Jesus May Not Take The Wheel, But This Instructor Will… Briefly
Here’s a little Saturday fun. Take one hugely confident, low-skill driver with a CTS-V. Load the car up with mods that range from the unnecessary (headers) to the dangerous (wacky-ass, incorrectly-installed shoulder belts) to the absent (track-ready brake pads or fluid). Let him pass a few people in a Novice session so he’s ready to GO FAST. Then add in an instructor who takes the wheel to prevent what he feels will be a dangerous crash and points the car into another one. The crash starts at 1:23 if you’re impatient. Click the jump to hear what I have to say about touching the student’s wheel… and the one time I did it during a crash.
In any discussion among driving instructors, bringing up the subject of touching the student’s steering wheel is a sure-fire way to raise a fuss. I’ve heard many intelligent arguments on both sides of the issue. My position is this: I always warn the students that I may adjust their steering gently if they fail to heed my visual cues. Usually, this takes the form of manually “unwinding” the wheel for them when their street-driving-educated minds just won’t let them do it to a proper degree. Once they see me do it a few times, they usually start applying the correct degree of steering themselves. If I haven’t warned the student in advance, I don’t do it. In general, however, it is an effective tool if you use it with commitment. That means that once you begin controlling the wheel, you keep control of it until the student knowingly resumes full control. Sounds simple right? Well, I’ve seen situations in which:
- The instructor reaches over to adjust the steering
- The student lets go of the wheel
- Having made the adjustment, the instructor lets go
- The unpiloted vehicle exits the track to the outside of the corner
Oops. Now let’s talk about what happens in this video: the student has a brake failure. He wants to go off the track one way. The instructor disagrees, so he reaches over, wildly shanks the wheel around, then huddles in the seat until impact. That’s absolutely wrong. Once the instructor intervenes, he needs to address the situation to its conclusion.
This is my story about a similar incident: I was with a very fast, very competent student in a Z06 at Autobahn Country Club. He was doing about 140 on the back straight when he pumped the brakes and got no response. He tried to take into the grass sideways at about 125mph. See the diagram below. The red line was the one he thought he could follow. The blue line was the line I had intended for us.
Seems like a long way, right? Trust me, at 100+ mph it’s over in a hurry. I straightened the car as we exited the track by reaching over with both hands, knocking his hands off, and steering off straight. Why didn’t I want the car to exit the track at an angle? Let’s watch Antonio Pizzonia as he shows us why not:
Hoo-boy, Pizzonia sucks. Watch him crank the wheel AGAIN after leaving the track. That might work in an F1 car. Not in a street car. When you leave the track sideways in a street car, particularly when the ground is uneven, you roll. It’s that simple.
Screaming through my helmet, I told my student, “IF WE TURN WE ROLL!” Two car lengths before the tire wall, I took my hands off and folded them in my lap. We struck at about 40mph. The nose of his Vette was pretty well ruined, I must say, but we were both completely uninjured. Like the student in this video, he disagreed with me about being able to “save it”, so I sent him the Pizzonia link in an email the following day and that seemed to calm him down. Too bad I didn’t have this one to send him. This is a 350Z going off sideways at Mid-O:
and this is what happened after the camera died:
Bad stuff, for sure. Never forget, kids, this track stuff can get serious in a hurry.
What’s the lesson from all these videos:
- Make sure your car can stop as well as it accelerates.
- If you need to go off, go off straight.
- Any money you spend on your helmet is probably money well spent.
That’s it!
More by Jack Baruth
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Editor, Please don't use the Name of the God Jesus for your title. This hurts people. If you can change it please do. Thank you.
Wow, Antonio Pizzonia is a hack. I doubt that move would have worked on an F1 car and it was just painful to watch. Glad no one was hurt - especially with their unprotected melons just asking for it. I don't think an instructor should ever take the wheel unless the driver is really screwing up, ignoring verbal instruction, and the instructor is sure he can fix the problem just by steering. If you take the wheel of my car and we hit something, I'm gonna be pissed at you. It's very hard to say what happened here because the video of the crash doesn't show the track at all. But the earlier part shows that this driver is pretty good. His lines are good and he seems fast and smooth. But brake failure is a bitch. All any driver can do then is keep the car as straight as possible to avoid rolling and assure that if there is going to be an impact the car should hit nose first. Here the instructor yanks the wheel to the right, and the car seems to spin in that direction and hits on the side. I would say the instructor screwed up badly. Looking back on my track days, I think it should have been emphasized more that if you go off you must straighten out the wheel as you leave the asphalt. "Two feet in" I heard plenty, and that's easy, but straightening the wheel when you're going off due to understeer/too much speed is a bit counter intuitive and should be drilled into novice drivers.