Onboard Video of me crashing

During the last SCCA road racing event I was testing lots of over the winter changes. The best thing you can do in our old vettes is to build them to give you the driver confidence.

Right at the end of the race I had my friend in his GT1 1972 vette behind me. I was trying to brake later and later on each turn.

traveling down through the S's at @120 mph I totally missed the brake point. I had all four tires locked up because there was no way that i could make the 40 mph turn. The car is airborne skipping off the pavement into the gravel traps.

"When in a spin both feet in!" I kept the motor running and drove right back to the edge of the track to see where the following cars were. I was getting gassed by all the tire smoke filling the car. I took off slow and stayed out of the race line because the tires are just embedded with rocks. You kind of look over the gauges to see if everything is alright. I did not know that i had broken the front end fiber glass and aluminum radiator ducking. That is what you will hear flapping against the pavement.

[ame]http://s124.photobucket.com/albums/p9/gkull/?action=view&current=crash.flv[/ame]

Wow! It's good to see that it wasn't major. I can imagine what was going through your head when it started making that noise.:flash:

That's bad news, it sounds pretty bad.... is the damage as bad as it sounds ??

MYBAD79 said:

That's bad news, it sounds pretty bad.... is the damage as bad as it sounds ??

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Years ago when I had the Daytona front end put on I started to have engine cooling problems. So I thought that a possible cure would be to force all the air going into the nose through the aluminum radiator.

But the gravel whacking the nose bent this aluminum down. Then air was forcing it to flap up and down into the pavement. To drive home from the track I had to duct tape the broken front back together. I had kept the original cardboard templates and I refabbed the bottom plate. I had the body guy redo the fiberglass. I'll have to get it painted later

Looks like you got crossed up trying to shift/brake...??....
Is there anyway you can fab the duct out of some flexible material and toss the sheetmetal...???

Qwik502 said:

Looks like you got crossed up trying to shift/brake...??....
Is there anyway you can fab the duct out of some flexible material and toss the sheetmetal...???

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I've been working on rocking my right foot side to side as while braking and blipping the throttle down shifting. I was just going to fast to be able to turn the car and the front tires were pushing instead of grabbing and turning the car.


I didn't want to chance hitting the gravel sideways at speed and take a chance of barrel rolling.

As to fabbing something instead of sheet metal. The sheet aluminum metal actually fits into a slot across the face of the nose and I used silicone to glue it in. This is my second version. The original was made out of thinner sheet aluminum. The first time I went fast, the air pressure bent it down far enough to pull out of the nose and turned into a scoop shovel as it got ground away.

It has to be very strong. Lets just say that it's flat bottom covers 8 SQ feet 8X144 = 1152 sq inches Lets say that you develop just one PSI of ram air above the sheet metal @125 mph That is 1152 pounds of down force bending the metal. Then the rake of the metal might even be creating a lower pressure below it. That is why the first design blew down driving over 150 mph. This design has been tested to near 200 mph

Glad it wasn't more serious mate :thumbs: Did you have a fair idea what the noise was or were you bricking it all the way back to the pits?

You may already have found this, and I'm not wagging a finger at you, but for the benefit of anyone else following along I didn't want to leave this unspoken...

During the entry phase into turns I've found that with some tires you can maintain quite a bit of trail braking on them as you turn in and build cornering force, while with others you have to really be on top of trading off releasing the pedal proportionately as you ask them to build cornering force, which can make how you come off the pedal hypercritical. Wasn't riding with you, so I'm not sure if this might have played a part...

If the heel and toeing is feeling a bit unnatural, consider doing some more pedal "adjustment" to make it more comfortable (making sure not to catch throttle during max braking other than when you blip, of course). Pressing hard like you're doing amplifies little stuff like this, as even a simple shoe change could require an adjustment.

