving your ass: not always.

When I was 17 and even stupider than I am now (I know, hard to believe) I was driving my dad's '96 C4 for the first time without supervision (though with permission), with my new girlfriend next to me, with the (really quite good) stereo CRANKED up, and in the first corner out of our subdivision, I stomped the throttle hard enough to get the back end loose for a split second before TC could kick my foot off the pedal. Of course, that was the worst possible solution to a little bit of oversteer, so my touch of countersteer turned into snap oversteer in the opposite direction, putting us promptly and unceremoniously backwards in the near-side ditch. Which was a deep one. Not 50 yards from the subdivision.

I don't think my pride will ever be as hurt as it was at that moment.* Certainly a learning experience - so was working all summer to pay off the insurance deductible.

Of course, that was a perfect storm of idiocy: 17 year old boy, girlfriend, loud music, cold tires and most importantly, a very unskilled driver, especially with a torquey RWD sportscar. But, at least in earlier iterations, it is indeed possible to slip under the watchful eye of the electronic nannies, at least long enough to get yourself in trouble.

*For the record, I still have that girlfriend some 14 years later, my dad still has that Corvette, and he still lets me drive it. And I haven't put it into a ditch again. Yet.

Although autocross is generally pretty safe, as the saying goes, "Nothing is foolproof for a sufficiently talented fool." Looks like he just made the worst possible mistake at the worst possible place on the course. I always consciously decide where I will and won't push it on an autocross course before I drive, largely based on over-run. Might miss out on a few trophey t-shirts that way, but I've never towed my car home from an event.

and here i always thought that strapping into a Corvette made anyone into the greatest driver ever..

or am i mixing that up with a Ferrari?

at least the wheels took the brunt of the impact and folded up..

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Layout fail.

+1

novaderrik wrote: and here i always thought that strapping into a Corvette made anyone into the greatest driver ever.. or am i mixing that up with a Ferrari?

No, that would be certain BMW drivers

it is indeed possible to slip under the watchful eye of the electronic nannies, at least long enough to get yourself in trouble.

Hard to argue with that, but traction control, abs, and stability control have all come a long way in the ensuing 15 years. I had a 96 car with ABS so bad i unplugged it so i could autocross faster. My dad has an 03 diamante with a circa-95 traction control system and it's frankly really bad. I think some of the earliest systems didnt help much at all, but any sports car from the c6 era ought to have something much better than that.

Brett_Murphy wrote: Given how he was driving on the rest of the course, it looks and sounds like he hit the gas instead of the brake for some unintended acceleration. That truly sucks.

Exactly what I was thinking. He did not seem like he expected to accelerate there. Another reason inexperienced people should learn in crap cans and not 190mph sports cars.

novaderrik wrote: and here i always thought that strapping into a Corvette made anyone into the greatest driver ever.. or am i mixing that up with a Ferrari? at least the wheels took the brunt of the impact and folded up..

Grrr .... Ferrari drivers are so berkeleying annoying .... I've gone hoarse yelling at Ferrari drivers to move the hell over.

Too bad the wheels weren't the only thing to fold up. Looking at the rear wheel that's a lot of suspension damage too.

DaewooOfDeath wrote:

novaderrik wrote: and here i always thought that strapping into a Corvette made anyone into the greatest driver ever.. or am i mixing that up with a Ferrari? at least the wheels took the brunt of the impact and folded up..

Grrr .... Ferrari drivers are so berkeleying annoying .... I've gone hoarse yelling at Ferrari drivers to move the hell over.

[ sarcasm ]
Don't you know, having a car that expensive means you own the road
[ /sarcasm ]

There is enough fail in that video to go around. Layout and driver can share most of it. Hate it for him, that's going to be an expensive fix. Hope the axle didn't take out the transaxle when the rear suspension broke.

I just watched the wreck a couple of times, and it's hard to wrap my head around. It's like he was doing fifteen or twenty, then suddenly found himself five car lengths away, sideways, facing the way he came, and doing thirty.

I've not participated in an autocross yet, but this sure intimidates me in a way I wasn't before. I think the unintended acceleration/pedal confusion explanation is most plausible, and it gives me new respect for the power a car like this must have.

