Autocross Car Flip Video..how'd this happen?
 

The event is not exactly an autocross, it is a gymkhana, which is pretty similar.

http://c-racing.web.infoseek.co.jp/20041121/ga2_b1.wmv
Around 55 seconds in, the guy obviously flips his car onto it's side.

I was wondering how something like this could have happened? Is it possible the chalk on the ground caused traction loss, or what?

I know these things are rarities, but make me worry about bringing out my daily driver for autocross runs...

Anything can happen at an autocross. Being a part of the sport since 1981 I have seen many incidents. My wife broke her back in a parking lot event at 25 mph in Jax.

I looks to me the driver carried alot of speed into his final turn, and did not modulate the throtle as he did perviously, and kept the steering wheel turned to the left. Add to that, it turned over on the drivers side in a light weight car.

yeah, he did enter that last 360 with a lot of gusto.

I guess the frequency is usually rare, as you don't see a lot of autocross events here with 360 degree turns around cones.

Most of the rare flip accidents seem to happen here during slaloms, with an over enthusiastic driver.

Stock econocar suspension plus sticky tires.

He's on taller than stock wheels/tires, and sticky tires. Not a good combo.

chaulk will make you lose traction....however, that's the opposite thing to putting a car on it's side. Putting a car on it's side means that you need MORE traction, not less.

wha!?!?

I think what Jesse meant was that he had too much traction combined with too high a roll center. Remove traction and the car slides rather than rolls right over.

There's several factors here.

There is a rise in the pavement there that drops off. He's doing pretty heavy trailbraking to get the car to turn as well. As he enters the turn on the brakes the front end is loaded pretty heavily, the car hikes up its inside rear wheel, (not altogether uncommon at an autocross). As the front wheels go over the rise the rear wheel that is still on the ground is popped upwards by the rise in the pavement, at this moment the car is already at it's maximum lean angle so a whole lot of weight transfer goes to the front right wheel rather suddenly. To make matters worse the driver kept the steering wheel turned left through the whole incident. I don't know if he could have been fast enough to prevent the roll, but unwinding the wheel would have certainly reduced the energy of the roll at the least if not put it back on all fours. Essentially the car got "tripped" by its own traction and weight transfer.

some suspensions have a jacking effect during some transitionary maneuvers as well. The Focus is well documented, for instance.

On my car, I'm planning on upgrading the suspension BEFORE stickier tires. This should help above incidents not happen, correct?

Some would suggest upgrading the driver before R compund tires. I'm not aware of a street tire that would get you into that kind of trouble, even the really good ones.

Not to add to your seeming paranoia but the Scion xA sort of fits the profile ...

short wheelbase, front wheel drive, relatively tall and narrow

stick to street tires for a while, get the hang of your car and what it feels like as you approach it's limits, and inevitably how it reacts when they're exceeded. If you pay close attention to what you and the car are doing, you'll be guy that steers out of that situation instead of wondering why everyone seems upside down all of a sudden.