Track Day Report - 11/25/2011 - Calspeed Karting

This is what I get for posting late.  I don't remember that much about this day, and I've already gone to another practice session since then.  I'll have to post back-to-back reports now.

That day, we went to the Auto Club Speedway's karting circuit.  A course layout is here.  This was more of a horsepower track, and it was important to know which part of the track was grippy and which was not.  Track times changed a lot depending on the air and surface conditions.

I spent this day getting comfortable with driving the kart, and getting over the fear, much like the day before.  More importantly, spent this time trying to at least vaguely understand where the limits of the kart is.  Looking back, every minute of seat time was very valuable because I needed every bit of it to help me get more comfortable with the kart.

The memorable part of the day was when I crashed, crashed decently hard by karting standards.  It happened on the exit of turn 9, the "silk."  This corner has a lot of runoff space, and it can actually be taken at full throttle in my kart.  Well, I tried that, and thought I had nailed it.  I expected to use every inch of available space.  I noticed I might have misjudged it, and right when I glanced at the wall, my front left wheel just barely touched it.  The kart bounced off and it spun me so that I was pointing to the left, which changed the direction of my momentum.  I plowed into the tire wall hard.  My upper crotch went right into the steering wheel.

The damage?  Front left spindle bent (again), bearings inside front left spindle broken, left side tie rod broken, rod end broken, steering shaft bent.  We also discovered that the rear axle was bent at the next event.  I have no idea how the axle damage happened.

Lesson learned: never never never look at anywhere but where you want to be.