I keep it under control if I am unfamiliar with the road....just to avoid this type of butt-puckering situation.

 

Just brake while the steering's straight, then turn, and thank god you didn't crash ... and drive slower next time

 

I said this was hypothetical. It hasn't happened to me so far. It's just one of the things that I'm afraid of when driving fast on unfamiliar roads. In real life I would never take a 35 mph corner faster than about 50-55 mph unless I was familiar with the road.

 

I found that GPS works well for canyon carving in unfamiliar territory. You can "see" what turns lie ahead and how sharp the angles are. It helps with planning your lines.

 

its funny that someone posted this situation, cause this happened to me a few months ago, here in va. almost same exact layout, same speeds and all. the sharper turn came up so fast!!! i braked just a bit, but at the last second, tail end came out, and as lucky as i was, i corrected it perfectly. from that moment, my driving habits have completely changed, and now i have vsa this happened in my old 03.

 

This is a good suggestion for unfamiliar roads but the few times I've taken my Garmin GPS on runs I haven't used it while driving because there's no way it would stay in a stationary position to use it!
A good thing to do is a surveillance run at 'normal' speeds so you know what to expect.

 

I got to thinking about the hypothetical question and I can't remember ever seeing what amounts to a decreasing radius turn with different speed limits posted as you went through the turn. If 25MPH was the slow speed limit that would be posted up front. That type of turn is very hard to drive fast even on a race course and I suppose a some people have trouble driving a varying radius corner at any speed. Most corners seem to be designed with a constant radius when they can be.

In any event I think you're taking a chance on any public road driving that hard particularly if you're not familiar with the road and you can't see. How do you know that somebody won't be over the line and in your lane or some gravel in the corner? IMO you've just got to have some handling left so you can avoid and or brake for the unexpected situation.

 

Similar thing happened to me this weekend.

I was on my way to a small cottage in the rural part of Iceland for the weekend. The road was a little bit icy and I was driving around the national speed limit, around 55 mph, and it was dark outside. I hadn't driven that road for mayber 4 or 5 years and a little tired after working for about 14 hours that day. I was driving my father in laws BMW X3 and I suddenly saw that there was a sharp turn ahead so I slammed the brakes not hard but firmly and when I entered the turn I was going about 50 maybe 60 km/h. Managed to stay on the road by tapping the brake and gas pedal. Nice sideways action during the night and sweaty palms afterwards, would have been heaps of fun if it was planned and if my girlfriend wasn't in the passenger seat. But then again if it was planned I might not have made that turn. Adrenaline is either your friend or foe.

Next time I'm going to put on studded tires.

 

clawhammer Posted on Dec 10 2006, 05:48 PM
Then the best answer is: "Don't drive fast on unfamiliar roads" followed by "Take advanced driving school lessons or attend to track days to learn how to react"

This is what happened to me in these corners.

First lap ever on that track, on cold S-02's, straight out of the pits.
The pits is where the blue is on the left.
The yellow corner went allright, the blue one I entered way to fast and barely made it, was afraid to brake to hard and never figured the worst was yet to come.
In the pink corner I spun at the arrow and did a 180, no damage, just my ego.

After a couple of laps on warmed-up (= HOT ) S-02's it went better and better and secuence of corners turned out to be a great challenge.
I guess the speed I went through them by the end of the day (after 33 laps) was as high or higher then at the time of the spin in the first lap.
I did drift a bit a couple of times exiting the pink corner, but I didn't spin anymore there.

Getting to know your car is good.
Getting to know the road you drive on is much better.
Be carefull not to get over-confident.

 

definitely don't step on the brakes unless you can do it in such a controlled manner and that you can recover any slide that comes from braking.