The Westcoast bites back!

Mitsubishi EVO 6 - 2.3L Stroker 550hp - Quaife sequential - MCA gold without canisters - E85

10k Run in and 10k out, first time navigating with notes, fresh navigator with zero experience. No Problem! 3x timed runs, no problems, lots of near misses, lots of laughs... Notes were dropped, notes were recovered, epic piece of road. On the return run of run 2, notes were lost and the call for caution was aired through the comms. I think I said something like, ''I got this!'' Actually, a good 6 corners earlier I think the response was, this is how it's done! Anyway, a corner that looked like a 6 tightened into a 4, was too late to change cars attitude, just had to boot it and hope it'll came around... It didn't, we chucked the rear end over the side and ran square sideways into a small but sturdy tree. Are you OK Mark, I said, yes, he claimed, but it wasn't over. We were wedged up against the tree and the ass end of the car was hanging over a 60-degree bank, roughly 60m deep down to a river below. I had my foot on the brake, but the car started sliding backwards down the bank and we became passengers. It was a fairly dense part of the forest, but we cleaned out everything in our way except for and lucky for us, a knarly as tree. We hit that squarely backward and came to a stop. This time Mark wasn't that calm and after claiming to be OK and not being able to open his door, proceeded to try and climb over me to get out of my door. We got out and was immediately worried that if another car would come down the same route, we'd be toast! The only way to get back up the bank was to traverse diagonally as it was seriously steep! We managed to get to the top and walked back to a marshal point to about 2km back to notify them of our indiscretions.

My initial thoughts were holy shit, I did not realise there was such a steep bank on the outside of that corner, you just couldn't see it. I probably would've been a little more careful if I knew. There's definitely a feeling of utter disappointment but at the same time, quite happy not to be hurt and that the navigator is still in one piece.

We were not hurt at all luckily. Mark said he had a bit of a knock from the initial sideways impact but nothing serious. The seats have wrap-around head protection so that really helped.

We had to wait until the event finished so we drove down to the nearest town for some liquid courage. The only truck that was large enough to pull us out was a few towns away, so we started organising that. She wasn't going to be cheap! The guys were really professional and managed to pull the car out without causing any more damage. It was quite impressive how strong the front factory hook was, you could basically hang the car from it.

I'm not sure if other drivers feel the same but I definitely take a little bit of time to understand what happened and try to make sense of what I could've done differently. This generally plays on my mind for a while but getting back behind the wheel as soon as I can works wonders.

The car was towed directly to a friend's house where it was straightened on a chassis plant and fixed up. Mark and I painted it.

Couple things I've learned, always take extra care when your navi loses their notes and slow it down until you have sufficient experience.