WSIR close call at turn 9

[Ti-Jean]

Was at Willow Spring - Big Willow this past week and got a pretty close call at the infamous turn 9. Maybe not as hardcore as some of the video on here but definitely scary for me as low level HPDE guy. You can see from the G-meter that I had to brake pretty hard while turning. I also couldn't tell for a moment which side of the track he was going to land... Check it out:

[M3 Esq]

Wow, scary. Nice maneuvering to avoid there. It looks like the driver was going wide but I don't know that track. Where are you supposed to be there going into that turn?

[bigjae1976]

Great job! You kept the car moving which is a good thing. The worst thing you can do is stop.

That shows the importance of having an exit strategy at all times. You will react much better if you have one.

[paradocs98]

Wild video. Nice job avoiding him. So hard to know what to do. As stated above, the advice is typically to drive towards the spinning car, because by the time you get there, it will have moved elsewhere. But if you had done that initially in this instance, you would have driven down to the right as he first spun in that direction, but although he then spun to the left, he finally came back to his first position off to the right. So you would have been right on him. Instead it looks like you drove away from him initially, driving up to the left as he spun right, and then you dove back down to the right as he spun across to the left, and then you had to counter back to the left at the last minute as he finally came back to the right. Either way, you had to have quick hands to avoid him. Well done!

[Ti-Jean]

Originally Posted by M3 Esq.

Wow, scary. Nice maneuvering to avoid there. It looks like the driver was going wide but I don't know that track. Where are you supposed to be there going into that turn?

TT and HPDE line is to stay left about 1/2-1 car width from the edge and take this turn as a very late Apex. This is a high speed turn taken normally at ~90MPH. You would normally be on full throttle before the apex setting yourself for the long straight right after that corner.

If you turn too early, the track literally disappear from underneath you at the exit and you're on the dirt... happens to a lot of people. If you lift trying to stay on track... even worst as the car gets light and you spin just like the other car did. I actually wonder if he lifted and that's what caused his spin.

Here's a video of an entire lap, at the very beginning of the video I'm taking the same corner with no cars in front. You can get an idea how the corner is taken normally. And feel free to tear apart my driving, always looking for comments on how to improve

Originally Posted by paradocs98

Wild video. Nice job avoiding him. So hard to know what to do. As stated above, the advice is typically to drive towards the spinning car, because by the time you get there, it will have moved elsewhere. But if you had done that initially in this instance, you would have driven down to the right as he first spun in that direction, but although he then spun to the left, he finally came back to his first position off to the right. So you would have been right on him. Instead it looks like you drove away from him initially, driving up to the left as he spun right, and then you dove back down to the right as he spun across to the left, and then you had to counter back to the left at the last minute as he finally came back to the right. Either way, you had to have quick hands to avoid him. Well done!

To be honest, he caught me by surprise spinning off and I really didn't have a chance to think what to do. Subconscious took over and I was pretty much trying to keep control of the car as I knew that turning and braking was not a good situation. I was simply trying to brake smooooothly while keeping the line of this turn. There was a scary moment where the back-end was "wiggling" amplified by me trying to decide which way to go

Thank you all for the nice comments on my driving I was glad to be able to drive the car home at the end of the day