“Tank slapper” (TS) is originally a motorcycling term that describes a violent shake of the front wheel that causes the handlebars to slap the sides of the tank. Car drivers have adapted the term to mean an abrupt oversteer and recovery. The motion can be so violent that it flips the car (often with the help of road features but tall cars like SUVs can roll even on a flat surface).
The following clip shows two camera angles of a TS that leads to a frightening incident.
It looks like the oversteer was initiated by a lift throttle oversteer and possibly a slippery berm. FWD cars tend to oversteer having little weight in the rear, so that didn’t help. Ultimately, the countersteer wasn’t big enough or fast enough to prevent the TS and the high berm did rest. Pacific Raceways isn’t high on my bucket list.
you suck at racing 
I was in the car following the camera car in the first part of that clip.
Turns 5a & 5b aren’t called “The Million Dollar Corner” for nothing. The curbing that the Honda hit are about a foot tall and are to be avoided at all costs.
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I can imagine all sorts of different thoughts and emotions going through me if I saw that. What were you thinking/feeling at the time?
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I was thinking “Don’t hit the car on it’s roof!”
I was about three or four seconds behind, lots of time to react and slow way down to find a way through the debris.
He hit the curbing so hard it snapped the rim off of the wheel hub.
There’s also a hole in the dirt on the outside at the exit of 9. It is also to be avoided at all costs.
It’s a challenging and dangerous track by modern standards, but it’s a ton of fun if you get it right.
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