Fiesta ST autocross accident

[David Price]

My friend rolled his FiST at an autocross last year. He and I both want everyone to know that the car will roll with just steering input. He ended up on the roof after 3 and a half rolls. Took more than 20 minutes to free him from the wreak. He survived, but incurred significant financial loss since the car was totaled and hospital bills were high.

View: https://youtu.be/mtS3-uSTx4c

 

[XR650R]

Wow. Glad he's OK.

 

[the duke]

The stock Fiesta is banned from autocrossing without mods for this reason (And the Mazda 2 I believe). It's one of the reasons I don't want to run R-comps on autocross or even on a nicely prepped surface. Luckily my local lot is a really bad parkinglot so we slide far more than digging and rolling. This is one of the things I really don't like with this car, the center of gravity is high, and the springs are stiff with high rebound.

What year is the car? I always wondered if the 2016+ with the revised suspension fared better than the harder spring 14-15.

I'm a bit surprised to hear about the hospital bills and I assume injury. These things are pretty damn safe, and he had to have been belted in with a SNELL helmet.

 

[David Price]

Setup info from the YouTube post is below. He was wearing a racing harness and had a good helmet. He broke 4 ribs and had other abrasions. He is an
experienced driver. Tire pressures were checked before the run and the surface did not contribute to the rollover.

205/50/16 RE71R's on 7 inch rims
Eibach sport springs
Koni yellow shocks
Eibach rear sway bar
Cobb intake
generic muffler delete cat back
Cobb stage 1 tune

 

[RubenZZZ]

Interesting. I figured the car would slide before that happened.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Intuit]

48 second mark, it looks like the rear caught that patched pot-hole mess there. If the rear can't slide, I presume any car will flip.



@the duke brings a good point about the base Fiesta. Regarding the Fiesta ST, a lot of people make changes to wheels, tires and suspension without fully understanding the results of such changes. After damaging a rim, I just bought slightly larger sidewall tires but I don't autocross. Never the less, I'll do some parking lot exercises to get a feel for the limits and changes to handling characteristics. On stock setup, it does nothing but slide.

 

[David Price]

Obviously, that's what everyone wants to believe. However, there are lots of reports of two-wheeling a FiST. Another member of our club got his stock FiST up on one wheel at Nationals 2 years ago. He sold it to keep his son and him safe.

 

[David Price]

48 second mark, it looks like the rear caught that patched pot-hole mess there. If the rear can't slide, I presume any car will flip.

View attachment 37318

@the duke brings a good point about the base Fiesta. Regarding the Fiesta ST, a lot of people make changes to wheels, tires and suspension without fully understanding the results of such changes. After damaging a rim, I just bought slightly larger sidewall tires but I don't autocross. Never the less, I'll do some parking lot exercises to get a feel for the limits and changes to handling characteristics. On stock setup, it does nothing but slide.

We considered that possibility, but there was no evidence of that he ran over that feature or that it played a role. It was a spot that had some small loose dirt and gravel, but no lips that would catch a tire. It also didn't play a role when the car got up on two wheels in the previous right a second earlier.

 

[Intuit]

Thanks for the P.S.A @David Price.
Is that a base Fiesta or Fiesta ST-Line? Looks like a much larger sidewall with a lot of gap between tire and arch?
Anything else we can learn from his experiences?

 

[David Price]

The setup is given above and on YouTube. It is a 2016 FiST running in STH. The reason I posted the incident is that I don't think it is a good idea to autocross a FiST. If my Type R could roll just by turning the steering wheel I would sell it.

 

[David Price]

The setup is given above and on YouTube. It is a 2016 FiST running in STH. The reason I posted the incident is that I don't think it is a good idea to autocross a FiST. If my Type R could roll just by turning the steering wheel I would sell it.

Here is another view of the remains.

 

[Intuit]

The setup is given above and on YouTube. It is a 2016 FiST running in STH. The reason I posted the incident is that I don't think it is a good idea to autocross a FiST. If my Type R could roll just by turning the steering wheel I would sell it.

Civic Type R is much wider, more akin to the Focus ST versus Fiesta ST.
Shouldn't be surprised with the result of putting fat sidewall sticky tires on a narrowed vehicle with a short wheel base.

