Long-time readers of this site will remember… well, maybe even short-time readers of this site will remember that my race at Laguna Seca this past Saturday ended in tears, so to speak. I now have the video of the crash, which is posted in its entirety below.
There’s a bit of NSFW language at the four-minute mark. The crash itself starts at 2:20, if you just want to skip to the good part. I’m including the lap beforehand because for those of you who have never seen Laguna Seca it’s a good way to see how the track works. Also, because I’m a narcissist and the lap before the crash is basically a clinic on how to drive cheap-car endurance races, complete with a near-Zanardi-line two-car pass in the Corkscrew, I left it in.
What you’re about to see is this: Out of the corkscrew on the second lap, the Bimmer of TBR runs wide and I take advantage to grab the outside line. He doesn’t see me so he moves outside and almost hits me. Once he realizes what he’s done, he changes his line without scrubbing enough speed to make that line work. This causes him to drop a wheel off the outside of the very fast Turn Nine. (We’re all doing about 85mph here, although it’s hard to tell.)
The Bimmer hits me twice. The fuel pump snaps in half leaving me unable to move from the racing surface. My vision was so blurry at this point from being shaken around that I thought a trackside photographer was an EMS person. So I start yelling (well, I thought I was yelling) for him to help me out. Meanwhile, people are driving right at my door at full speed, because this particular series is full of dumb-asses who don’t watch for caution flags. (There was also some discussion about the fact that the flagging crew used just wasn’t throwing cautions early enough).
Realizing that if I sit there long enough I’m going to get hit again, I get out of the car and head for the tires. This is a serious no-no — in any race series where you can rely on not getting hit if you’re in a stopped car. This is not that race series.
Okay, let’s roll tape and let the schadenfreude begin:
No wonder my neck still hurts a bit.
Since I’ve never been on a racetrack outside of Xbox, I hope this isn’t a stupid question. It looks like you put your car in the spot he was heading for if he continued driving the line he was on (at the bottom of corkscrew). That meant he’d either have to change lines (not easy if he’s at his traction limit) or hit you. So he changed lines and started the whole chain of events. So, how much of the fault are you accepting here? Was there actually enough room to pass without putting him in trouble?
I’ve been riding motorcycles on the street since the early 1980’s, so my basic approach is to understand where each a-hole around me is going to be (as opposed to where they’re at) and make sure I’m not in the spot that fixing to be occupied.
Otherwise, based on my Xbox days, looks like you were tearing the track up good. Hope you’re ok. Maybe next time put a taped arrow on the hood of the car.
Generally speaking, you have the right to the line until the off-line car gets his wheel to your door. In a contested situation, you have a right to the space in front of you. We were in contest at the time, so to speak. So had he hit me moving over, he’d have been at fault. I gave him some room anyway, as you can see.
What he should have done was tap the brakes hard as soon as he realized he didn’t have his line. Any experienced racer would have done it but not everybody in ChumpCar has five or ten or twenty years’ worth of wheel-to-wheel experience. He vastly overestimated his car’s ability to make the turn.
Very nice fellow however.
Thanks for the reply. So you moved forward with the expectation that he was off-line and would have to concede, per general racing practice. Makes sense. His mistake was in not slowing enough once he was off-line to make the next curve.
Damn, watching the cars go past at-speed in the sideview mirrors is scary. Glad you got out of that one ok.
is it just an artifact of the track surface, or did the BMW start getting squirrely as he crested that rise (right before your attempted overtake?)
Live axle car on rough track, it’s part of running an E30. In exchange for that, you get to motor Neons down the front straight 🙂
The E30 doesn’t have a live axle. They have a trailing arms IRS. You have lots of wheel movement control with a setup like that. Or not.
The semi-trailing arms on an E30 (and a 944, which I race) have a lot of camber change toward the ends of their travel. That means you can lose grip at the back quickly if the car moves to full rebound, as it does going over the crest of a hill. It helps to lower the car a lot and have good shocks, but it looked like this particular E30 was fairly floppy.
My neck hurts just watching that! On the second impact it looks like your head got knocked way over to the passenger side of the car. The HANS only protects front to back movement if I understand correctly. Is there anything that protects for that kind of impact?