Unskilled driver/finish line Hero. He finally hit the gas, for the finish line. The rear stepped out, he froze, then the sand that's off the course took care of the rest. Regrettable . I sense that he may not have been familiar at all with the car.

m

Layouts fail, but you can't make anything foolproof; the best you can hope for is idiot resistant, because fools are too damn clever.

The 2 most serious autox accidents I've witnessed were both caused by confusing the short, rectangular pedal for the long, skinny one.

Mmmm.... Engine donor?

Joey

yesterday, my friend saw this video and in the preview was the stop-motion of him actually hitting the curb. before he opened it, he looked at me and said that he wondered what went wrong.. i looked at him and said he probably hit the gas.. apparently i've watched enough corvettes autocrossing in my life to make a potentially exciting and surprising video be more like a movie in which we all know by the first 5 minutes they guy gets the girl in the end.. and yet for some reason, we all still watch, just to see the train wreck..

And people ask me, "why race a Civic."

I've not participated in an autocross yet, but this sure intimidates me in a way I wasn't before.

I definitely would not let this scare you. It's a perfect crap-storm that's not likely to happen with the vast majority of cars, drivers, and course layouts. Or transmissions for that matter.

If that car had been a standard instead of an automatic, that wouldnt have happened because WOT @ low rpms in 2nd wouldnt light up the tires like that and most people wouldnt bother a long rev-matched downshift into high rpm 1st just to get some tire spin. And anyway, most cars dont have the power to get out of shape that fast regardless of trans. Or, like my aries, you have MORE torque per weight but are fwd and simply go straight until you let out. LOL

And that's assuming you're the type to hit the gas when you shouldnt in the first place, and the course layout involves curbs.

It's obvious tha V-Tec Kicked in and he wasn't ready

HiTempguy wrote: If you guys listen to the sound, he literally drove that whole course at 5/10ths until that final chicane, and then for some absurd reason he booted it and lost control. Just by the way the car randomly spins out of control with very little effort (he didn't apply that much steering) is crazy. He clearly was a very inexperienced driver.

I was thinking the exact same thing. Still even assuming that's all true, why did it rotate like that? I wonder if the diff did something funny and only applied power to the back-right wheel.

That car appeared to have a lot of peel-n-stick accessories added to it. I wonder what else he changed to make it hit the curb harder.

I'd say the biggest mistake the driver made was that he quit driving the car once it went sideways. Looks like he gave maybe a half turn of the wheel and held it waiting for the car to recover. He keeps turning the wheel, gets off the brakes and maybe this is just a spectacular spin. Or he backs it over the curb, likely with less damage.

Vigo wrote:

it is indeed possible to slip under the watchful eye of the electronic nannies, at least long enough to get yourself in trouble.

Hard to argue with that, but traction control, abs, and stability control have all come a long way in the ensuing 15 years. I had a 96 car with ABS so bad i unplugged it so i could autocross faster. My dad has an 03 diamante with a circa-95 traction control system and it's frankly really bad. I think some of the earliest systems didnt help much at all, but any sports car from the c6 era ought to have something much better than that.

the early systems WERE very bad. The ABS that was in my NG900 got unplugged after the first time it refused to let me stop in the rain.

Early BMW tractioncontrol was so bad that in low traction situations.. all you could do was idle because the secondary throttle body (the traction control) was shut

I vote for a 3 way problem: course layout too close to curbing, an inexperienced driver who froze when something unexpected started happening and tires overinflated. Lots of people just starting out will jack their tire pressures way up and with some tires that's just begging for trouble.

I knew a guy (Toyman knows him too: Sam, the guy we used to race R/C cars with, he looked a lot like Sam Kinison) who was determined that his F body Camaro's limited slip was bad because of it banging and chattering, he also said this made it nearly uncontrollable. It turned out he was running 45 PSI (!) in the rear tires.

Vigo wrote:

I've not participated in an autocross yet, but this sure intimidates me in a way I wasn't before.

I definitely would not let this scare you. It's a perfect crap-storm that's not likely to happen with the vast majority of cars, drivers, and course layouts.

QFT. Those "stop boxes" (where you have to bring the car to a complete stop just past the finish) are actually illegal in SCCA, mostly for the reason that poor guy in the C6 just discovered. Smaller clubs use them so that they can run on smaller sites.

Some guys nail the throttle for the finish, and then lose the handle on it trying to stop for the box.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNA7ALhuDXc