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.
Witnessing an Uphill Miata Crash at Lime Rock Park
This Mishap comes from our good friend, Torsten Gross. Torsten created the Just Hands Foundation, whose mission is to normalize hand-control driving. Just Hands provides equality for disabled individuals to participate in motorsports events by outfitting track cars with hand controls and safety equipment.
With cars at Lime Rock Park, Spa, Nurburgring, and more coming throughout this year, Just Hands Foundation is on a mission to make hand controls just another option at every track around the country. Torsten will be featured in an upcoming show on Amazon Prime, and you can see the trailer here.
In this Mishap, Torsten’s camera captures the moment the Miata just ahead of him crested a hill and darted off course (around 36 seconds into the clip). Check it out!
Video courtesy of Torsten Gross. The video content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only.
2 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:
- Torsten shares that this crash at Lime Rock Park happened toward the end of the day. That’s not uncommon. As an event progresses, drivers tend to get fatigued, and mistakes become more frequent. Always be aware of your physical and mental state, and if you are tired, it’s always best to either back off a bit (6/10ths instead of 8/10ths) or even skip the final session.
- “The Uphill” at Lime Rock is a famous turn that has gotten the best of many drivers. In corners like this, it is important to reduce the lateral load on the car and tires before the car gets “light” going over a hill. This driver likely had a bit of lateral load when cresting this hill and may also have had some steering input still applied when they “landed” on the other side of the hill. Once the car regained grip, there was little the driver could do to correct this type of situation. Fortunately, the driver was okay and walked away with no injuries.
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.