Thanks for all the input on fixing the car!
About what happened, the slide began when I ran over the black rubber base left behind after the barrels/sticks had been knocked down earlier in the session. You can see it in the video if you look for it. I came in a little hot, and seeing no barrel/sticks in the way I did not lift or fight it, putting me a little deeper than usual. This is a very common situation with the barrels and driving into the runoff like that. I have never had a problem with that before, but this time it sent my car skidding. It looks like I caught the skid, but not with enough road to avoid going off track. Unfortunately Mike was stopped out there directly in the path. I went two feet in when it looked like contact was inevitable.
I have thought about what I might have done differently. I could have gone both feet in immediately at the beginning of the spin. If you look at my vector at that point, I'm pretty sure I would have still slid into Mike, but going backwards. Another approach would have been to not brake after I caught the car and continue to try to drive it. Maybe I could have affected the path sufficiently to go across Mike's bow instead of contact. But it would have upped the stakes with a much greater impact velocity had we hit. And I didn't know where Mike was going, especially as Mike was rolling forward slowly.
Obviously, the best approach would have been to avoid going into the runoff. I certainly would have done that if there was a yellow. But I think I made a reasonable decision given the lack of a yellow. Then had I spotted the base, I could have avoided it, although we run over those things all the time without this much drama.
I'm not sure why the T14 stand (at the end of the straight) was not displaying a yellow. Mike said that the turn worker was displaying it earlier, but took it down. I sent an Email to head of flagging to follow up. My concern is that perhaps they followed the standard protocol thinking that the yellow in T15 is sufficient. It clearly is not. So if that's what happened then we need to change that protocol. In fact we treat T14/T15 as a single turn, so the flag that counts is the one at T14.
As usual in crashes, it wasn't just one thing that went wrong. The lack of flag, the stopped car, and the siren call of downed barrels/sticks all contributed. The important thing is that we all walked away, which is a testament to the safety of these little cars and our gear. I have no injuries except for a very little bit of soreness, but Mike had some knee pain after.
-Juan