Musculature, maybe?
A Hutchens Hybrid or ISAAC device would help.
So would a halo seat like the one I have in my Neon in Ohio.
In this case, it was my relatively strong but not body-builder-spec 17.5″ neck that took the full brunt of it.
Ow. That hurt to watch, lateral head snap. Those are some heavy G’s your brain pulled.
Request: I enjoyed watching you drive the course up to the crash, very smooth with some smart passing. Would you ever consider a running commentary, even if it’s a VO over the video after the fact (though I expect that you’d be just fine being mic’ed up while you drive), of what you’re doing and why? It’d give me (and others, too) greater insight into the track, the car, your strategy, etc.
That’s not a bad idea, particularly in a traffic-filled race like these ChumpCar deals. I’d like to do it after the fact and second-guess myself, too 🙂
bonus points if you do these videos PewDiePie style.
I could send an SD card with the whole vid; the file is too big for a file transfer. This driving stint might be particularly entertaining for commentary and analysis, as it was the start of the race. There was a lot of slicing-through-traffic going on. This race had some of the quickest teams/cars running in Chumpcar from all over the country!
Great idea, you can use the FedEx envelope of cash I’ll need to send for repairs as a return envelope!
The neon is waaaaayyyyyy cheaper to crash & fix than a Spec B car!
I’ve been curious about this - when an incident like this happens, who pays to fix the car?
All parties cover their own damage, regardless of fault. If you think this leads to economic bullying in classes like Continental Tire, you’d be correct.
What “rebuild” means varies from team to team. I’ve driven with a few teams where you are responsible for restoring the car to like-new condition. In the case of a team that shall remain nameless, that meant that they got a stack of free fenders from the assembly plant and charged you $450 for each one. It was a profit center for them.
In the case of the Neon, it was already a dented-up “$500 car”*, so to speak, but both Greg and I want it right for the next race, so we’ll work it out.
* the cars are always worth more than $500.
OWwwwwwwww…………..
The last time I was on that track was a parade lap in 1970 ? .
Fun watching you tear it up jack ! .
Your head/neck snapping sideways , not so much .
I hope you’re o.k. and take some X-Rays before getting back to it , then I expect more great videos like this .
This is *exactly* why my high speed high junks are done mostly alone in the middle of nowhere .
-Nate
BTW : even mindless haters shouldn’t enjoy this as it was just as possible you’d be killed or crippled as walk away .
-Nate
It’s never any fun to have your neck bend anywhere close to its design limits.
Could you have creeped off the track by putting it in gear and using the starter motor?
The car still has a clutch cutout. Think Greg’s getting rid of it as we speak.
All you have to do now is post a video of you crashing and burning with a woman and you’ll make all your haters happy…
Somewhat O/T question. Do you or Bark have any posts on the finances of racing starting from getting the car all the way through what it costs to do racing on a consistent basis? Assuming 0 experience and need to hire a coach, what kind of disposable income do you need to maintain/start a race hobby?
IIRC, he ran one on TTAC or SSL some years ago, can’t remember which. From Lemons all the way to pro-level. Not cheap.
GRM must have something about it too.
Watching you sit dead center on track for a good two minutes was scary as hell. My heart pounded more after the crash than during!
How the hell is that not a red flag situation?
Amateur race, car disabled mid track after a corner, driver still inside. Absolutely no reason not to temporarily throw the red out imo.
As fun as it is to go wheel to wheel, a chump/lemons/aer/wrl race is just a red blooded version of a track day. There is nothing to win, only something to lose. Ten minutes of extra race time for everyone is just not worth a broadside smack to a disabled driver.
This has merit, but consider as well the folks who have little experience and how they will react to a red flag. I have seen multiple instances where new drivers are convinced suddenly they are better than 80% of the cars around them because they missed the yellow flag. Now you are looking at stopping a field of 80 of them with experience that runs the entire spectrum. This incident not withstanding, the folks at Chump and LeMons usually do a great job of keeping everyone at bay. It’s a judgement call made by the track safety officials and they have a minute time period to make this decisions. Its easy to Monday morning quarterback the aftermath, but again they don’t have the benefit of our hindsight.
