I forget the exact circumstances of my first experience, but I’m pretty sure it was during qualifying for a race weekend at Laguna Seca… it was probably the race I did to qualify for the 1981 Russell Formula Ford Festival. Anyway, I was driving down the hill towards the right-hander that is now turn 10 (was turn 8). As I approached the turn, the yellow flag came out and I could see a car off the track at the exit, driver’s right. With my whole family being corner workers, I had respect for the flags, so I slowed down significantly before entering the turn. I moseyed down to the apex, and then I fell asleep, or went into a time warp, or something because when I ‘woke up’ I was at the exit of the turn. Well, not exactly the exit; I was about 10+/- feet to the left of the exit bounding trough the dirt. As I was regaining my orientation, I remember glancing right, toward where I was supposed to be, thinking “what the hell.”
Then I realized that, my hands, of their own volition, were flying back and forth on the wheel, gathering things up. Apparently they must have been doing so since the drama had started; while I was out to lunch. I realized that the car was basically under control (as much as you can be on dirt); running parallel to the track and gradually slowing. When I realized things were under control, then there was this kind of an automatic hand-over; but it wasn’t like ‘me’ taking over, it was like something inside of me (or some part of me) saying “OK dude, I’ve saved the day, now you can bring us back onto the track. As I was doing that, the first thing that went through my mind was “crap, I’m going to get in trouble for over driving the yellow”, but then I saw the big stripe of oil heading down the track to the next turn. Apparently a car had lost a plug out of the gearbox and spread gear oil all through the turn.
At the time, I just thought ‘oh, that was interesting.’ However, in retrospect, I think that the instantaneous and massive mismatch between reality, and my pattern recognition model of the turn left my intellect disoriented; trying to piece together why I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, where I currently was, and how I got there. In the mean time, my intuition, recognizing that intellect was useless at the moment, and needing to diffuse the situation quickly, took complete control until my intellect was ready to get back with the program.