Streets of Willow 7/30 & 7/31, update: crash :( Options

[siverson]

My brother and I will be at Streets on 7/30 and 7/31 if anyone wants to join.

I've never run with this group, and it's been about 18 months since I've been on the track...

http://www.extremespeedtrackevents.com/eve...ge.listevents/-

-Steve

[siverson]

I dropped my right wheel just off the track on the right in the bend in the back straight before corner 9. And then I'm honestly not exactly sure what happened. I think the car's balance was upset so I could not brake well and I almost immediately went sideways into the dirt after corner 9 (on the inside of the track).

That was by far the scariest part because I was probably going about 105-110 mph at the end of the straight (just hitting 4th; with my tall gearing/redline 3rd goes to 105) and I was afraid I was going to dig into a hole and flip. I remember relaxing when the car started losing some speed ("whew, I'm not going to flip") and then I saw the light approach out of the corner of my eye and I slide sideways into the light with my left front corner. Maybe I was going 20-30 mph (I really have no idea) when I hit the light, it got knocked over, and then I ended up about 20-30 feet away from it. That sucked.

In retrospect, I think I started to get a lot more comfortable with the Bowl before the back straight, so I was carrying a lot more speed into the straight than I previously had been, so I needed to brake sooner and harder.

Plus, another strange thing that happened is that there was no impact on the right side of the car, but the bottom of the right strut broke right at the ball joint. The ball joint didn't brake as I initially thought. So I'm not sure if the strut broke when I dropped a wheel off the track (it could have been a lot of force given the speed) or if it broke during the slide through the dirt. Who knows, and I guess it really doesn't matter at this point.