A more common solution to these situations in this arena of racing is actually to black flag the whole field and bring them in. Had this happen at Chump in Daytona. It was night and raining and so many cars were in the grass, the safety folks just went that route to clean up the field and give everyone a chance to get their blood pressure back down.
That engine sounds lovely. How many RPMS were you pushing there? I’d guess over 6K. Goes quick too.
I like Neons, but would have never thought they could go like that based on the ones I sat in.
The crash was downright scary. You can feel the ‘GTFO of here quick’ need through the video.
when the Neon first came out, it was a good handling car with a lot of power (relatively speaking) for its segment.
You can hear him hit the stock rev limiter at 6750 rpm twice before braking for the left-right corkscrew. It’s a single-cam 2.0L engine, basically stock. It has an open element air filter, which is most of what you are hearing. We run it with no catalyst but with a stock DOHC neon muffler. An endurance racing car really doesn’t need to be loud.
” An endurance racing car really doesn’t need to be loud.”
_obviously_ you’re not a Serious Racer AKA stupid kid else you’d know that noise is necessary to show everyone else just how cool/fast you are .
=8-) .
-Nate
I get why you’re bummed about this, and I would be too.
What I don’t understand is that you seem to expect ChumpCar to be run like a professional level racing series, with other drivers who know all the ins and outs of racing, plus seasoned corner workers who are also at pro level. It’s like going to a Michael Bay movie expecting Shakespeare.
That said, the part before the wreck was fun to watch.
P.S. - E30s do not have a stick axle.
Ah, you’re right. For some reason I always think of them as being solid rear axle cars. They drive like them, maybe?
Haters gonna hate.
Man if you f**k the way you drive, no wonder you are such a hit with the ladies! I’m impressed.
I do fuck exactly the way I drive.
It ends earlier than expected and then I ask to be seen by an emergency medical technician.
Damnit Jack. That’s twice now. Mental note, do not drink beer while reading any of this. Beer out the nose is not fun.
I was thinking more along the lines of you running hell for leather for the tight spots other dudes were after, and beating them there, then being rendered hors de combat by le petit mort, sitting dead in the water, while all the other dudes who got beaten to the punch by you now speed by, looking for an opportunity to embarrass you or otherwise F you up, as you sit immobilized from your earlier all-out performance.
As in both venues you should, and probably do, recognize that when you beat the competition to the good spots consistently, they are going to try to come after you any way they can. And though they do their best (or worst), you refuse to be outdone, and labor overnight to be ready to go for the spot or spots you want again the next day.
“An Alpha, Swimming (F’ing, Racing) in a Sea of Beta”…you know that’s how it is, and you know that is why so many outdone competitors, if they can be called that, think you are a dick…
But you will never care, because it is not them that you are all about, it is the spot where you want to be, before anyone else gets there, by means others barely comprehend, much less are able to perform.
It has been my experience that it may be true that “lucky in cards, unlucky in love” or whatever, but it is also “Bold on the roadway, bold in the bed”…there are some pilots who, as an old boss used to say “do all their f’ing in the hangar, and all their flying in bed”, but the guys I have know who drove with reckless abandon, on or off the track, also approached the “moment of truth” with similar reckless abandon.
And they continue to swarm around, drawn like moths to the flame, when bold set foot on the track, or in the ring (boxing or bullfight), or anywhere else where only the most daring dare to go…
And we continue to be drawn like moths to the flame to those who are drawn to us like moths to the flame…
You know the poem, I’m sure.
“My candle burns at both ends,
It gives a lovely light.
But ah, my foes and all my friends,
It gives a lovely light.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay
(for those of you who were sleeping in Freshman English, if I can still use such a term to describe first year college English.)
Your self-deprecating humor is funny, and a nice touch of modesty, of sorts. But I suspect that you know that the real deal, the Truth with that capital T, is more like what I said…hell-bent for pleasure, and damn the competition, full steam ahead.
It’s always fun, though, to hear your analysis of situations such as these.
