Topic: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

We had a bit of a rough weekend ending with our 2002 getting T Boned in Riverside turn. No one at fault but us, wrong place to be in.
Dave is one of our more experienced drivers and had only been on track about 50 minutes. My opinion is that a  couple of bad things happened here that were major contributors.
First, Three wide in a Lemons race is never a good idea IMHO. Especially if you're the guy on the outside in a fast corner. Probably should have waited to try and make the pass in a better spot.
Second, if he had been able to go clutch, brake in quick enough he would not have come across the track. It happened pretty fast and he may not have been able to react in time. I know I have been guilty of not go both in during a slide too but it's important if you don't want stuff like this to happen.
I don't know how soft/deep the dirt on the outside of the turn is and if you could roll the car there. I don't know the number of the car that hit us but she was nice enough to drive over to make sure our guy was ok. That car has something pointy and low on the front of it that speared our side sill. This is what caused some of the most severe damage. The sill got pushed in and buckled the right floor and collapsed the tunnel. This in turn squashed the prop shaft center support and there was no way to fix that at the track. I would add photos but don't know how...

https://youtu.be/2qvjXlPDrz4

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

I feel you. I did exactly that at Thunderhill in 2012, though I was letting cars pass rather than passing.

Lorin Mueller
Scuderia Asino formerly Team Haulin' Ass - 83 Plymouth Scamp
Team Soccer Moms - 93 Dodge Caravan

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

For the last couple years, I've been making racing crashes an academic endeavor (cataloging, categorizing, analyzing). In my Taxonomy of Suckage (ToS) what your driver did is called On Track Praying (OTP). The onset of OTP is when your car is running wide in a turn and you're getting close to the edge of the track. At this point, you have a few options (1) turn the steering wheel more in an attempt to stay on track (2) keep the wheel where it is and hope you won't run off track (3) open the wheel and go off track intentionally. Turning the wheel more does nothing useful if you're already at the limit of adhesion. You'll be singing the understeer blues shortly. Hoping you don't run off track is an accident waiting to happen. Let's say you don't go off track this time. Your thoughts will be "phew, I made it". That's actually is reinforcing the wrong attitude. What you want is an attitude of "I handled that like a pro". And in order to have that thought, you have to deal with the situation proactively. That is, when you suspect you might be going off track, you open the wheel and go off track intentionally, in a straight line, away from the other cars, without rolling over or hitting anyone.

In the heat of the moment, it's hard to make the right decision. One way to prevent this is to practice off-track excursions until they are second nature. No, you really shouldn't do this in a Lemons race, HPDE event, or on your way to get groceries. But you can practice it in simulation. There are a bunch of really good driving simulators these days: iRacing, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2. You can get a Logitech wheel, pedal, shifter combo for under $300 new and much less on Craigslist. $300 plus software and maybe computer upgrades might sound like a lot of money, but it's cheaper than wrecking cars.

Race: 2012 Vodden; 2013 Pointless, EMP, Vodden, Freeze; 2014 Vodden, Freeze; 2015 Vodden, Loudon, Freeze; 2016 Pointless, Discomfort, Vodden, Sweat; 2017 Turrible
Staff: 2017 Pointless, Vodden, Freeze
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Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

drKorf wrote:

That is, when you suspect you might be going off track, you open the wheel and go off track intentionally, in a straight line, away from the other cars, without rolling over or hitting anyone.

I'll second that. Much better to go off straight under your control rather than drop a wheel while turning. On the other hand, in the moment, it is hard to process all the information overload. Glad you didn't roll or get hurt.

One of our drivers was on track 10:45-ish to 1:15-ish Sunday and said he had a t-bone happen right in front of him (I don't remember when). But it's not showing up on our video around that time when he's in Riverside. Is the time stamp on the data overlay correct?

25X Loser - Delinquent Racing - '86 Rust-Tite Merkur - 9 years (when do I get to stop?).

