There’s some awesome fun to be had at track days, right? Getting out there in your car, ripping some laps, working on your cornering and braking techniques, etc. These are days where it’s not about racing, it is about getting faster, smoother, and better at driving and tuning your car. They’re the same as a test n tune day at the drags but with more lateral Gs. For some guys they’re an excuse to get out there and show the world just how fast and bad ass they are. This video is proof of one of those guys. Why? Because you are going to see a Porsche GT4 hurtle off course backwards at speed. The fact that this guy didn’t collect anyone else in the madness is a miracle.
We’re riding in what seems to be a Camaro and this driver is working the car around the course, making good speed. The car sounds awesome and we can see all the telemetry stuff on the screen which is cool. You’ll have to watch the video a couple of times because the wayward Porsche comes out of absolutely nowhere. One second it is there and the next second it’s gone.
It’s tough to discern what happened here but we’re going to guess that the driver wildly overcooked the straight and landed on the brakes, sending the car into a snap spin and that’s how it ends up hauling ass backwards off into the hinterlands. We were thinking about what it must have been like IN the car and it about made us sick. The feeling of moving this fast and out of control backwards? No thanks.
Press play below to see this wild reverse exist by a Porsche at Mid-Ohio –
The guy in the Porsche might-have been me trying to figure out my neighbor’s new PlayStation setup last weekend. I did such moves a number of times…
I used to work corners for club track days and the Porsche drivers were the worst. The cars far exceeded their driving abilities. Couldn’t tell them anything either as they knew it all. But you know what they say, big car…
Video author claims there was coolant on the track, and that the blue car just passed also spun. He got out of the racing line slightly to slow down, but the white Porsche driver didn’t.
It was only water. No coolant. I don’t think the white Porsche had any choice.
Blue car lost control and was inches from the wall on the right (before turn 7). Definitely went a bit sideways but obviously not this much. Car only hit 125 max at the 500 braking point.
i love to watch videos of “VolksWagen SuperSport” owners at club events!
Pretty terrible article seeing as how the in car footage from the flying car is also available & shows exactly what happened – just as the driver started touching the brakes, the rear end snapped around & game over. Driver actually did a remarkable job keeping themselves going straight (while going backwards) once they hit the grass & avoided a high speed impact into the wall. All things considered, I’d say they netted themselves the best possible outcome.
Root cause? Small coolant spill on the track. Asphalt on that particular corner is pretty well polished by a few years of splitters and whatnot scraping it, so even a little spill is bad. You can’t see any sign of the spill in any of the posted videos, so I’m betting the only hint would have been the driver in front of them slipping a bit in the braking zone & going off line (you can see that in this video). You can see the flagging station in this video just prior to the braking zone, but it doesn’t look like they were aware of the problem yet as there’s not flag.
My takeaway? There’s a reason why driving cars at high speeds is seen as dangerous – it’s because it is dangerous.