continued from above
On lap 8 I was on a good lap, finally seeing a 1:36 indicated on the predictive lap timer, finally with no traffic, but I wasn't pushing it any harder than I had been the whole session - the corners were just finally coming together. I was motoring down the LONG back straight and could see two cars entering Turn 10A as I went to go grab the brakes, doing about 150 mph. WHOOMP! Pedal goes straight to the floor, nothing happened. No brakes.
Shit!
Most racers will mentally practice for this very situation. You should also practice a stuck throttle pedal, having a flat tire, and a few other "bad things might happen" scenarios. This way, when Bad Things happen (given enough time, it
all happens) you know what to do
automatically. In 27 years of driving on road courses I've had exactly
one other sudden and complete loss of brakes before, in my 2013 Mustang on the OEM pads/small front rotors, I went off track after a 120 mph braking zone at ECR, and I was doing about 80mph when I left the track. I had time to downshift, pump the brakes a bit, try to use the E-brake, etc. THIS time it happened FAST and the loss of brakes was COMPLETE. I was going a lot faster here, the braking zone was steeply downhill, and the run-off area option was not very friendly. This wasn't just loss of pad material like last time, it was a total and immediate loss of hydraulic system pressure.
Last time we saw the front end intact and all one color for a few months...
As it often happens in a crash, my perception of time Slowed Down: I quickly evaluated options. There was a wall immediately off track to my right, a gravel trap just off track ahead, and two cars negotiating Turn 10B to my left. Pulling an e-brake could shed a
tiny bit of speed but potentially lock the rear tires, put the car into a spin, and likely punt me into a wall. Or into the gravel trap sideways - and flip. Going left and "short cutting" Turns 10A-10B through the grass wasn't an option because I'd likely collect one if not both of the cars slowly exiting 10B right in front of me. So going off track straight ahead was my safest option. I managed a quick 5-4 downshift, as I would normally here while braking (and even go down to 3rd gear), but grabbing 3rd at 150 mph would only mechanically over-rev the motor and lock up the rear tires. According to the Solo DL, I left the track doing 142 mph, so the downshift was good for a tiny reduction of speed via engine braking.
Now of course we always video EVERY lap of every session Amy or I drive, to catch good laps as well as bad things like this - to hopefully learn from it. But we goofed didn't pull
any video off the same SD card in this vidcam for 4 race weekends in a row, and the 1080P camera filled the card
during the 2nd hot lap of
this session. So we have no video of the crash. Sadly I always check the vidcam before a session starts, and would have realized "oh, this won't record, it must be full" and swapped cards before the next session. Just happened to fill up during the worst session of the weekend. We still have plenty of pictures of the shunt thanks to some sharp eye'd shutter bugs.
I hit the gravel trap and was going through it at an angle towards the bridge. There were big berms/walls on both sides of the bridge span that I didn't want to nose into, and my hope was to shed speed in the gravel, likely lose the splitter, and get back on track and under that bridge without hitting any walls or the 2 cars ahead of me. And that's what happened, but the impact LEAVING the gravel trap was INCREDIBLE. There was about an 18" earthen berm that marked the border of the gravel trap and that's what got me airborne....
This vertical impact is what broke my back, and while I didn't know that for certain for a few days, I knew a new level of PAIN. The hit knocked the wind out of my lungs and I couldn't breath for about 90 seconds. My entire spine started spasming and it was the most intense pain I've ever felt. The left front tire blew and both front wheels bent going over the 18" vertical berm, but I still left the gravel trap with the ability to steer, doing about 90 mph, with no brakes. The momentum took the car up the hill to the bridge and I was just coherent enough to know that I was closer to the pits than a corner station - I remembered seeing where the ambulance was parked. I checked and since nobody was close to me from behind, I rolled into Pit In just past T11, rolled down and then up the pit road and pulled over right next to the Medical Building. I shut off the engine in gear to slow then stop, and was less than 5 feet from where the ambulance was parked.
Brandon was sitting on pit wall and snapped a few pictures of me coming off track. It took him a second to realize that the car ...
didn't look right. The splitter was gone and part of the lower bumper and front flares were ripped off. He saw me pop the belts, roll out of the car and lay on the ground, which I did to try to get my diaphragm working and to be able to draw a breath. He thought I was checking under the car, walked up and then heard me moaning in pain.
It felt like someone was stabbing me in the back, and I still couldn't breath. The ambulance crew was on me in about 20 seconds and tried to immobilize me, learning that I had intense back pain. They checked me out for feeling in my legs, but by then I could breath and talk and kept trying to stand up - against their wishes. They wanted to load me into the ambulance and cart me off to a hospital but I was having none of it. I waited until the next Monday to get X-rays, and then saw the broken bones. It was a hard hit, and I think most of my damage (compression fracture to vertebrae T-11 and broken rib at T-12) happened where the pictures show me coming OUT of the gravel trap. There was about an 18" high ridge of dirt they cut into the ground for the hole for the gravel pit which launched the car about 2 feet into the air.
After 27 years of doing this stuff, dozens of offs at all sorts of speeds, this is the first time I got hurt. I was drenched in my driving suit and badly overheated, but they got me into the air conditioned medical building 20 feet away, cooled me down, and gave me two bottles of water which I guzzled. Getting out of the drenched driving suit helped cool me down, and they checked my vitals a couple of times. Amy was on the scene pretty quickly and wanted me to go to the hospital, but I was stubborn and stupid, and walked the 1/2 mile back to our paddock spot. Well, limped back while leaning on Amy.
This all happened at about 11:45 am, and while there was one more GTA session left there was no way I was driving and the car looked like crap. Brad came to fetch the car from Medical and after about 30 minutes it has SOME brake pedal and could be stopped, carefully. He pulled remnants of the brake ducts and splitter mounts off, noting some green fluid and a crushed air conditioning condenser. We don't run any anti-freeze and we figured out later it was just freon and whatever crud they use in the A/C system. Amy limped it back to our paddock spot with the mushiest pedal EVER.
continued below