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

delacruz7 wrote:

We had a bit of a rough weekend ending with our 2002 getting T Boned in Riverside turn. No one at fault but us, wrong place to be in.
Dave is one of our more experienced drivers and had only been on track about 50 minutes. My opinion is that a  couple of bad things happened here that were major contributors.
First, Three wide in a Lemons race is never a good idea IMHO. Especially if you're the guy on the outside in a fast corner. Probably should have waited to try and make the pass in a better spot.
Second, if he had been able to go clutch, brake in quick enough he would not have come across the track. It happened pretty fast and he may not have been able to react in time. I know I have been guilty of not go both in during a slide too but it's important if you don't want stuff like this to happen.
I don't know how soft/deep the dirt on the outside of the turn is and if you could roll the car there. I don't know the number of the car that hit us but she was nice enough to drive over to make sure our guy was ok. That car has something pointy and low on the front of it that speared our side sill. This is what caused some of the most severe damage. The sill got pushed in and buckled the right floor and collapsed the tunnel. This in turn squashed the prop shaft center support and there was no way to fix that at the track. I would add photos but don't know how...

https://youtu.be/2qvjXlPDrz4

Out of curiosity, how bad was the damage to the car that hit you?

-g

Myopic Motorsport's #888 Ceci n'est pas une Citron Thunderbird ("This is not a lemon" but a 1995 tbird w/ 93 V8 swap + shopping cart rear wing + engine mounted frito maker)
2017 Sears Pointless Organizer’s Choice
Frito Making Tbird from 2018 Sears Pointless Engine Heat BBQ - http://goo.gl/csaet4

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

It happened at about 11:00 am. There is a clock on the steering wheel. I didn't really check out the other car. I was focused on trying to fix ours.

7 (edited by billybobster 2016-10-04 04:43 PM)

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

delacruz7 wrote:

It happened at about 11:00 am. There is a clock on the steering wheel. I didn't really check out the other car. I was focused on trying to fix ours.

I looked at our video. Our guy went through Riverside about a minute before your t-bone. And our cheap ass giant dash clock is automatically synced to Official NIST US Time. Srsly.


So there was another T-bone midday Sunday, I suppose.

Best wishes.

25X Loser - Delinquent Racing - '86 Rust-Tite Merkur - 9 years (when do I get to stop?).

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

Don't you also lose 1/3 of a car width on the outside of that corner, as you enter the straight?  I was warned about that section of track the first time I drove there, and always make sure there is plenty of extra room just because of that.

bs

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

Watching that video, if not told I would not have realized it was 3 wide. It looked like you cleared that RSX and had the run on it, but with only front facing camera it is hard to tell. With the middle car in that 3 wide it is extremely tough to gauge the apex of that turn.

Before I say anything else, I had 2 incidents this year at Thompson at turn 1 which is right off the main straight with a combo turn 1 and 2. The first incident was with a CLK, which the driver had misjudged his turn in point along with braking point. Similar to this video. The CLK put both of its leftside tires (hard right turn) off of the track and immediately tried to regain traction after turn 1. I am sure the driver of the CLK was Sawing off some sort of Tree trunk from his steering column while playing Chopsticks with Tom Hanks in the movie 'Big' with the clutch, brake and Fun pedal. He nearly ended the race for me by almost T-Boning me in somewhat of a similar fashion, but not quite. I lucked out and so did he with no contact. Reviewing the video though, and a little more experience the driver should have doubled down on the brake and clutch and rode it off for a penalty. Which leads into...

A little later I had a run into turn 1 myself, I hit the brake point exactly where I wanted it, but slipped the front right wheel for a fraction of a second leading to a slight front right lock up. I had just passed a VW Beetle which would have been on proper line to make the first turn right behind me. I had so little time to save from the lock up and tried before Mr. Medulla BadIdea got hit over my head with Mr. Bringiemycar in one piece home. Realizing I could have been your car in the video (although at the time i did not know that) with my drive tire going off just to fight to regain control if an even if I could, I decided to dump my clutch and brake down releasing steering into the grass.

In the heat of the moment, it looked to me like your driver did a reaction to the situation. He had all of but a thousandth of a second to make his mind up and do what needed to be done. Thank goodness no one was injured. Although this turns into many things, driver confidence loss, financial lost for 2 cars, 2 teams that had a race both were looking to finish, 2 teams that worked very hard to race and prove they could finish the race. It was over in a mere second.

I feel it is videos like this one that need to be shown to every racer during the driver meeting an especially for the rookie driving meeting. I wish I had the video editing ability to do this but I lack the ability and equipment to do such. If anyone would like to do this I can send in my 2 moments which maybe can help out with a "emergency safety" video of what to do and not do.

