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Old 07-01-2014, 06:09 PM   #11
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Thanks... For reference, my question on "southernmost turn" from Google Maps was for Turn 5. Turn 7 was going to be my second guess.

The witness comment at Jalopnik said two things -- that he kept on the power and never turned the wheels. Hard to figure out why he didn't let off or attempt to turn. I still remember my dad going through driving scenarios on how to handle a skid when I was 15 -- and "steer into the skid" was burned into my brain...
He panicked. He didn't know the basics of car control. The track, FWIW, is a shitty place to learn car control--probably worse than the street.

Honestly, if I were motorsport god I wouldn't let anyone on the track until they'd autocrossed for at least a few years. And then I still would make them take a real track driving course, like the Porsche school. If I were an instructor...I would never get into someone's car unless they'd done both of those things.
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Old 07-01-2014, 08:20 PM   #12
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Autocross, maybe. Skidpad, definitely.
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Old 07-01-2014, 08:28 PM   #13
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For context, this was the "Hyper Drives" event, which involves taking spectators with their adrenaline up and throwing them on track for a few minutes to see how it is. It's basically an awful idea. The Jefferson Circuit is not very forgiving, but it's not nearly as bad as it's made out to be in this incident.
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Old 07-02-2014, 02:09 AM   #14
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Wouldn't this make more sense if he actually lifted on the throttle? I know way less about this stuff than most of you do, but when I went to the BMW events, I seem to remember reading that if you did something a certain way, you would end up in the center of a turn very very quickly.
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Old 07-02-2014, 09:07 AM   #15
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Originally Posted by Nick M3 View Post
For context, this was the "Hyper Drives" event, which involves taking spectators with their adrenaline up and throwing them on track for a few minutes to see how it is. It's basically an awful idea. The Jefferson Circuit is not very forgiving, but it's not nearly as bad as it's made out to be in this incident.

Husband is a DE instructor. Of the handful of events I've tagged along, they won't let students on track until after a half day of classroom instruction.

Spectators aren't allowed to drive on track.
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Old 07-02-2014, 09:31 AM   #16
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Husband is a DE instructor. Of the handful of events I've tagged along, they won't let students on track until after a half day of classroom instruction.

Spectators aren't allowed to drive on track.
Classroom instruction is better than nothing, of course, but until you've actually felt a car break loose at the limit and learned how to recover it, it's all just words.

JV has a good point about skidpads, which are really good labs for teaching this basic skill. Of course, snow covered parking lots work pretty well, too.
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Old 07-02-2014, 09:42 AM   #17
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Husband is a DE instructor. Of the handful of events I've tagged along, they won't let students on track until after a half day of classroom instruction.

Spectators aren't allowed to drive on track.
People break/bend a lot of rules for the pageantry around HyperFest.
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Old 07-02-2014, 09:54 AM   #18
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Classroom instruction is better than nothing, of course, but until you've actually felt a car break loose at the limit and learned how to recover it, it's all just words.

JV has a good point about skidpads, which are really good labs for teaching this basic skill. Of course, snow covered parking lots work pretty well, too.
The old snow-covered school parking lot was how I learned. That playtime definitely has saved my ass several times over the course of my life.
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Old 07-02-2014, 10:04 AM   #19
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Sobering...

Not being familiar with the track, I looked it up on Google Maps. Do you think its the southernmost corner? If so, you can see a few trees not far off the track in sat view mode...
Yes. That is the only high speed left hand corner without run off. If you run off the western large sweeper, there is a lot of run off. And the northern corner has barrier to keep you from joining the fun on the main circuit.
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Old 07-02-2014, 10:07 AM   #20
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Hyper Drive participants do get a short classroom session.

And most only do one session, so never get fast enough to be a problem.

I don't see Turn 7, there is a barrier off to the right to keep cars from ended up in the paddock. And I can't see that he could get enough speed towards the left to cause that much damage. Turn 7 is a quite slow speed corner, that most early apex leading to the front end heading to off track. But I guess that is how it happened.
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