So you’ve ended a successful date with “fuck this, I’m out of here!” at least once then?? 😀
Yeah, I had an OKCupid date a while back with a nice but chubby psychiatrist that basically ended with her trying to walk me back to her house and me, after pondering the idea of possibly falling in love with the mind of a woman who was not in my favorite kind of body, doing pretty much what I did in the video.
Yes, but the drugs, Jack.
You don’t not have the complete absence of a lack of point there.
I think the Beemer had the rear right off the right curb (almost out, see 2:28-2:30) and over corrected, thus losing it some more.
How come you didn’t have a seat with more side-ways neck protection like this?
I have one in MY car, but this one belongs to a friend.
1. Does the driver’s side of your cage have NASCAR bars? if not, that was a scary place to end up; I would have vacated the premises too.
2. Do you always race with your visor up? I used to, because visor-down made me feel like I was suffocating - but then I caught a bit of face shrapnel while passing a wreck-in-progress. I taught myself to breathe with the visor down.
1. It’s a store-bought cage without much door protection. My personal Neon has double NASCAR door bars and a LaJoie halo seat, but this Neon belongs to a friend who isn’t quite as cowardly as I am.
2. I ride a motorcycle with the visor down but I race closed cars with the visor up. In a Miata I go visor down. You have a point however…
Ouch… Been meaning to watch that at home but I kept forgetting. I’m glad you made it out of that in one piece. But damn you’re gonna feel it every day when you’re in your 60’s. 🙁
Terrifying beyond words.
Was expecting a Yakety Sax soundtrack. Glad your head’s still (nominally) attached.
We could make that happen!
wow, glad you are ok!!
those were some pretty awesome passing moves you made before the HIT….esp the balls to the wall corkscrew! gotta try that one in the sack 😀 seems you really moved up on everyone in the braking zones. Better braking skills or better brakes? or both?
great footage. I esp like how you are still in view after you get out of the car & stomp off into the distance. needs a little sergio leone / morricone treatment
I’m the last of the late brakers, everybody knows it. I was sharing my data with the young engineer on our team and he was saying, “Okay, in that turn you’re braking later… in that turn you’re braking later… in that turn, you guessed it, braking later.”
The artistic effect of Jack wandering off in the distance struck me the same way…sort of an “arty” ending to a racing-centric movie along the lines of other “arty” sport movies such as On Any Given Sunday, Endless Summer, Senna, etc.
The loneliness of the wandering driver, having lost his mount in the heat of battle…
Or something like that. Definitely did give it a nice touch, though.
“The loneliness of the wandering driver, having lost his mount in the heat of battle…”
You need your own column with word skills like this Volando .
-Nate
Anything he submits, I’ll put up, for sure.
Wow, Jack…coming from you, whose adventures and writing I classify in the top tier of all that I have read and seen, is a real compliment.
This may be just enough of an inspiration to both get me writing a bit more seriously, and to dust off a few things I have written in the past. I am thinking right now in particular of something I wrote to my only son, when he was still too young to fully understand all that I had written, but was important enough that I wanted it down for him to see, should I not survive long enough for him to grow to where it would be relevant to him and his life. I’ll see where I have left it hanging out.
Is there any particular way you’d like me to send you things, if I would like to see you put them up?
You have my email address. Drop me a direct line, and I will use it as a guideline for further interaction.
But much of the credit for that line, which Nate liked, goes to you for being the way you are, and for wandering off in that particular manner, after what was very likely an NDE. It takes a certain type of spirit to walk a certain kind of walk…a different departure from the defunct vehicle would have been an entirely different story.
You and Nate have made my day. And after you have been around as long as I have, it is always good to have something to add a little bit more to one’s total existence.
I’m sure I will be able to find at least a couple of things you might want to put up. And I’ll trust your editorial judgment and solicit your feedback, at least until such time as it might not work. But I suspect that if anything, your feedback and editorial experience might actually help improve my work.
Let’s see what I can come up with, and I’ll send it to wherever you want me to.
Thanks again, to both you and Nate.
Thanks, Nate.
When I was much younger and had aspirations to be a writer by profession, a successful writer told me that to be successful, a writer had to have a life and life experiences to write about.