I hope your car gets fixed and you guys get back out on track again as soon as possible. It sucks that from moment of impact until you found out your driver was ok had to happen. None of us want to have this happen to us, we must take it upon ourselves to educate and elevate each other to not only increase our awareness of the x factor of possibilities on track. We need to help each other out on refining and building upon our own racecraft. Sorry to rant on this. The safety equipment did its job and everyone was ok.

a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila.

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

gunn wrote:
delacruz7 wrote:

We had a bit of a rough weekend ending with our 2002 getting T Boned in Riverside turn. No one at fault but us, wrong place to be in.
Dave is one of our more experienced drivers and had only been on track about 50 minutes. My opinion is that a  couple of bad things happened here that were major contributors.
First, Three wide in a Lemons race is never a good idea IMHO. Especially if you're the guy on the outside in a fast corner. Probably should have waited to try and make the pass in a better spot.
Second, if he had been able to go clutch, brake in quick enough he would not have come across the track. It happened pretty fast and he may not have been able to react in time. I know I have been guilty of not go both in during a slide too but it's important if you don't want stuff like this to happen.
I don't know how soft/deep the dirt on the outside of the turn is and if you could roll the car there. I don't know the number of the car that hit us but she was nice enough to drive over to make sure our guy was ok. That car has something pointy and low on the front of it that speared our side sill. This is what caused some of the most severe damage. The sill got pushed in and buckled the right floor and collapsed the tunnel. This in turn squashed the prop shaft center support and there was no way to fix that at the track. I would add photos but don't know how...

https://youtu.be/2qvjXlPDrz4

Out of curiosity, how bad was the damage to the car that hit you?

-g

It continued on and finished the race with then nose slightly askew. Black Subaru. Former Pikachu Wagon. Lemons Sticker Wagon. Back cut off to look like Baja. Painted Petty Cash blue. And then, for this race, painted black.

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

Wendell34,

Apologies for the damage to your car, did you guys get any video of this? Does your car have some sort of tube pointed out the front of it?
I would like to see photos if not too much trouble. I am trying to understand the damage to our car and if we should add a low bar to our cage.

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

Rudy,
Really sorry that happened to you guys.
I had more than one time that I had to lift going to pass on the outside on Riverside because the car inside moved out, not knowing I was coming. Drivers' focus seems to be way forward visually there as you are accelerating out of the busstop.

Gary
Old Crows

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

drKorf wrote:

For the last couple years, I've been making racing crashes an academic endeavor (cataloging, categorizing, analyzing). In my Taxonomy of Suckage (ToS) what your driver did is called On Track Praying (OTP). The onset of OTP is when your car is running wide in a turn and you're getting close to the edge of the track. At this point, you have a few options (1) turn the steering wheel more in an attempt to stay on track (2) keep the wheel where it is and hope you won't run off track (3) open the wheel and go off track intentionally. Turning the wheel more does nothing useful if you're already at the limit of adhesion. You'll be singing the understeer blues shortly. Hoping you don't run off track is an accident waiting to happen. Let's say you don't go off track this time. Your thoughts will be "phew, I made it". That's actually is reinforcing the wrong attitude. What you want is an attitude of "I handled that like a pro". And in order to have that thought, you have to deal with the situation proactively. That is, when you suspect you might be going off track, you open the wheel and go off track intentionally, in a straight line, away from the other cars, without rolling over or hitting anyone.

In the heat of the moment, it's hard to make the right decision. One way to prevent this is to practice off-track excursions until they are second nature. No, you really shouldn't do this in a Lemons race, HPDE event, or on your way to get groceries. But you can practice it in simulation. There are a bunch of really good driving simulators these days: iRacing, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2. You can get a Logitech wheel, pedal, shifter combo for under $300 new and much less on Craigslist. $300 plus software and maybe computer upgrades might sound like a lot of money, but it's cheaper than wrecking cars.

This 100 times.

One of my drivers doing "OTP" in the kink at CMP.  https://youtu.be/DSLdWlsK9pI?t=23m35s
I had a similar screw up (wrong line, too fast) a year later and just drove it off track in a straight line.  No drama.  Sadly no video either.  I would build a side-by-side training video if I could to show good and bad reactions...

Apparently my name is really "Craigers".  Who knew?
We might be yellow, but at least we are slow
I'm a WINNER!

