Originally Posted by wstar

There are a lot of subtleties going on in that situation though. Around the apex and beyond, I really was at the traction limit of my fading front tires, but maybe not the rear, hard to say. If I had *just* lifted the throttle, the back end might've come around on the left and made things worse. In the moment, I didn't think that the amount I could safely lift the throttle by would be enough to save it. Not that what I did do was much better: I tried to hold the throttle steady and force the car to stay on the road with the steering wheel, which almost never works.

If I had straightened the steering wheel first (to avoid the back end stepping out on throttle lift), and *then* lifted and hit the brakes, I might've shed enough speed (heading in a straight line towards where my wheels went off) that I could've slowed and turned back onto the line at reduced speed. And if I didn't shed enough speed, at least I'd have been more likely to keep going straight off the track instead of what I did.

Either way, at the moment just before the wheels went off the pavement, I should've had the steering wheel dead straight to avoid getting ripped back across the traffic path on the track like I did. A straight drive off into the grass would've been fine, but cutting back across isn't.