Somewhere along the way, I got caught up in living that life, and writing has only been a more or less hobby, though one that comes easily to me when I am in the mood.
All of my life I have been essentially a want-to-be creative person, wandering around trapped inside the body of an engineering and projects type of a guy.
But perhaps someday before my time is up, either some one may offer me a venue for random musings, or I may finally find enough time near a sunny shore to devote serious time to writing most days.
In the interim, reading TTAC and Riverside Green a/k/a jackbaruth.com provide me with a place to interact with others like myself who are both involved in active lives and also have a creative streak to their writing, debating, etc.
But every once in a while I wake up and wish for a moment that I had become the American Kurosawa, or something like that. But life as it is is good enough, and will have to suffice…
Volando ;
Writing , like any creative endeavor , comes from within ~ yes , one can learn the nuts and bolts of it but good writing is a gift , the reader will willingly read tripe about painting the back fence or plumbing an old toilet if there’s a gifted writer doing the scribe .
I have ever so many things rattling ’round in my head but I lack those skills , hell I cain’t even _SPEL_ .
I do some Automotive Tech writing , DIY how-to’s mostly for clubs and newsletters because I’m a Journeyman Mechanic but I’m also keenly aware of how useless many Factory Shop Manuals usually are : “Grasp special tool 345X-b/2 in the proscribed manner then….”
I am told my tech articles are easy to read and understand as they always include what you’ll actually see when you’re working on your old battered Rolls-Can’ardly .
I too saw something in how Jack walked away from the car at the end but wasn’t able to explain it like others did .
Life , it’s what happened to me whilst I was waiting to grow up and make my mark in the world .
Oops .
-Nate
Hi Nate,
Sounds like we went to different schools together. 🙂
One of my favorite manual instructions was when I was new to wrenching.
I had just bought a 600cc Norton Dominator SS, a dual carb, air cleanerless cafe race. Once straightened out it proved to be more powerful than either Triumph Bonnies or 750cc Commandos. But when I first bought it, it had been torn down and rebuilt, and ran solidly but slowly.
Found a great British bike mechanic, in my hometown, about four hours from where I was then living. I was a nearly starving student, and he agreed to try to fix it, if I would leave it with him for the winter, when business was slow.
A couple of months later, I got a call, was told it ran like a striped ape, and that I only owed him some small sum, like an hour’s labor or so.
When I got there, he explained what had happened. The doofus who had pulled the head to decarbonize it had put the rocker arms in BACKWARDS. The lift was a 1.1:1 advantage, so instead of having a ten per cent greater valve lift than cam lift, I was getting the reciprocal of that, or about 0.89 times the cam lift.
So when he turned the rocker arms back, I went from 0,89 of cam lift to 1.10 times it, or 1.1/0,89 more lift, which would have been an increase of lift of 1.24 times as much as I had been getting. Talk about a quick HP boost, especially with the wide open carbs.
But before I had gotten to that point, I had found a manual for the bike, and my friend, another Norton rider was helping me.
The manual said that once the nuts that were holding the cylinder head on were removed, to “simply remove the cylinder head from inside the frame.”
No matter how we twisted, turned and limboed, we could not get that head out of the frame to save our lives.
After struggling, mostly mentally, for two days, a good mechanic tipped us off that the studs had a habit of working up out of the block, and that you had to loosen them with something like PB Blaster, then tighten a pair of nuts onto the stud to give you some grip, and turn the studs back down into the block.
Which worked. But we laughed and joked quite a bit about how all we had to do was “simply remove the cylinder head…”. The manual made no mention of possible stud workup.
So I have always had an appreciation for the manual writer who goes the extra mile and tells you what to do about what you will run into in the real world.
I think Jack has enough brain cells left to make sure that it is he, and he alone, who has control over his intake of anything that he might put in his body.
The idea of letting a beta female with an inferiority complex and a possible penchant for Witches of Eastwick put up a regimen for me, would scare me the way few things do.
No, I think Jack chose the correct response in that case. At least, it is one I would have chosen also.
It ain’t worth it for a little action to end up in a messy morning-after wannabe relationship that you don’t want to be.