yes, it is 5 pm all around the world

to conclude my recap of blackhawk, i woke up early on sunday morning watching married with children on tv. i got ready and checked out of the stupid-8 motel, filled up with gas, and headed back to the track.

my first session of the day went fine and afterwards i went for a ride in my instructor's evo 8 during his session in rungroup 2.

i've never been inside an evo before, but they are pretty plain as far as interiors go. three small gauges for coolant temp, battery, and boost are on the center console above a single din radio. some basic heat/ac dials and a digital clock in the center of the dashboard. the seats felt pretty supportive and you sit a bit sunken in them, which was good. my instructor, brian, said he didn't have any mods "other than 3 stickers."

we were behind a modded wrx most of the session and through the carousel it was interesting to watch the back wheels on the wrx drive differently than the front ones. i would watch the boost gauge on the evo to see how brian was modulating the throttle. it hits ~1.3bar pretty quickly.

entering turn 3, brian commented to me that he had cooked the brakes, so he started to slow down through 4 and 5. i'm not sure if he got some pedal feel back or what, but he wasn't really slowing down for turn 7. at about ~70mph we were approaching the turn pretty fast with no brakes and he said "we're going off" and we did just that.

we ran right off the track and were headed straight for the 5-foot high weeds that surround the track. brian held the wheel straight as we mowed down the tall grass and small bushes as the car bounced off the uneven terrain and bottomed out on small mounds of dirt. we left the track in what seemed to be a split second, but it felt like we were driving through the weeds forever.

eventually we came to a stop and brian put the car in reverse and started to back up, but we weren't really going anywhere. he shut off the car and we decided to get out and look at the damage to the car. as i opened the door, i had to push it against all the weeds that were surrounding us standing taller than the car's roof. we walked to the front and saw some oil on the grass which brian thought might have been from a cracked oil pan. the passenger side fender liner had completely ripped off and was laying in the grass. i picked it up and noticed it had an "evo 7" manufacturer sticker on it for some reason.

after we surveyed the damage, we looked back through our path of destruction and actually realized how far we had driven off track. we could see the tow truck coming our way as we walked the 100 feet or however far it was back to the track. brian collected more pieces of the bottom of his bumper that had ripped off, including a carbon fiber lip that had been completely cracked. the tow truck backed up and we pulled the hook all the way back out to his car and hooked it up in the back. brian got in to steer and as i walked behind the front of the car as it backed out and watched it drag more things under it. the plastic trays under the car were completely bent backwards and being pulled under the car. his front-mount intercooler had a big dent in the bottom of it and the hood had a lot of scuffs on it.

eventually the car was completely out. we were a bit worried that we'd be leaking oil on the track, so they towed the car in the grass and then hopped across the track quickly to let it sit in a grassy area off to the side of the pits. there was no more oil leaking, so i'm not really sure where that oil had come from that was on the grass where the car initially stopped. brian said his oil cooler had probably been broken.

after that ordeal, i walked back to my car and brian called mitsubishi roadside assistance for a flatbed truck to take the car back to chicago. i skipped my next session and got some food, then had brian sign me off to go solo and drove the next two sessions by myself.

there was one session left for the day and they were combining rungroups, but i was a bit tired and wanted to go out on a positive note, so i packed up and headed out at around 4.

all in all a great weekend and some rather exciting agricultural excursions. the tires and brakes held up great all weekend and the car felt really neutral through the turns.

i assembled two videos from my footage:

• video one - 18.5mb, me doing a hot lap and then going off track in turn 4
• video two - 90.3mb, a compilation of me passing a bunch of cars and some slow-motion of a neon srt4 almost rolling over, also in turn 4

both are encoded with divx. right-click, save as...