I know you likely thought the worst when you first heard that scraping. (BTDT a few times.) Glad it wasn't so bad. Haven't seen an elevation map of RFR. Are there any pronounced changes or is it all relatively flat?

saudivette said:

Glad it wasn't more serious mate :thumbs: Did you have a fair idea what the noise was or were you bricking it all the way back to the pits?

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I just went off the course in a safety zone and climbed out to fix the damage as best I could. Driving it would have made things much worse with miles to go back to the pits.

TheSkunkWorks said:

During the entry phase into turns I've found that with some tires you can maintain quite a bit of trail braking on them as you turn in and build cornering force, while with others you have to really be on top of trading off releasing the pedal proportionately as you ask them to build cornering force, which can make how you come off the pedal hypercritical. Wasn't riding with you, so I'm not sure if this might have played a part...

Haven't seen an elevation map of RFR. Are there any pronounced changes or is it all relatively flat?

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That turn is pretty simple hard straight line braking then ease of the brake petal and down shift 5-4 4-3 or some times just 5 - 3rd as the speed comes down. The added compression braking going into 3rd gear causes the rear to kick out for the trail braking idea. I just had way too much speed and the front end was pushing instead of grabbing the pavement. The video doesn't really show it, but I did make it part way through the turn.

It probably has about 100 feet of elevation changes

You call that a crash?.....THIS is a CRASH!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

#71, is that the car bult by the nissan GTP guy?

gkull said:

As to fabbing something instead of sheet metal. The sheet aluminum metal actually fits into a slot across the face of the nose and I used silicone to glue it in. This is my second version. The original was made out of thinner sheet aluminum.

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I was thinking of Polyethylene....they make plastic trash cans from that,and you can cut what you need from a rectangular one...my kayak is made from that stuff...very tough,strong,and flexible....and not as heavy as the sheetmetal..

Twin_Turbo said:

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

#71, is that the car bult by the nissan GTP guy?

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yes...but not rebuilt by the ex Nissan guy....

Needless to say, I guess it was red flagged,, you avoided this?
Is that a real Canadian BFG racer, #60

gkull said:

I just went off the course in a safety zone and climbed out to fix the damage as best I could. Driving it would have made things much worse with miles to go back to the pits.



That turn is pretty simple hard straight line braking then ease of the brake petal and down shift 5-4 4-3 or some times just 5 - 3rd as the speed comes down. The added compression braking going into 3rd gear causes the rear to kick out for the trail braking idea. I just had way too much speed and the front end was pushing instead of grabbing the pavement. The video doesn't really show it, but I did make it part way through the turn.

It probably has about 100 feet of elevation changes

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I don't know squat about race driving, but it looks to me that you did a good job of avoiding a much more severe accident...must be pretty scary at that speed....

redvetracr said:

You call that a crash?.....THIS is a CRASH!

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Yikes! Yes, that's a crash. Looking at all those GM's, it was obviously the Ford's fault.

George's incident was only an "off" with damage.

racervette69 said:

Needless to say, I guess it was red flagged,, you avoided this?
Is that a real Canadian BFG racer, #60

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yes and no...it was the 2005 BRIC. 18 cars wrecked.

TheSkunkWorks said:

Yikes! Yes, that's a crash. Looking at all those GM's, it was obviously the Ford's fault.

George's incident was only an "off" with damage.

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actually it was the fault of a Camaro driver, you can just see his yellow roof in my signature pic. he 'turned" the black roadster up arainst the wall going the wrong way...

redvetracr said:

actually it was the fault of a Camaro driver, you can just see his yellow roof in my signature pic. he 'turned" the black roadster up arainst the wall going the wrong way...

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Bet he was the Bell of the party....

I still remember the anger from many years back, when a moron in a T/A put his bumper in my door and quarter when he tried to go way to deep on his braking. A heavy ass T/A cant brake with a Bimmer. And off turn one I did go. However, he didnt make the first lap,, he went off big, three more turns. Wrecker big.....S.F. However,, I didnt finish either, few laps later I took the nose off the car. Driving mad.