Lost control on the burnout. Oops!

 

Must take lessons from the same guy

 

Ouch! That looked expensive.

 

I like hitting threads like this!..
Someone should post :Stupid Videos.What were they Thinking?
..and that 2nd video?,where was he driving?It looked like he hit a big patch of oil or something as that car came around just like "that"!..

 

Bahh, that bra did all the work :P

 

you need to get your rx7 tuned lol mine kicks its *** end out like that if I punch on it sometimes in 3rd gear. if i were to freak out and lock up my brakes that would probably happen

 

i love how they are laughing in the background in the first video lol

 

Seen what happened in the first video too many times. Second video, the one reason I won't really compete in autocross. Most parking lots are too small for the speeds achieved and its far too easy to end up in a light post or curb, as this video portrays.

As for why the corvette seemingly lost control all at once in the second vid, if you watch carefully there was a violent shifting of weight right before the spin, off the rear wheels and then immediately back on. It was as if the guy shifted to 2nd gear, which generally causes a car to do weird things in my experience.

 

It's easy to poke fun, but I cringe to see incidents like the second 'Vette in the autocross. To me, it doesn't look to me like he did anything particularly wrong, other than possibly try to power through the slide for a moment before getting out of the throttle. Which was all it took to run himself out of space.

It's hard to judge the dimensions of the lot, since I don't know how much zoom is being used, and so can't judge how much the depth is foreshortened, but it seems small-ish - and as a long-time course designer for my local club, I can say it is hard to accommodate big horsepower cars on all but the largest parking lots or preferably, airfields, which are hard to come by in Canada.

In this case, the course is (in retrospect) probably a little too close to the curbing - there is the depth of the stalls, usually about 5-6m, and the width of the aisle behind, likely also about 5-6m, before the curb. Solosport GCR's call for a minimum 8m clearance to obstacles parallel to the direction of travel, which in this case is clearly, if not hugely exceeded. However, if the lot was a little off camber (towards, or away from the curb - the spin, counter-intuitively, often starts on an off-camber away from the direction the car actually ends up going, as the rear gets loose on the off-camber, and the car ends up pointed at the obstacle - in this case the curb. Autoslalom/Solo regs also require that courses be designed such that street legal cars can't exceed 110kmh - which this car looked to be nothing close to, so I don't think excessive speed was the problem - rather, a combination of driver error, and possibly insufficient clearance to the curbing.

My club, running on my courses, had 3 such incidents 2-3 seasons ago, somewhat ironically after we had gained access to a larger, more open venue, which also saw more high performance sedans and sports cars come back out. One such saw a modded Subie WRX spin up a fairly steep slope, hit, and launch, over the curbing, and hit a tree on the passenger side while spinning in mid-air, which punched the driveaxle through the engine and transmission, leading to a fire from the crank and tranny oil sprayed on hot exhausts and turbos - the fire was quickly extinguished by marshals, and fortunately the driver wasn't hurt, but the car was a total loss due to the extensive body and mechanical damage. The driver acknowledged having tried to power through as the car got loose on the off-camber going away from the curbing - and my lesson was that, even though drivers love fast, flowing courses, and I as a designer want to maximize my use of the lot, I need to both slow them down with less distance between elements, and keep more like 20m between the intended car path and obstacles on faster parts of courses, and be aware of even small camber changes (inevitable in parking lots, as they need to drain water). And we now also emphasize at every driver's meeting for drivers to not try to be heroes - if the car is getting away from you, two feet in, brake and clutch, shut it down. Plastic trophies and bragging rights at the pub after the event aren't worth possible damage or injury - and we've not had further, even minor incidents for a couple seasons now.

Autocross really is probably the safest type of competitive motorsport, but that's not the same as saying no danger. And if you want to uncork your high horsepower car, you really just have to get it to a real track. You can have fun and test your's and your car's agility autocrossing, but the kind of horsepower seen on more and more cars means those cars are unlikely to fully exploit it on an autocross course.