10-23-2005, 10:31 PM
It was the first session on Saturday, after some heavy rain Friday night. Chad and I stayed up late changing out my pads and rotors and I decided to keep the Pirellis on the car for the next day instead of putting on the Hankooks (which I thought would have been worse in the rain). We got through the warmup lap pretty well. I seemed to have pretty good control despite the rainy conditions. On the next lap, I went into turn 1 pretty cool (about 100 mph) but still didn't have the stopping power I needed and went off course. No problem though. However, for the rest of the lap, I felt like I had NO control at all of the rear end. I should have limped to the pit, but instead I came down the roller coaster and entered 17 at probably 55 mph or so. If you know where I'm talking about, there's a little dip if you come into 17 too tight and instead of trying to adjust by opening the wheel a little, I pinched it even more, lost my tail and 360'd into the inside guard rail. The only reason I didn't flip around and hit it with the rear was the bumper got caught in the guard rail and the force of having it pulled off along with the spin slowed me down enough that I avoided that. Lesson learned about driving in the wet.
John
John