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So after the Hoosiers fell off a bit I kept making laps, pushing 9/10ths or so, desperately feeling my way through T11 like a blind man. With walls surrounding both sides of nearly the entire track, steep elevation changes everywhere, BIG nasty curbs that could upset a battleship, and five corners that are over rises, it was the hardest track I've ever driven. Cars were dropping like flies - blowing motors, ripping splitters off, going off track, etc. By the end of day one I heard that
half the GTA cars had dropped out (some made repairs and got back out on day 2). I kept pounding out laps, trying to soak it all in.
Again, in the 2nd session the car felt pretty consistent after the tires fell off about 2 seconds, after the first lap in this session. But learning the track was making up for the tires falling off and still I was dropping time late in the 2nd session. I made a 7th best lap time of a 1:37.015 with tires that we later noticed were absolutely FRIED. Down to the base rubber, zero tread left on the fronts or rears.
I still hadn't taken turns T11 or T12 at any respectable rate of speed, since I couldn't seem to find any visual markers to "line me up"... yes yes, I had 20 people giving me advice about "go under the red light" under the bridge, or "aim for the top left window in that medical building" over the horizon. It just wasn't working and I was still very slow through these last 2 corners. And those corners dictated the next long straight past the start finish.
On lap 8 I was on a good lap, finally seeing a 1:36 indicated on the predictive lap timer, finally with no traffic, but I wasn't pushing it any harder than I had been the whole session - the corners were just finally coming together. I was motoring down the LONG back straight and could see two cars entering Turn 10A as I went to go grab the brakes, doing about 150 mph. WHOOMP! Pedal goes straight to the floor, nothing happened. No brakes.
Shit!
Most racers will mentally practice for this very situation. You should also practice a stuck throttle pedal, having a flat tire, and a few other "bad things might happen" scenarios. This way, when Bad Things happen (given enough time, it
all happens) you know what to do
automatically. In 27 years of driving on road courses I've had exactly
one other sudden and complete loss of brakes before, in my 2013 Mustang on the OEM pads/small front rotors, I went off track after a 120 mph braking zone at ECR, and I was doing about 80mph when I left the track. I had time to downshift, pump the brakes a bit, try to use the E-brake, etc. THIS time it happened FAST and the loss of brakes was COMPLETE. I was going a lot faster here, the braking zone was steeply downhill, and the run-off area option was not very friendly. This wasn't just loss of pad material like last time, it was a total and immediate loss of hydraulic system pressure.
Last time we saw the front end intact and all one color for a few months...
As it often happens in a crash, my perception of time Slowed Down: I quickly evaluated options. There was a wall immediately off track to my right, a gravel trap just off track ahead, and two cars negotiating Turn 10B to my left. Pulling an e-brake could shed a
tiny bit of speed but potentially lock the rear tires, put the car into a spin, and likely punt me into a wall. Or into the gravel trap sideways - and flip. Going left and "short cutting" Turns 10A-10B through the grass wasn't an option because I'd likely collect one if not both of the cars slowly exiting 10B right in front of me. So going off track straight ahead was my safest option. I managed a quick 5-4 downshift, as I would normally here while braking (and even go down to 3rd gear), but grabbing 3rd at 150 mph would only mechanically over-rev the motor and lock up the rear tires. According to the Solo DL, I left the track doing 142 mph, so the downshift was good for a tiny reduction of speed via engine braking.
Now of course we always video EVERY lap of every session Amy or I drive, to catch good laps as well as bad things like this - to hopefully learn from it. But we goofed didn't pull
any video off the same SD card in this vidcam for 4 race weekends in a row, and the 1080P camera filled the card
during the 2nd hot lap of
this session. So we have no video of the crash. Sadly I always check the vidcam before a session starts, and would have realized "oh, this won't record, it must be full" and swapped cards before the next session. Just happened to fill up during the worst session of the weekend. We still have plenty of pictures of the shunt thanks to some sharp eye'd shutter bugs.
I hit the gravel trap and was going through it at an angle towards the bridge. There were big berms/walls on both sides of the bridge span that I didn't want to nose into, and my hope was to shed speed in the gravel, likely lose the splitter, and get back on track and under that bridge without hitting any walls or the 2 cars ahead of me. And that's what happened, but the impact LEAVING the gravel trap was INCREDIBLE. There was about an 18" earthen berm that marked the border of the gravel trap and that's what got me airborne....
This vertical impact is what broke my back, and while I didn't know that for certain for a few days, I knew a new level of PAIN. The hit knocked the wind out of my lungs and I couldn't breath for about 90 seconds. My entire spine started spasming and it was the most intense pain I've ever felt. The left front tire blew and both front wheels bent going over the 18" vertical berm, but I still left the gravel trap with the ability to steer, doing about 90 mph, with no brakes. The momentum took the car up the hill to the bridge and I was just coherent enough to know that I was closer to the pits than a corner station - I remembered seeing where the ambulance was parked. I checked and since nobody was close to me from behind, I rolled into Pit In just past T11, rolled down and then up the pit road and pulled over right next to the Medical Building. I shut off the engine in gear to slow then stop, and was less than 5 feet from where the ambulance was parked.