 

[The_Ryan]

Any particular reason you waited until now to share this/waited until September to upload the video? I’d imagine with your level of concern about people using the Fiesta for Auto-X we’d see this sooner. Not trying to be an ass, just genuinely curious

 

[David Price]

Civic Type R is much wider, more akin to the Focus ST versus Fiesta ST.
Shouldn't be surprised with the result of putting fat sidewall sticky tires on a narrowed vehicle with a short wheel base.

I am not sure what you mean. I can't imagine why anyone would autocross a car if they thought it would roll during an autocross.

 

[The_Ryan]

Civic Type R is much wider, more akin to the Focus ST versus Fiesta ST.
Shouldn't be surprised with the result of putting fat sidewall sticky tires on a narrowed vehicle with a short wheel base.

Softer spring rate than OEM too. Could the eibach springs make it more prone to rolling?.

 

[David Price]

Any particular reason you waited until now to share this/waited until September to upload the video? I’d imagine with your level of concern about people using the Fiesta for Auto-X we’d see this sooner. Not trying to be an ass, just genuinely curious

The video was posted on YouTube as soon as it was clear my friend was going to survive. The goal was to get the info out to people who might be thinking about autocrossing or tracking a FiST. I felt it was the responsible thing to do because I didn't want people to go through what my friend did. It was also very hard for me. He posted the video on Facebook when he thought it was appropriate taking into consideration his friends and family that would see it. There were over 2500 views of the YouTube post when I discovered this forum this morning (I don't have a FiST). I wish I had known about this forum earlier. Are there others that would be appropriate? Hopefully, members here will share to other forums to get the word out.

 

[Intuit]

I am not sure what you mean. I can't imagine why anyone would autocross a car if they thought it would roll during an autocross.

Backyard engineers suffer with these problems all the time. The team of engineers made the decisions they did for good reasons. The vehicle has a completely different suspension with much larger sidewall... some people even look for ways to disabled stability control. When you combine all these factors, this is not a problem with the vehicle, but a problem with backyard engineer.
See the sidewalls on this Civic?

EDIT 21y06m15d: This is a video of a modified Civic being flipped on a corner. I suspect the video was marked private in response to it being used in this thread. The Civic is a good vehicle. It wasn't posted here in an attempt to criticize the vehicle, but merely to point out that any vehicle is subject to be rolled on "improperly" modified suspension; including wheel and tire combinations.
View: https://youtu.be/4YUrDzGzyA8?t=20

 

[Business6]

The car is a phenomenal performer in autocross but there's no way I'm doing it with mine.

 

[The_Ryan]

The video was posted on YouTube as soon as it was clear my friend was going to survive. The goal was to get the info out to people who might be thinking about autocrossing or tracking a FiST. I felt it was the responsible thing to do because I didn't want people to go through what my friend did. It was also very hard for me. He posted the video on Facebook when he thought it was appropriate taking into consideration his friends and family that would see it. There were over 2500 views of the YouTube post when I discovered this forum this morning (I don't have a FiST). I wish I had known about this forum earlier. Are there others that would be appropriate? Hopefully, members here will share to other forums to get the word out.

I appreciate the perspective here. Though people may be unwilling to sell their FiST especially since it’s quite the performer/it’s not financially practical for them to do so.

I understand your perspective that any risk of roll over is grounds for selling the car, and I sort of agree with that. But do you think some of the mods here added some additional rollover risk? Maybe that should be the takeaway here to those that are unwilling/unable to part with their Fiesta. What mods can create a rollover risk? I can totally see how softer/progressive rate springs + bad damping adjustment + a rear bar would make the car more likely to roll with steering input only. Things were only made worse by a thick sidewall. I think this is what @Intuit was getting at.

The people I’ve spoken with who auto-x the fiesta keep stock springs/dampers (maybe change to Koni Yellow with stock springs), use coilovers, or stiffer & linear rate springs (swift). I have heard a lot of different setups but non with with a rear sway or eibach springs.

 

[shouldbeasy]

Full set of RE-71R's didn't help - putting them only on the front and a quality AS on the back is where the car shines (IMO).

The mismatched spring / shock combo probably didn't help.