i recently found this windy road right off of my university campus...i am currently a senior, i can't belive it took me four years to find it. anyway, over the last few days i have been doing some runs on it. last night i went out and pushed it a little too hard...i took a really sharp turn and i think two wheels went off the road momentarily into some dirt losing traction at like 50. i skidded off the road to the right, threw the wheel to the left and skidded back onto the wrong side of the road, finally sliding back to stop in the middle of the road. luckily nobody else was on the road and me and my car were both fine. when i was coming back the other way i saw the skidmarks and couldn't believe what had happened. it led me to think about something...

i plan on getting an s4 in a few years and my drive in the a4 just scared the crap out of me. it made me think that if i had done the same thing in the s4, i probably would have been going twice as fast and it would have been disastrous. now, the fact that i don't have the sports suspension on my car and that i am only running 15" all seasons didn't help me last night, and thank goodness for quattro which surely saved me and my car. but this incident still made me think really hard about the idea of owning an s4. last night i really was driving carefully, and i felt like i had complete control of my car the whole time. i feel like i just wanna push the car to the limits to see what it can do. with an s4, i'll want to push it much harder, and at that point a problem might not end so well.

i don't want to hear about driving safe. i always drive safe and at no point did i think i was anywhere near losing control of my car. you all know what i mean about wanting to push your cars and i know there are people that push theirs much harder than i do. has anyone else had a close call like that, where you felt like you were in complete control and then you just totally lost it?

 

Yeah, it's always a gamble.

Have you thought about going to track days?

 

you shouldnt have taken the "really sharp turn" at 50.

that right there is a big mistake. especially with winter tires. you gotta slow down in the turns. the a4 is not a rally car.

learn how to handle the car in these conditions and then push it to the limit.

and most importantly make sure you have the proper setup for something like this.

just my 0.2

 

Not quite as bad, but here goes. My dad moved my seat around, but not enough for me to immediatly notice it. Anyway, I went and did a run on a nice twisty road. I was probably at about 4500rpms in 2nd, and was getting ready to slow down and shift down to first. Anyway, the torque of the high RPMs dropping rapidly with the clutch engagement combined with a downhill section and braking threw me forward in my chair and knocked my knee into the ignition, turning the car off. The RPMs dropped to zero, and I put it in neutral quick and let the clutch out and coasted through a tight hairpin with no power steering or brake booster. It took me a while to figure out why that happened, but I limped the rest of the run because I thought maybe the turn shifted the engine oil to one side and robbed the engine of oil.

Another time on a less windy road, I was taking a turn at a safe speed (traction wise), but felt uncomfortable. This was pretty early in my spirited driving experience and instictivly jabbed the brake to slow down. The car straightened out into the oncoming traffic lane for a second, then I jerked the wheel back towards my lane and fishtailed back into control. I didn't have any experience in situational awareness (wet ground, dry leaves, etc) and didn't realize that braking in a turn is a bad idea.

 

18t - yeah, i suppose i exaggerated a bit...the turn wasn't really sharp, but after what happened, in my mind i guess i feel like it had to be too sharp since because of what happened. basically what freaked me out the most is that i thought i was in total control... i didn't think what happened to my car would happen so easily.

 

Well you got it luckier then me. I was showing my brother the new car and took this corner in my neighbor hood. Not a sharp corner just very gradual turn o the right. Anyways I hit black ice, I lost traction, over corrected (my stupid mistake) 180'ed and landed in a ditch that i couldn't get out of. Luckily nothing major. A few small dents in the lower right side of the passanger door. But I thought i heard some front right wheel noise. Getting it checked up on in a week. (Earliest time i could get an appointment). Hopefully all is well and I can just get the dents sucked out. Be careful when its cold out. You never know when there will be some random black ice.

 

that already happened to me.

a couple of months ago i was driving in my school parking lot and i was testing my quattro's abilities, (i found out that quattro does NOTHING on ice) i hit a huge sheet of ice that was covered by some fresh powder and skidded about 100 feet on the ice straight up onto a curb. i didn't damage my suspension at all but i did 500 dollars of damage to my front passenger fender.

when i did that i realized it was completely idiotic.

but what scares me most about what this thread is about, is how in control of my car i thought i was and the fact that i was driving on a road. in the parking lot there was nobody else around and i was just being stupid. on the road, even though i was pushing it, i i really though was in control...i didn't feel like i was at the point where i should have questioned what i was doing.

i feel like if i lose control of my car, i should be able to look back and realize it was me being stupid or unreasonable. i really don't feel that way about what happened. it just popped up on me while i was driving. luckily the quattro and me staying very focused and throwing the steering wheel every which way to stay straight saved me.

it's really unsettling to think that i could just lose control at a time when i feel like i am in perfect control of my car.

 

Disastrous things can happen when different pavements meeeeeeeeet

 

You'll learn, i used to drive extremely fast, and got extremely good in the twisties with stage 3. Unfortuanlly,i had to learn the hard way, its only a matter of time

 

yup, i definetly thought i was just going to hug that corner, car didn't give me any sign of anything going wrong until i was going sideways. Pretty scary to think you ahve control then you lose it.