What can you learn from another driver’s mistakes? A lot! Lockton Motorsports is sharing Motorsports Mishaps to help everyone have better days at the track.
How to Make a Smoke Screen Like a Ninja (to Hide Your Spin)
This Mishap comes from Zexia, who was participating in a HPDE event at Road Atlanta — one of our favorite tracks!
Like all drivers at Road Atlanta, he was focused on getting a good exit out of Turn 7. Since this turn leads onto a very long straight, it’s a critical one to get right. But a little problem at Turn 6 resulted in a full spin at Turn 7.
Fortunately, Zexia avoided contact, injury and damage. After kicking up a little dust, he was back on his way. Check it out!
Video courtesy of Zexia Li. The video content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only.
4 Lessons to Learn From This Mishap
When Lockton Motorsports’ Ryan Staub isn’t leading our HPDE Insurance program, he’s at the track, where he is a veteran HPDE instructor. Ryan shares what we can learn from this incident:
- Exiting Turn 6, Zexia was carrying a lot of momentum and struggling for traction. We often see situations where a driver gets a little “out of sorts” in a corner, mostly gets the car back under control, but then has an issue in the next corner. Keep this in mind. Drop your speed a bit until you are confident that you’re back on line and in the zone.
- The turn-in point looked good going into Turn 7, but Zexia used a bit too much of this apex’s aggressive curb for his throttle application — a fairly common mistake at HPDE events. In general, it’s best to avoid using apex curbing on this type of corner.
- When his countersteer didn’t stop the spin, Zexia wisely went “both feet in” — clutch and brake. This likely helped him avoid contact with the wall. Too often, drivers will try to save an unsavable situation and end up in a “tank slapper” that leads to a hard impact with a wall.
- Zexia has a great sense of humor about the situation! He was very quickly able to bring the car to a stop and get back on the track. Ninja skills indeed!
How to Prevent Your Own Motorsports Mishap
Worried about having your own Motorsports Mishap? Make sure your car is protected at your next HPDE or track day event with HPDE Insurance from Lockton Motorsports.