Common Causes of Spins, Off-Tracks and Crashes

The Mother Cause: Building Confidence Without References

The mother cause of most crashes is building too much confidence without building any references, without building a system that you're going to follow to approach the limit in a safe way. Obviously if you got this course you're literally learning this system right now so you don't have to worry too much about that.

A more clear description of this problem is: you're under the limit, you're building confidence but you're not really sure how you're approaching that limit and then at some point you're going to go over the limit and you don't really know how to deal with it.

Common Crash Causes and Prevention

1. Too Much Speed on Entry

The second most common cause of crashes is simply too much speed. You carry too much speed on entry and there's nothing you can do. If you go over the point of no return you are going off. The car is not going to be capable of slowing down anymore. If you try to rotate you spin, if you try to brake you just brake and go off because you're just carrying way too much speed. This is again why it's so important to have the references earlier and build up your speed progressively.

2. Fixed Radius on Exit with Tight Hands

Accelerating and keeping your hands too tight towards the exit expecting the car to do that consistent circular fixed radius arc on the exit is a common mistake. If the car is already at the limit the car is supposed to spiral out. If you don't remember that and you try to do a fixed radius on the exit the car is going to gain speed and then it's going to go over the limit and you're going to spin.

The solution is very easy: as soon as you get back on power relax your hands—not necessarily unwind yet, just relax your hands—and then start talking to the car as it's trying to spiral out and get you to the exit.

3. Turning In Too Early

Turning in too early leads to understeering off on the exit and going off track or spinning at the very late exit. Remember the workload distribution has to be 50/50. If you turn in way too early you're not rotating 50% of the corner on 50% of the corner's length and then you're going to have to rotate way more than that on the exit and the car might not be capable of dealing with that.

4. Not Turning Enough Mid Corner

Not turning enough mid corner is another common issue. Remember mid corner closer to the lowest speeds—that's your opportunity to rotate the car as much as you can because that's the safest moment to do so. When you get back on power your speed is going to increase and you're going to be able to rotate less. Also on entry when you're still starting to turn in the car is still fast, still accelerating, so your rotation should be building up.

Remember: maximum rotation point, that changing point between closing spiral and open spiral—that's where you rotate the car the most and then you branch out of that point towards the extremes of the corner.

5. Turning In Late and Forcing the Apex

Another very common cause of crashes is turning in a little bit too late and then hyper obsessing about the apex and forcing your car all the way to the apex even though it's already not going to be capable enough. Remember: if you turn in too late you have to abort the apex and you have to just do whatever you can do to stay on track, but you won't have the opportunity to get the apex in this lap—it'll be the next one if you turn in a little bit earlier.

6. Turning In While Trail Braking with Tight Hands

Turning in while trail braking with tight hands is a critical mistake. Sometimes the tiniest amount of trail braking is going to multiply your steering effectiveness by 10. You turn a little bit, as soon as you touch the brakes if you don't adjust your steering that's going to throw the car into spin very quickly. That is why we're going to obsess so much about that in the simulator exercises, making sure you develop that very very precise steering to be able to trail brake into the corners without inducing any crazy snaps.

7. Late Turn-In with Forced Steering

This is actually a related cause to the previous one. When you turn in late and you really want to get to the apex, you forget to relax your hands and you force the car more than it's capable. That's pretty much the same effect—you're just inducing oversteer by accident. That is why in one of the exercises we're going to induce understeer on purpose so that you can really develop that feeling. If you can cause it you can also prevent it.

Video Analysis and Feedback

If you have any crash or spin or an incident and you have a video, you can share that with me and I will give you a detailed analysis on exactly what happened and how you can fix it and prevent it from happening in the future. Now I'm going to analyze and detail the actual causes of each of these videos that my students sent me and we're going to learn from them.