It's one of the first mistakes you make as you're learning to drive a manual transmission: accidentally skipping a gate and notching into the wrong gear. Most of us first encounter this slip-up at sedate public-road speeds, attempting a 2-3 upshift and grabbing 5th instead. No harm there, except for a little lugging and lurching and a lightly bruised ego.
But we all have a healthy fear of the opposite-direction mistake: the dreaded 5-2 downshift. Done with enough gusto, this stick-shift oopsie can have catastrophic consequences. As Robert Mitchell was just reminded.
Mitchell runs Apex Nürburg, a veritable candy shop for car enthusiasts. Apex offers a whole slew of performance cars you can rent for open lapping sessions at the Nürburgring, and offers complete packages for faraway'Ring fans, so you can arrange your local lodging, your expert driving instruction, and your sports car rental all in one shot. Apex also offers'Ring Taxi rides if you want to experience the thrill of the Green Hell from the passenger seat, and Mitchell has a fantastic YouTube channel that gives you an inside look at what it's like to have the'Ring as your neighborhood sports car playground. Yeah, we're jealous. (Mitchell's colleague Misha Charoudin also has a delightful car-themed YouTube channel, which is where we snagged the image of the injured Yaris coming off the tow truck.)
© Misha Charoudin - YouTube
Robert Mitchell's tale of a missed shift on a Nurburgring lap is the mechanical horror story we all hope to avoid.
On a recent run around the'Ring in Apex's Toyota GR Yaris, Mitchell made a momentary mistake and performed what car enthusiasts everywhere know as the"Money Shift"-that sickening moment where you realize you've gone from 5th gear to 2nd. On track, at high RPM, that's a problem. As Mitchell explains, he realized his mistake as soon as he began letting the clutch out, and while he disengaged the clutch immediately, his split-second mistake still sent the Yaris's tachometer swinging way past redline. As some of us have learned the hard way, a car's electronic rev-limiter is powerless against the force of momentum spinning the wheels. If you engage the clutch in a too-low gear, it doesn't matter how much the ECU cuts fuel and spark: you're gonna overrev.
Amazingly, once Mitchell caught his mistake, everything seemed to be fine. The engine wasn't making any undue noises, it revved freely in neutral, and there were no hints of mechanical damage. He kept lapping the track and drove home with no issues. But during the next day's lapping session (are you jealous of Mitchell's life yet? Because we sure are), the car began stumbling. It was way down on power, and as Mitchell pulled off the track and behind the catch fence, the GR Yaris died completely.
After a tow back to the Apex shop, Mitchell and crew examined the Yaris's engine. Good news: no sign of a bent or broken valve. Bad news: the No. 1 cylinder had zero compression. Yep, that's a problem.
Mitchell's theory is that his moment of overrev damaged something in the valvetrain. Perhaps a rocker arm cracked. The engine ran normally for the rest of the session after the overrev, but letting the car get cold overnight and driving it again the next day caused the problem to become painfully apparent.
We empathize with Mitchell. Every single person who has ever gotten behind the wheel of a car has made some kind of brain-fart mistake at some point. Sometimes we get away unscathed; sometimes, we grenade an engine. Factor in the mental and mechanical stress of driving on the world's most challenging race track at speed, and the consequences compound. It's the gamble we all make whenever we drive out of the paddock and onto the track.
To his credit, Mitchell makes it clear that he's not going to try to scam the Toyota dealership into fixing the car under warranty. Anyway, it would be hard to convince a technician that this car, emblazoned with sponsor decals and owned by a Nürburgring sports car rental company, just happened to have a catastrophic engine failure on the way to the grocery store. But people have tried that, and we respect Mitchell for taking the high road.
So let this be a reminder: Never underestimate the overrev. It can fell the best of us-even a'Ring veteran with more laps at the track than just about anyone.