idealrides

I was just out driving my WRX on my favorite road at 1 a.m., going about 45mph around a fairly tight left turn, at maybe 8/10ths adhesion.

Then I get a Wrangler flying towards me, smack in the middle of the road. There's a streetlight right on the corner so I didn't see his headlights coming around the turn. He starts understeering as he tries to avoid me. I barely avoided dropping my right tires off the road by getting really close to him, but after we pass each other with inches to spare as I'm getting away from the shoulder I got a large dose of snap oversteer, so I countersteer straight down the road, turning the wheel maybe 180 degrees, and she snaps over to the other side, I correct and do a little wiggle as I straighten out. By then I'm going probably 25mph.

This has happened before in this car, and also happened in my S4 a few times. I've done some driving schools, autoX and rallyX events, which probably explains why I've never wrecked in one of these situations... but...

Is this a handling phenomenon or did I dial in too much countersteer? What am I doing wrong? (aside from the obvious... driving like an *** on public roads)

Thanks

Geza

more qualified than me to answer that question, but here goes mine.

1) Keep you eyes focused on where you want to go - presumably straight down the road.
2) Smoothly add throttle - sounds like you were coasting if you slowed to 25mph. This will transfer weight, thus grip to the rear tires. Also, all wheel drive doesn't help you when you are coasting like a rollerskate.
3) Doing 1 and 2 above will automatically reduce the amount of counter-steer your brain wants your hands to add.

mirth

Most driver training manuals teach you to follow these three steps:

Catch -- a very abrupt steering input to catch the slide

Pause -- to let your input take effect; add throttle gradually

Recover -- once it's clear that you've caught the slide, start bringing the steering wheel back straight. Done right, you'll smooth out the release of all the potential energy built up by skidding sideways, and you won't snap back at all.

One other note -- it's also worth asking yourself what caused the slide in the first place. I obviously wasn't there, and one can only read so much into your description. However, the way you described getting in the rough stuff on the side of the road sounds a lot like a 'two wheels off' situation at the track, where the last thing you want to do is upset the car by trying to steer it back on the road. in cases like that, where you're not yet sliding, you want to find a way to gradually reduce speed without upsetting the car, and without yet trying to bring it back on the higher-traction surface. This means minimal steering input, and very gradually easing off the accelerator. Then, once you've slowed down, you can steer back on the road.

Skids like that are caused because your outer wheel has so little traction that you have to give it a lot of steering input to get it to go back on the road; but once you get it back on the road, the gripper surface causes the front wheel to suddenly bite while the back wheel still has less grip, sending you into a spin.

juliem

when it doubt, both feet out - when in a spin, both feet in - clutch, brake NOT gas

Here's another : CPR - correct, pause, recover ie you turned to far, undo it - check to see if the new input is correct to stop the 'wrong' motion, then recover yourself and the car

The "eyes where you want to go" advice is good. Same with smooth - it sounds like you over corrected on the first countersteer..

just my penny's worth

juliem

i just type slow...

John/TSR

...and lots of practice.

As mentioned by previous posters, you've got to learn to 'feel' when the slide is about to stop (the 'catch' part), and then learn how to softly 'land' it (the 'recovery' part). A wet skid pad is the best place to learn it. You'll learn more in 4 hours on a wet skid pad than you'll learn in 20 days of HPDE/open track events.

The 'neck-snapper' part of the slide recovery is easy to explain. In the initial part of the slide, the "slide-side" rear tire (the one that's closest to the direction you're sliding) loads up (compresses) its suspension. The other side unloads. You've compressed the spring on one side and stretched the spring on the other. Lots of potential energy has been stored in the springs. When the slide starts to 'catch', all that energy has to go somewhere. SPROING. If you add up all the vectors, it's probably all aimed at your neck, hence the 'neck-snapper'. Your goal is to give the car inputs that allows that energy to release as slowly as possible. Having fast hands and 'the feel' for the 'catch' and 'recovery' is really neat, once you learn it. It allows you to do all sorts of stupid things with the car, and get away with it.

Just be happy you can learn this in a car. The motorcycle equivalent of this is known as a "high-side", where the bike spits the rider into low Earth orbit. I have a very funky shaped collarbone that is my proof that this is easier to control in a car than on a bike.

Mark Dalen

Throttle steering works great when you are in control of the car and want a little change in attitude. When you are out of control and trying to catch the car, throttle is a bad idea. It is very likely that the extra power will take away far more grip than the weight transfer will add. Having done quite a few hours on wet skidpad, I can tell you that throttle is great when you pitch the car in a corner and balance it, but it is a disaster to try to use as a recovery tool.

What gets you in these is that the correction comes too slow and the car is already unloading for the direction shift when you are correcting. When the car moves you are still correcting, but now it is the wrong direction and the car snaps back the other direction, even further. That will keep it up until you completely lose it, or make your opposite correction before the car even starts to come back. (In other words, the tail comes out to the left and you steer left. Before the car stops the leftward slide, you change to right steering and the car will come back to center.)

Wet skidpad time will help greatly. If you can do this in a purpose built racecar with limited steering lock, it will also teach you to use very fast hands. (You will keep hitting the lock at first and lose the car. Then you start to understand that you have to be very fast to catch it before it is gone.)

Look where you want to go is excellent advice. I read one thread where the author crashed into a wall and didn't understand why looking where he was going didn't help him avoid the crash.

NASA racer

that's the key...you have to "over" correct initially (but just as quickly get it back into rational counter-steering) and get the whole thing "tamed" before it gets away...there's no catching up...you have to be ahead of the car the whole time to save it.

mirth

That's the primary thing you have to catch. the rest is about recovering from your abrupt input... which absolutely takes fast hands and anticipation, as others have said.

Jeff Vader - boscoj

let go of the wheel?