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

redzed wrote:

Rudy,
Really sorry that happened to you guys.
I had more than one time that I had to lift going to pass on the outside on Riverside because the car inside moved out, not knowing I was coming. Drivers' focus seems to be way forward visually there as you are accelerating out of the busstop.

Gary
Old Crows


Thanks Gary,

We will be back, unfortunately our whole team is addicted to this Lemon's thing...


Rudy G

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

billybobster wrote:
delacruz7 wrote:

It happened at about 11:00 am. There is a clock on the steering wheel. I didn't really check out the other car. I was focused on trying to fix ours.

I looked at our video. Our guy went through Riverside about a minute before your t-bone. And our cheap ass giant dash clock is automatically synced to Official NIST US Time. Srsly.


So there was another T-bone midday Sunday, I suppose.

Best wishes.


Billybobster,

Maybe it was this one?

https://youtu.be/XrqaFoTiVvo?t=1s

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

Thanks, it is a good candidate. I will get our crack forensic video team (me) on it. When I get back from the track day weekend I leave for today. Too much motorsports fun in early October for me.

25X Loser - Delinquent Racing - '86 Rust-Tite Merkur - 9 years (when do I get to stop?).

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

On track on consecutive weekends? You lucky dog!

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

Really good video of the wreck, so how the super pooper ford tag the left rear corner and spun the car in front . Does anyone have any pictures of inside door bars of the car that got t boned?

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

I believe there is a pic in the Facebook Lemons Lounge area.  Door bars didnt appear obviously deformed but the unibody crossmember under the rear seat is very kinked.  Cage appears to have done its job well.

1990 RX7 "Mazdarita"  1964 Sunbeam Imp (IOE 2013 Sears Pointless) 2002 Jaguar x-type (Winner C-Class 2021 Sears Pointless)
Gone bye-bye
1994 Jaguar XJ12 (Winner C-Class 2013 Sears Pointless)  1980 Rover SD1 (I Got Screwed 2014 Return of Lemonites)

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

delacruz7 wrote:

Wendell34,

Apologies for the damage to your car, did you guys get any video of this? Does your car have some sort of tube pointed out the front of it?
I would like to see photos if not too much trouble. I am trying to understand the damage to our car and if we should add a low bar to our cage.

This is probably too late and you will never see this since this thread is so old…but…

Here is a picture. I think you may see why your damage was a little strange. This poor car has had every part of it ripped off at some point.

http://www.murileemartin.com/UG/LBW16/0 … N5173.html

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

Wendell34 wrote:
delacruz7 wrote:

Wendell34,

Apologies for the damage to your car, did you guys get any video of this? Does your car have some sort of tube pointed out the front of it?
I would like to see photos if not too much trouble. I am trying to understand the damage to our car and if we should add a low bar to our cage.

This is probably too late and you will never see this since this thread is so old…but…

Here is a picture. I think you may see why your damage was a little strange. This poor car has had every part of it ripped off at some point.

http://www.murileemartin.com/UG/LBW16/0 … N5173.html

Wendell34,
It all worked out. We were able to pull out the damage and a little welding,a few new parts, a used door and we are looking good for Sonoma!

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

solman244 wrote:

One of my drivers doing "OTP" in the kink at CMP.  https://youtu.be/DSLdWlsK9pI?t=23m35s...

I remember that crash. Watched it from the front of the RV. The lesson from that video is don't hang you head in shame after crashing through a wall! They were close to red flagging the track for that. Move around. Wave. So they know you're ok. (this goes double when your wife is sitting in the paddock with a radio listening to the corner workers)

Driving straight off the track is the correct thing to do. Maintain control of your car. If that means driving (safely) off the track, then do it. Yes, the clowns in the penalty box will laugh and ridicule you without end, but it's the best thing you can do. Sideways in the middle of the track is bad place to be.

Duff Beer Civic (#128) -- 2014 Sebring - Class B (#1 of 7), 2016 Barber - Class B
1981 Jet Electrica 007 [Plymouth Horizon TC3] (#128) -- Mk.1 - Index of Effluency Eco (IOEe) @ 2016 Lemons South Fall, Mk.2 - Judges' Choice @ 2017 'Shine Country Classic, Mk.3 - Index of Effluency @ 2017 Southern Discomfort

Re: Oktoberfest gets T-Boned in Riverside turn.

Ouch