Exactly as the title says. His name is Joe Huston and he's a member of our local SCCA region. He's fine now, he just got some stitches in his elbow, a sprained neck muscle, and some other bumps and bruises. This just goes to show you how effective safety equipment can be when used correctly, and just how dangerous it is to take a street car to a road course without said equipment. He said that he had his harnesses very tight, but he'll never go back out again without a HANS system installed.

http://atabo.com/SpecMiataCrash.wmv

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What the hell happened there? Mechanical failure? he was lined up fine then just went into the grass for no reason, which of course, caused him to shoot across the other way.

Did one of his tires blow out or did another car jostile him?

 

It looks like the first thing he did after he got out of the wreck was to check and see if his ***** were still there.

 

yea what happened? it looks like he just ran off the road and overcorrected

 

he was probably heavy on the brakes when he hit the grass..but it still seems odd that he ran off course. it seemed like he thought the track was wider or something..

 

He was way off line and went too far over the kerbs. The other side of the kerb was dirt and the back end came loose, it looked like the car just launced over it when he tried to get back on course.

 

He probably had an anti-submarine belt on his harness (goes from under the seat to past your crotch and into the bottom of the harness), and racked himself in the collision.

 

I think he's disconnecting something, like communications or cooling, or he's just pissed himself.

I think that Mazda 3 kinda crowded him out of his line and, I'm guessing, Joe just didn't realize how bad things would get if just dipped off course.

 

No, he just made one of the most common errors in track driving. Probably the single biggest cause of avoidable wrecks on the track. When he hit the grass, all he had to do was just ride it out. Instead, jerked the wheel to get back onto the tarmac. Honestly, it's kind of a novice mistake to make! You'd think a racer would know better.


You guys say that like it was unavoidable. Just because you run out of room at track-out and get up onto the grass, that's no reason to total a car. Just ride it out, shed some speed, and glide it back onto the track surface. No big deal.

His problem wasn't that he went off course. The problem was that he jerked the wheel to get back on course.

Emre

 

Yep, he tried to jerk it back onto the track to quickly. Turn 1 at Mid Ohio is 80-85 mph corner. You need to go straight off and slow down in the grass. Plenty of runoff area there. Poor driving.

 

I'm gonna say that he would've been fine had he not bounced upon entering the course again. I don't think it was necessarily unavoidable, I just don't think he jerked the wheel. I know this man, I autocross with this man, and I have talked to this man about the crash. He's a very level-headed guy who's been doing this stuff for years (I'm guessing he's in his mid-50's), and he even went into detail about how fast thoughts go through your head during a situation like this. He essentially had a conversation with himself during the incident, as weird as that may sound. He even remembered to take his hands off of the steering wheel before the impact. I didn't even know you were supposed to do that, but I did know that you should never jerk the steering wheel to re-enter the race track, or even on a public road for that matter.

I have no idea, however, because you can't see the steering wheel, so whatever we say is only theory.

 

You don't need to see his hands. All you have to do is look at how the car behaved and you can tell what the driver did. He tried to get back on track while he was still up on the turtles. Bad move. There's no rush. Just let the car off onto the grass and ease it back onto the track once everything is settled. He's lucky he didn't collect any other cars when he flew back across the track like that.

Emre

 

+1

I have watched many races at Mid Ohio from the inside of turn 1 in addition to having run hundreds of laps there in my Evo. There is very little doubt as to what happened. It's physics, not theory. That doesn't mean the driver is a bad guy, but he made an error. It happens. Not what is expected from an experienced racer, more like something from a driving school. I've spun my Evo at Mid Ohio on lapping days. But what happened here is harped on constantly at driving schools as something you should never do. And he has the repair bill to prove it.

Randall

 

I am with Emre-the driver overcorrected. He tried to keep racing and should have gone straight, slowed up a bit and then pulled back on the track. But it's easy to Monday morning 1/4 back when there is no adrenaline/competition invoved. I was impressed just how quickly it got ugly-it was instantaneous. The wheels can dig in and the car acts entirely differently than on pavement.

I went 2 wheels off there in my Miata at a track day once and it was terrifying since you are carrying so much speed-some of the all-out race cars never lift in that corner . The runoff ground is hard and flat though so if you slow and steer straight it is managable.

 

Emre is correct. This is a common mistake of trying to save it with two or four wheels off of the track. the thing to do is simply drive it straight off the track. glad he was alright; same thing happened to a guy at streets of willow in july but he wasnt so lucky, he had to be airlifted out.

Ernie