[/old guy steps onto soapbox]
Speaking of wiggle room and all, I hope everyone takes time to mentally rehearse going off at all the critical spots and especially Mike's list (which is excellent). Rehearse now how you are going to respond to every possible outcome you can think of. Don't wait for a real time learning opportunity since it is VERY likely you won't have the automatic mental skills required to recover.
Do this from an "associated" view, meaning you are visually seeing the world from inside your body (i.e. you see your view out of the windshield)...you can also do a dissociated rehearsal (i.e. viewing the car from above for example), but the associated one is the most powerful since you can generate real feelings inside yourself while doing it.
If you find you have some "blanks" in your ability to rehearse a recovery from going off at 10 let's say, then those are clues to what you need to learn, train yourself for.
Let's take a hypothetical example:
You just finish a late pass going into the uphill esses, and you carry a bit more speed than "normal" but by T9 you feel stuck very good and really rocket out of there with that nice sweet "in the groove feeling". However, since you're going a tad quicker than normal you screw up and don't quite brake enough for T10. You turned in early enough to hit the apex, but you're just carrying too damn much speed, and the car is plowing toward the outside on track out.
Stop the rehearsal at this point and create a list of options of how you respond and then resume your rehearsal, eyes closed, feeling yourself in the car, holding the wheel, feeling the feedback in your hands, butt and feet.
Maybe option 1 is realizing you are "over the top" of the front tire's tractive force curve and you MUST open up the steering wheel to reduce the front slip angle to have any chance of increasing front grip. Feel yourself managing that wheel "just right" such that grip is returned in just the right amount to use all the track without further issue.
Maybe option 2 is realizing as you are doing option 1 that it isn't going to work...instead of panicking and lifting with that front steering lock dialed-in, you rehearse opening up your vision to the outside of the track, see your path, open up the wheel and drive right off into the grass/dirt. Realize that you want to exercise option 2 early enough such that you can go off without substantial side loading in the rear tires! Make this happen in your rehearsal -- that do or die point where you learn how to bail the corner prior to making the bail nastiness percentage go up too high! You can feel that loading in your butt in your rehearsal and manage that pavement exit at just the right time.
The point of my post here (which I'm sure is too long already) is that you can rehearse all of these scenarios, how the car responds, and most importantly how YOU respond ahead of time, and you can do them a zillion times. Just rehearsing the basics such as where you keep your vision during times of massive stress is extremely powerful. For example, if you spin in T10, keeping your vision where you want the car to go (such as down track) is the only way you can save it, but under stress the majority will look where it is going instead and visit the Armco. Of course this is easier said than done, but mental rehearsal will make it automatic over time.
“Fun rehearsals” – braking into 14 from 145mph on the back straight, and the instant you step on the pedal it goes to the floor. Same thing for turn 1. How about tracking just as your apexing the first part of hog pen right near the limit, the three cars out in front a bit all come together in a heap, two in the track, one off to the left on the grass. This stuff is endless to create and rehearse, and my belief is that waiting until something like this happens to find out how you’re going to handle the issue, what basics you will have drilled into (or missing from) your brain already, is not the hot ticket.
You don't want to be staring at that heap of cars in the track in Hog Pen and just plow into them with your foot buried in the brakes...
You can definitely scare yourself in these rehearsals, and that’s good. That was one issue numerous people in the past used to complain to me about in my old days of instructing...that what I had suggested had scared them about their track driving and now they felt insecure. My reply was always "that's great" since now you realize what you have to learn not to mention that if just thinking about stuff like this "scares you" you should not be on the track in the first place. I believed those folks who were scared by stuff like this are the most likely to get into trouble and harm themselves or others on track.
Most of all make mental rehearsing fun. Make if fun to find your faults. Embrace finding all of your weak points. Welcome them.
[/old guy steps off soapbox]
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Just about every other corner on that track has some "wiggle room" for an over exuberant entry, but not South Bend. You just never realize it until it's too late.
That is how I had my first off at my first track event last year. Everything was just fine until I realize that I almost had it, but had transferred too much weight to the front under braking as I was turned right into roller coaster. Rear got light at the entry and off I went! I learned quickly to not do that later in the weekend.