I managed to go faster at ICAR, but then I crashed, hard.

Last photo of the Civic before the crash

My last Tuesday at ICAR started out really well. It was vey hot, almost 30 degrees, but the Civic felt good. I was in the 1:14's in my first session, and in the next session, I bettered my lap record at ICAR, hitting 1:14.17, despite the heat. As I chatted with other drivers, I heard them say that they found the track was not gripping well and that their times were suffering. Despite this, I felt I had a real shot of getting down into the 1:13's that very evening. 

I had invited my friend Stéphane to drop by so he could check out the car. He recently bought a similar Civic with a B-series engine and was curious as to what was involved in a K-swap. He arrived just as I was heading out for my third session. After two laps, the session was red-flagged. We restarted after a few minutes and on my second lap out, disaster struck. As I was most of the way through the 90-degree right-hander onto the front straight, I felt something let go on the car and I almost immediately slammed sideways into the barriers along the beginning of the straight. I had time to realize I was going to crash, hard, and it did indeed feel like a major impact. I had the wind knocked out of me, but I was immediately pretty sure that I had not been seriously injured in any way. I felt my safety equipment had done its job. The ambulance came out and I got out of the car. I told them my ribs were hurting, as it had been a side impact and I had been pressed into the side of my seat during the crash. The car looked bad, and I could see what had caused the accident: the front left wheel had broken. The center of the wheel was still bolted to the hub, and the rest of the wheel was gone. The disc was all scraped from hitting the ground. 

The ambulance technicians looked me over and saw that my vital signs were good. I asked one of the ICAR employees to find my phone in the Civic, as it had come out of its cradle during the impact. The trim piece around the radio even came off. 

I had my phone and my wallet (I always keep it in the car when I'm on track, just in case) and the track ambulance techs called the city ambulance to take me to the hospital. Stéphane called to find out what had happened and I told him. He brought me my backpack with a change of clothes. He also agreed to take all of my tools and gear home. The car would be towed to somewhere out of the way on site. I called Alex as I waited for the second ambulance and she did a great job of remaining calm while I explained to her that I'd been in a crash and that I was being taken to the hospital. By this time, I had managed to find the data from my GPS app that showed my speed at the time of impact: 112 km/h. No wonder the hit had felt so hard.

The city ambulance arrived, and while switching from one to the other, I took a moment to change out of my race suit and into shorts and a fresh T-shirt. The drive to the hospital was about 15 minutes. At the hospital, when they heard it was a car crash, they put an uncomfortable foam collar around my neck, which I had to keep wearing for the rest of my visit. Alex came and joined me at the hospital and by the time she arrived, I had seen the ER doctor and had my X-rays. The doctor came in soon after and told me I had no visible fracture and that I could go home. He prescribed an anti-inflammatory and told me to take Tylenol for the pain. I was quite sore on my left side, but I was able to walk around without any issue. As Alex drove us home, I could see that the M3 engine was misfiring, but the code reader would not say on which cylinder. It was an intermittent misfire, so not a total failure of one of the coils. I was not really in any shape to change a coil on the side of the road, even though I had a spare and the tools in the trunk (I keep a kit to do exactly this job in the trunk now). We eventually got home and I began un uncomfortable night's sleep. The next day, I asked Steph if he had any photos of the damage, and he did:

Things were looking bad for the car, but I was in OK shape and just glad to be in one piece. The track season is over early but I still have a great summer ahead. To be continued.