Brandon was sitting on pit wall and snapped a few pictures of me coming off track. It took him a second to realize that the car ...
didn't look right. The splitter was gone and part of the lower bumper and front flares were ripped off. He saw me pop the belts, roll out of the car and lay on the ground, which I did to try to get my diaphragm working and to be able to draw a breath. He thought I was checking under the car, walked up and then heard me moaning in pain.
It felt like someone was stabbing me in the back, and I still couldn't breath. The ambulance crew was on me in about 20 seconds and tried to immobilize me, learning that I had intense back pain. They checked me out for feeling in my legs, but by then I could breath and talk and kept trying to stand up - against their wishes. They wanted to load me into the ambulance and cart me off to a hospital but I was having none of it. I waited until the next Monday to get X-rays, and then saw the broken bones. It was a hard hit, and I think most of my damage (compression fracture to vertebrae T-11 and broken rib at T-12) happened where the pictures show me coming OUT of the gravel trap. There was about an 18" high ridge of dirt they cut into the ground for the hole for the gravel pit which launched the car about 2 feet into the air.
After 27 years of doing this stuff, dozens of offs at all sorts of speeds, this is the first time I got hurt. I was drenched in my driving suit and badly overheated, but they got me into the air conditioned medical building 20 feet away, cooled me down, and gave me two bottles of water which I guzzled. Getting out of the drenched driving suit helped cool me down, and they checked my vitals a couple of times. Amy was on the scene pretty quickly and wanted me to go to the hospital, but I was stubborn and stupid, and walked the 1/2 mile back to our paddock spot. Well, limped back while leaning on Amy.
This all happened at about 11:45 am, and while there was one more GTA session left there was no way I was driving and the car looked like crap. Brad came to fetch the car from Medical and after about 30 minutes it has SOME brake pedal and could be stopped, carefully. He pulled remnants of the brake ducts and splitter mounts off, noting some green fluid and a crushed air conditioning condenser. We don't run any anti-freeze and we figured out later it was just freon and whatever crud they use in the A/C system. Amy limped it back to our paddock spot with the mushiest pedal EVER.
These two cars went on to clobber me 1-2 in Unlimited RWD. Somehow my limited running time still held onto 3rd place
The car was relatively fine, but I was not, and I was pissed - at myself for not feeling any drop off in braking, not feeling any warning at a total brake system failure, and ignoring the other signs (pads). Looking at the brakes after the shunt, the rear pads were down to about 1/4 thickness but the fronts were down to 1/8th, at best. While they loaded up our gear and got another tire & wheel installed I fought through pain and brief stints of back spasms for a few hours. Somehow in there I did a 10 minute videotaped interview with Whiteline, standing in front of the car. I don't remember much of that. I mostly just lied down in the trailer that afternoon, and we knew our weekend was over.
Brad was shoveling gravel out of the car and removing the brake duct hoses - there's still gravel coming out weeks later
Amy and Brandon had called our hotel and managed to check out of our 2 rooms by 12:15, raced into town and got all of our gear, while Brad and I watched part of one of the Trans Am races. We stuck around for another few hours so Brandon could shoot some more pics of the GTA drivers and paddock, but we decided to leave early and head back to Dallas by about 4:30 pm. I was a wreck and that was the most miserable drive. We made it about 5 hours, with me downing Advil and applying Icy-Hot patches several times, then stopped for the night. We got back on the road Saturday morning and made it back by about 3 pm, and I laid on the couch for the next 36 hours.
When I got back to shop on Monday I made a doctor's appointment and the guys unloaded the car, and we saw the extent of the damage. It wasn't as bad as my back, that's for sure, and we had it fixed and back on track for Amy to drive a mere 10 days later. The actual repair work only took about 2 days and not many parts.
I'm trying to see the good side to this event, so please humor me while I bench race a bit here, heh. Since there's not a results page up on the GTA website for this event yet I put this page (above) together from a Facebook data dump they posted. Looks like my session 2 times from Friday were still faster than about 29 other GTA drivers (14th overall) with only 19 laps taken on this course, using a very worn out set of mis-matched tires. Many drivers picked lots of time on Saturday, including fellow NASA Texas TT competitor Todd Earsley, who dropped a staggering 10 seconds on Day 2.
The TT3 track record at Road Atlanta is a 1:29.64 (linked
here), so I needed to drop about 8 seconds to be competitive, yet the ST3 track record is a 1:35.3, set just this last weekend (same rules as TT3). Knowing where I typically place relative to Todd's EVO when he is racing on street tires, like he was at GTA, I
think I can bench race my way there. For a few weeks after this event I was NOT going to ever go back to this track, but after a bit of time and healing, I'm now thinking... yea. Gotta get back on that horse. We'll do NASA Nationals, and the Test day before. I am hoarding sets of Hoosiers now to be able to take at least 2 sticker sets + a set of R6s to test on for Nationals at the end of August. Its gonna be
hot!
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