Scary! You slide forever on the grass! Oh, and nice view of the MINI too.
I had a similar experience with my MINI Cooper S at Eastern Creek last year
. I had just finished my warm-up lap, was doing 187km/hr by the end of the main straight, and turned into turn 1 a fraction too soon and with a fraction too much speed. The result was that I was slightly off line for the apex and then (stupidly
) tried a very slight correction mid corner. End result was that the back end swung around and I totally lost it while travelling at 160km/hr. I jumped on the skids and the car slid at 90 degrees with full opposite lock for 120m before coming to a stop near the right-hand edge of the track. The noise and smoke was incredible. But at least I managed to keep it on the track, not hit anything and didn't break either myself or the MINI. I also somehow remembered to declutch, so it was a simple matter to check for oncoming traffic and then move off again. That is, until the clunk-clunk noise from the front tyres suggested they'd copped some punishment. After returning to the pits, I discovered a palm-sized chunk of rubber had completely delaminated off the front-right tyre and it was down to the canvas. The front-left was badly flat-spotted too, so that was the end of two almost brand new tyres.
I was also keen to review exactly what happened via the video that I had set up in my car. I was frustrated not only to discover that the DV tape had ended during the session, but that the precise point where the tape ran out was about three seconds after the slide started! AAAAARGH!!!
You wouldn't believe your luck. Anyway,
this is what I caught on video.