I know you have good intentions, but your last two questions are not really relevant to the thread. Let's not criticize driving and focus more on the safety aspect and prevention of future injuries, regardless of driving.

 

last I checked driving is the best prevention of future injuries, especially when you're alone on track in a time trial. I'm not trying to say he's a bad driver (he's not), but that an improvement in technique would help avoid future accidents.

 

Definitely a high priority as well as better safety is to get the setup to where the cars balance/handling is consistant thru the life of a set of tires!

I had some setup problems thru the week and so I was kinda chucking the car and had turned the rear rebound to get the rear to rotate.

Where I messed up was putting on new tires and expecting to be able drive the same.

 

live and learn. The most important thing is that you're ok. I'm sure you'll get everything setup even better the second time around.

 

Speaking saftey gear, just think had you lost the wheel in the final turn at Road Atlanta! Without a cage you'd probably get a helicopter ride paid for by your insurance company. I did it recently on the street in the rain while yapping on the cell phone in my truck. Get use to using less countersteer.

 

Glad you're ok. Video can be a great tool to analyze what happened.

 

This^^^^

 

I'd be cautious saying it was "just a concussion", I'd personally take a broken bone over another concussion. The results are quite serious and the recovery period before feeling "right" again can be a long one, hopefully not the case for you.

A seat with a properly designed back mount like on the high end Racetechs would have served to maintain the alignment of the seat and prevented the impact of your helmet with the hardtop. Something to consider. Getting the seat down as low as possible on a solid base mount will also help, anything that can remove tolerance in your mounting system.

Some skid pad practice getting comfortable with recovering the car from high angle slides is worth while for those rare cases when you might contact fluids or something on the track that requires full lock and releasing the wheel to recover.
Otherwise I'd recommend maintaing hands on the wheel as opposed to the shuffle steer technique and catching the slides before they get to the point of requiring more than 180 steering wheel correction. Easy to say on a keyboard though, I've definitely induced enough slides that required more steer angle than that to correct.

 

Agreed, if safety is what we are talking about, then I feel it is very relevant to this thread.

Dan, you are very good driver, winding in/winding out the wheel as you feel the understeer/oversteer, but never let go of the wheel. I beat that in to my head in my early carting days. Clearly you have the talent to reel that spin in, and turn the situation only in to a minor "off track" excursion. If you committed to minimal steering angle (like Krazik said) with both hands on, your talent would have brought the car back.

Glad you are ok. That was pretty good lick, and one of the worst possible ways to go off. Anyway, +1 on the safety suggestions. And good luck!

P.S. looked like a really quick lap until then!

Cheers,

Nick

 

That was pretty crazy. Glad to hear you're ok. As far as emergency procedures go, I always thought it was good idea remove both hands from the steering wheel prior to impact to prevent any injury to the hands as the steering wheel may whip around with fairly high force? Is that true?