Did you make contact with the Miata or was it a L.O.T. (Loss of talent)
Reasonable adults will disagree...but yes, there was contact.
Would love to discuss it over a beer (and have, many times) but here's how I saw it.
I was in second place in the Integra with two ITS RX-7s
right on my ass (Matt Rooke, the blue one you see go zipping by, and Wilson Wright, the yellow one) drafting me and trying to find a way around (every time I looked back all I saw was Matt's windshield). Jeff Harding, the leader in another RX-7, was 5+ seconds ahead and had already gone through (editorial: which should have let them know more were to come). It was a case of bad timing on where we caught them, but the two trailing ITB cars either saw me and/or kept their proper line on the track so we could weave through. As I came up on the Spec Miata he was quite a bit offline to the left (you'll note, comparing to prior laps, that I end up pretty much "on the line" going through the right-hand bendy) so I
assumed he saw me and would stay wide. It is my
opinion in hindsight that he did
not see me, that I was lost in his right-hand blind-spot, and that
possibly he saw the two guys trailing me. Regardless, he moved right to (my opinion) either take the line back and/or move out of the way of the coming trailing cars, and he caught me a bit off guard.
Once I realized what was happening I lifted for a brief moment to make some space to go around him, but not so much to lose momentum; obviously I misjudged it. I tapped his rear bumper as I moved left and made a mental note to go find him later to apologize. At that moment I experienced what you saw.
There was no known video from trailing cars, but based on the damage on all the cars the Miata must have gotten sideways toward the right, then tank-slapped back to the left and t-boned my Integra directly into the passenger door. I have no clue how he was able to maintain that speed to do that. Regardless, the collision punted him back pointing right where Wilson Wright was going by and Wilson t-boned him in his passenger door. Both cars were totaled. I backed into the left Aarmco, smashing in the rear of the car, then continued to rotate right and put the right side of the car into the Aarmco, totaling the Integra. Fortunately, I managed to steer it while driving backwards to keep the car against the Aarmco so that we didn't collect any more cars.
What you didn't see in the video is that I sat there for at least two more hot laps as cars streamed by. I don't know what WGI was thinking , but it took some time to checker the race and get cars contained. I did drop down my window net and stick a thumbs-up out the window to keep any workers from trying to go across the track to check my condition.
I got my bell rung pretty good, so I asked to be taken to Medical for eval, all checked out OK (well, at least no worse than I was before).
I found all the players after getting out of Medical. Matt came out unscathed (actually finished the race P2) and Wilson said "it was just one of those things". The Miata driver was still talking to stewards when I met him, and I apologized to him with the proviso that "I'm not sure what happened either, but it's the passing driver's responsibility" and made no excuses. He was still looking kinda loopy at the time, saying he 'had no idea what happened' but we apparently parted on reasonable terms; or so I thought: it still gets back to me once in a while through the grapevine that "that guy really hates you".
Whatever.
Just one of those things...? As I said, reasonable people disagree. - GA