So, on Saturday, I had my first track day at Reno-Fernley. Its a great track! 23 turns, 4.1 miles; its pretty awesome. What isnt awesome is brake failure. Brake failure is when those things that slow your car down decide not to work. You charge up the hill and right when you need to stop for turn 8, your pedal goes dead. You step down and the pedal goes straight to the floor. Nothing.

I must admit, however, that I reacted exactly how I was trained to. I think most people would have tried to make the turn. If i had done that, I would have flipped the suby. Instead, I put the car straight into the dirt. And thats when things got bumpy, literally.

The first thing i came across when I left the track was a ditch. The ditch put my car in the air, and upon landing, blew out my front suspension. As I continued to plow through the dirt, a rock tore off my dust guard. That exposed my oil pan. Something under there started leaking, and I dumped oil all over the place. My exhaust set the grass and sage brush on fire, melting my passenger side skirt and burning my door.

The track officials extinguished the mess and a friendly, fellow suby driver trailered my car off the track and into the paddock. As of now, my baby sits at Reno-Fernley, waiting for me to return to pick her up. And now what you've all been waiting for:

 

pay to play?

 

wow, sorry to hear that. Stock brakes? Lines? Etc? Details.

 

pretty much.

no, i have SS lines, H6 upgrade in the rear, Racing brake slotted rotors.

 

I heard about this, sorry to see it happen but it could always have been worse like you said.

Bet you won't buy kragen pads next time eh?

 

no way, but sometimes when you are in a bind, you do what you gotta do. on the good side, my porterfields are here now, LOL

 

damn,so sad to hear that

 

Kragen pads FTL.

 

Eep, I saw your car sitting there on Sunday. Hope it all works out.

 

Don't know if you remember me but you were my instructor at my first track day at Thunderhill in June or July (it was Miata day, iirc).

Sorry to see your car in such a state. Hope you get it back on the track soon. Good luck.

Andrew

 

You probably could have gotten better pads from Summit Racing in Reno, FWIW...

Could've been much worse though. They red-flagged the course when I was on the main straight. I saw someone in the paddock point towards the hill and saw a column of smoke from where you were. Hope you get the car fixed soon!

- Tam

 

Debbid,

Do you know who the blue wrx was with the carbon wing and STi motor?

 

Sorry to hear about the car. It is a good thing that you were not hurt. metal is metal and paint is paint but "flesh" body work is much more difficult/bad/painful.

Were you in the Evo or the Miata?

I've never been in a red flag situation before, always full course yellow or corner station yellow. When they have something really bad happen it goes Black ALL. Red=pull safely over to a stop in NASA flagging rules, right?

 

Tam drives the red canadian evo.

 

So the OP is a NASA instructor? I guess racing incidents happen to the best of them. I saw a honda in a wall at Seca with an instructor on-board.