I’d had my first three, dual-consciousness experiences, in 1981; the next came during a lapping day in 1983. I sat out most of the 1982 season, including missing the North American Formula Ford (NAFF) Festival for the first time, because funds were short after I destroyed my Crossle 35 formula ford at Sears Point’s turn 10.
After many fruitless attempts to secure sponsorship for a Bosch Super Vee season, I decided to come back in 1983 in a final attempt to win the NAFF Festival, which had a sponsored ride in the new Formula Mazda class as the prize. To gain entry into the Festival, I had to do a lapping day at Laguna Seca, and then compete in one of the Laguna Seca series events.
For the lapping day, I set a goal for myself of eclipsing the lap record, even though I hadn’t driven in about a year. I always set big goals, but I wasn’t crazy; I would do it if I could, but I wasn’t willing to crash the car trying to do it… I couldn’t afford that.
During lapping days, the instructor would give us a low rev limit to start, and then increase it each session. During each session, they would drive to strategic locations around the track, pull off, and then take notes for our between-session debriefs. Things went pretty well, and for our last session, the instructor said we could use ‘full revs.’ I saw this as my chance to go for the record, so I was pushing immediately, however, even though I was pushing hard, I wasn’t being ragged (at least no more ragged than I usually was). I put in 2-3 good laps, during which I had caught and passed a hot-shoe who had come down from Canada for the session. I pulled a small gap to the driver I’d passed as we approached turn 4. I noticed the instructor car was there; pulled off in the dirt on the right side of the track.
In Laguna Seca’s original configuration, we were flat out in 4th gear from just past turn 1 to turn 4, where we would brush the brakes (or maybe just breath it), and click it into 3rd gear for turn 4 and the pull up the hill to the corkscrew. So Turn 4 was very fast, and provided very little room on the outside before you encountered a tire-lined Armco barrier. The inside of the track was not much better with its hard earth bank.
This was Turn 4 at Laguna Seca Back in the Day
Photo courtesy Richard Janes Jr. via Kurt Engelmann at myf5000.com
Anyway, on this particular lap, I approached the turn, brushed the brakes, clicked it down a gear, turned in and pinned it; just as I had each previous lap. However, I quickly realized that this was not like the previous laps because I was completely sideways. ‘I’ (intellect) thought “oh $#!T,” As I watched ‘him” (intuition) instantly go to full opposite-lock. ‘I’ realized ‘he’ recognized that a huge energy wave was in motion toward the right side of the car (actually mostly to the right rear because ‘he’ was still on the gas at the time) and ‘he’ was trying to get ahead of the wave. We were so sideways that the only way to get ahead of it was to instantly go full opposite-lock.
I was sitting there, with my arms crossed, waiting to see how things were going to play out; trying to determine if we had gotten in front of the energy wave or not. ‘I’ instantly did some type of calculation (on the visual info. traction, rotation rate, engine tone, etc.) and told ‘him’ “that’s not enough.” I’m not sure ‘who’ was doing what for this bit, but ‘we’ let go of the wheel with our right hand, dropped it out of the way, and then used all of the range of motion in my left elbow and wrist to crank a few more degrees of correction into the slide. I could feel that the small amount of additional steering lock had done the trick. We were finally ahead of the energy wave, but we were still in deep trouble. The car was still yaw rotating, but the rate of rotation was slowing quickly. ‘He’ was still on the gas, and the whole time I could hear the engine tone dropping as the car got more and more sideways, placing a huge lode on the right rear suspension and tire; like a motorcycle getting ready to high-side its rider.
There seemed to be a moment of calm, as the engine tone bottomed out, and I realized that the energy wave was stopping; a state of equilibrium was imminent. That was the good news, the bad news was that while the energy wave was stopping, there was still a huge amount of energy sitting in the right-rear spring and tire, and it was about to ‘equal-and-opposite’ it’s way across the chassis and point us head-long into the outside barrier at a very high rate of speed. Before the energy wave had even completely stopped ‘I’ told ‘him’ “get that correction out NOW’ because I knew we had to be WAY ahead of the rebounding energy wave if we wanted a prayer of getting out of the situation. So ‘he’ let off the throttle and snapped in correction in the opposite direction. That had the desired effect; killed most of the energy tsunami, so that instead of the back end rotating left and pointing us straight into the barrier, I ended up with a manageable tail wag to the left, followed by an even smaller final wag to the right.
The car’s energy was back under control and appropriately dispersed throughout the car, so the situation was looking much better than moments earlier. However, the big initial slide and subsequent tail-wagging maneuvers had walked the car off line wide, so I was on an unrecoverable trajectory to intercept the unprotected Armco at the exit of the turn. After I glanced the right-rear tire off of the barrier, I could see in the mirror the wheel was slightly bent, but the car was still drivable, so I slowed down, pointed the guy behind me by, and then motored slowly back to the pits.
When I was getting out of the car in the pits, one of the mechanics came over rather animatedly. I figured I was about to be told what an idiot I was, but he said “you just broke my track record.” I replied “yeah, but I bent the car.” he smiled and said “yeah, but you broke my track record.” The guy who was behind me told me that he couldn’t believe what he had witnessed; “going as fast as we were, and as sideways as you got, I can’t believe you saved it.”
The whole incident (from turn-in to barrier bump) took 3-4 seconds, but the critical moments in the ‘save’ (the time when the collaborative conversation and associated actions took place) happened in 0.5 seconds or less, but to me it felt slow-motion and calm. It really felt like each part of my consciousness (intellect and intuition, and maybe instinct too) knew what they and the others were good at, and each took the appropriate responsibility, shared information and just got the job done; got us out of the situation.
I still don’t know exactly why the car jumped sideways the way it did. I don’t think I did anything different than previous laps, especially different enough to cause the car to react that way, but who knows. Anyway, in addition to another glimpse into how my brain works when driving, the experience produced an epiphany regarding two things:
- It made me see (and feel) speed (the kinetic energy stored in the car) as a liquid that flows in waves through the car and into the tires until an energy equilibrium is achieved; then it flows back into the car (and hopefully not out the other side again).
. - It made me believe that there is no such thing as ‘over correction’. As I see slide correction now, ‘over correction’ is actually insufficient correction (or half correction) because of how energy moves through the car. Correcting a slide (at least a slide of any significant magnitude) is at least a two-stage process of: first getting in front of the initial energy wave (essentially putting a levee in front of it to stop it), and second, getting in front of the ‘rebound’ wave to stop it so that the car’s energy is once again stabilized within the chassis and tires. Also, the more significant the initial energy wave, the more quickly correction must be added to control the rebound wave. Ideally rebound correction should start before the rebound wave begins; that is, before the initial energy wave reaches equilibrium in the suspension/tire combination.