[Rich]

As good as making Cobras safer sounds, I think that's looking in the wrong direction. I'm not presuming to know the facts surrounding the fatal Cobra accident last weekend, but I do know this subject comes up about once a year and that’s way too often. In the main thread about the accident someone said, "…simply dropped two wheels off on the shoulder and spun when he pulled back onto the road". That may or may not be what happened and we’ll never know for sure. Whatever the case, it doesn’t hurt to reiterate the importance of driver situational awareness.

One of the first lessons learned in any racing school is that if you go off the pavement, don't jerk the wheel in an effort to get back or you're likely to go shooting sideways across the track. Instead, ride it out and gradually pull back onto the road surface. So far I haven’t had the opportunity to test this out, but I have had two drivers pull this stunt in front of me at speed. The first time was a sideways Alfa GTV that missed taking me out by inches. The second was a 914 that spun all the way across the track into the infield. Six years later I can still visualize both these incidents like it was yesterday.

If you’re driving a Cobra, you’re operating a thinly disguised, or in some cases, undisguised racecar. It never ceases to amaze me how people will spend $20-300K on a Cobra and not fork out another $600 to learn how to operate it safely. Everyone, do yourself and your loved ones (and our insurance premiums) a favor and get some high performance driver training and please, be careful.

Rich