Thought that might get a few views and opinions. I've started the thread with quite a lot of content but thought we may as well get as many facts out from the beginning.
Ok so I got myself into a situation 10 days ago at the track. First time I had the car back out there since late 2010 after a large number of changes. Apart from a bit of 'Ring Rust' (Boxing term, not in relation to my leakdown numbers) I was finding the car a bit jittery. The tail had stepped out previously that day and we removed the rear sway bar completely for a temporary fix. The builder is of the opinion that the rear springs are too stiff (just over 900 front and 1100 rears) however this is a kit that I bought from Moton for a race prepared 944 turbo.
As you will see in the video I am going through a long left hand constant radius corner. I was travelling about 145mph before light braking. You can see that I make an initial correction but then soon afterwards the tail just steps out on me. There has been much conjecture and supposition as to the cause. Some think the car in front was probably spilling some fluid based on how much unburned fuel was pouring out and how I described the car as a bit of a shade tree 'Special'. AlfaSud with a mid mounted Rotary 13b motor and what looked like a GT35 turbo. Meant to be good for about 600hp but not so much on this particular day as I saw him working pretty feverously on it in the pits.
People have also said I over corrected and caused my own demise. Well this may be true to an extent however they weren't in the car and didn't experience the total sudden full loss of traction. Couple with the one pressing thought in my mind which was to avoid snapping back across the track and into the Left hand inside wall at all costs. We've seen too many cars do this and end up in bad accidents and rollovers. So I was determined not to let this happen.
After this however was where I was lost at sea. The grass was totally sodden due to a week of record breaking torrential rain so there was no slowing down over this. Then into the Gravel which didn't seem to slow my progress much either. Finally spinning about 90o to hit the wall pretty much perfectly side on which may have been the best thing for the car. Not so much for me as you'll no doubt agree.
Broken ribs and nasty whiplash but overall very lucky to be up and about straight away. Adrenalin is amazing stuff.
So anyway, apart from a burning desire to figure out the cause (more on this later) I realise that I just didn't have any moves in my armory to pull off once I left the track. Should I have tried to spin the car at some stage either through handbrake (not easy to access in a 951) or a sharp tug on the steering wheel?
Should I have tried to rotate the car or would this have seriously increased the chances of a rollover? These are the things that I just don't know and wonder why we don't get any form of education in matters like this?? Perhaps nobody will give us this advice in such litigious times but there must be some info out there to enable a fighting chance of avoiding massive impact?
GO952 crash April 2012.wmv - YouTube
Note the car in front do a pretty obvious tail wag on the last corner before main straight on final lap....(as I'm continuing to stumble ineffectively groping for my new 3rd gear! Hey it's a new 6 speed trans and I said I was rusty! )
So according the the engineer he is of the belief that the rear suspension doesn't have enough droop and is causing the inside rear wheel to actually lift which of course reduces traction by approx 25% but also creates that imbalanced Jacking motion. It seems very unlikely that a car such as this would lift a wheel on such a corner but the data points to this. So once we pull the car down and check we will know what was the cause...or I'm not going out in it again! The other possibility was that we were running pretty high boost levels (23psi) and there may have been a bit of headlift which could have caused coolant to drip down onto the rear wheels. I don't think this is the case but have had this happen in the past and I went off without warning in similar fashion although much slower on a different track. Also didn't notice leaks in the pits that day. I haven't been back to the car yet for a few reasons. Hope to see it this weekend and perhaps find something apparent.