New Driver Education Learning lessons from expensive mistakes.

[alangbaker]

I took a 2-day advanced course this week (Mon-Tue) at Laguna Seca, and made a very expensive (dollars/equipment only) mistake, but I think that the important thing is to learn the lessons from the actual series of mistakes I made.

First, the situation:

Our last lapping session of the course, I was a little late getting ready to leave the pits (ironically, because I was attaching my GoPro, but I didn't remember to turn it on!), and so I was already a bit behind the curve. So following me out closely were our two lead follow instructors. And it must have been pretty obvious to Thomas that I wasn't driving as well as he'd already seen me drive, and he immediately took the lead between two and three and signalled for me to follow his line. Unfortunately, as unprepared as I was, I fell back a little and so I was immediately trying to catch up. Then I early-apexed four, didn't identify it and ran two wheels onto the dirt, then turned back on too early and too abruptly, and ended up hooking the car into the tire wall on driver's right. About the only thing I did right was that I at least got it all locked up to scrub speed and get the car fully turned around, so that I hit with the left rear corner first. So no damage to the driver; big damage to the car and a big bill for me to pay.

But the only value I can take from this is evaluating what my mistakes were that led me into that wall. So in reverse order chronologically, but from least important lesson to most:

1. When you put two wheels off at speed, there's no rush to get back on. If I'd just stayed relaxed with my hands and eased out of the throttle gently, there was lots of road straight ahead for me to have come to a complete—and completely safe—stop, if need be. I think that I was fooled by my experience of a road car in similar circumstances where we are actually so much farther from the absolute limit that we can get away with more when things go wrong. But more important was:

2. When in doubt, focus on line. I braked earlier for the turn and when my braking was done I picked up the throttle as I started to turn in, and guess what: not only does radius equal speed, but speed equals radius and so half a car length early on the turn-in became half a car width wide on the exit. And if my eyes had been looking further down the road, I would probably have identified being too early and simply not put the throttle down as hard and ended up making the corner on the asphalt (or at least the trackout rumble strip). But MOST important was:

3. Don't drive fast until you're ready to drive fast. I was out for my last session of an afternoon that had already seen two long (nearly half hour) sessions, and I wasn't even through my warmup lap. I wasn't through even a THIRD of my warmup lap. When the instructor car pulled away, I should have just let him go. Thomas was right that I wasn't driving the way I could have (and should have) been driving with regard to line, but I was wrong to take him up on his offer to help at that moment. We were going to be out there for another half hour session and there would have been plenty of time for me to bring myself up to full concentration and THEN to work on being more consistent and precise.

Fortunately, I wasn't hurt at all, and there was enough time for me to get a couple of laps in a replacement car to remind myself of what I was supposed to be doing out there, so the only permanent damage was to my VISA.

We are, all of us, going to make mistakes from time to time. So when they happen, look back on the entire chain of events, and make sure you learn all the lessons that you can learn.

Remember the lessons and keep racing.