Losing the brakes at Sebring in a 2015 Z/28 will get your attention.

Okay, so maybe our new hero Tristan Herbert, Audi’s customer-racing program manager, didn’t have 155 souls in the back seat of the 2015 Camaro Z/28 he was driving at Sebring International Raceway like Sully Sullenberger did in the back of his Airbus A320 back in 2009.

But with ostensibly little or no time to react, one could argue he had to make a quicker decision than Sully did to possibly save at least one life–his own! Tristan was hot-lapping the car at Sebring, coming out of a turn and accelerating to well beyond 100 mph, the Z’s LS7 catapulting him down the track when he went for the brake pedal….

We swapped a bunch of E-mails with Tristan who we really consider to be the master-of-disaster on this deal. Or actually quite the opposite you could say.

Here is what he told us: “The incident happened during a Trans Am race weekend less than a month ago. I was attending to help a friend shake down their new race car. Coming from professional motorsports as a driver and currently managing Audi’s customer racing program in IMSA, I had been to Sebring many times. It was the first practice session and second lap in the new car which was a fully-built 2015 Camaro Z/28 set up for pro racing in the SCCA. The lapping started pretty normal and the car felt great with no sign of brake fade or issues. In fact the car was operating perfectly and it was fast as all get out! The excitement, though, quickly went sour under threshold braking entering Turn 7.”

The culprit? A damn zip tie, Tristan said. “Zip ties are commonly used on race cars to hold the brake lines away from the wheel/tires and other moving parts. Well this little five-cent piece of plastic had failed leaving the steel braided brake line resting against the rotating left-front (driver side) wheel where it eventually wore through and severed the line. I was going well over 100 mph and as soon as I hit the brake pedal it flopped to the floor. Of course, I was in trouble. I wish I could say that things started moving in slow motion like some relate to in an accident but it didn’t. In fact, things moved extremely fast. Like tenths-of-a-second fast and decisions needed to be made. I could either turn right and impact the wall or turn left and buy more time to slow the car down. Having driven Sebring before, I knew there was an access road back there for emergency vehicles to enter and exit during races. I chose this option and held on for the ride.

“I would say I reacted in the best way possible to reduce injury to myself and damage to the car but in the end I was just along for the ride and it worked out. I always tell fellow racers to make sure they are conscious of their escape routes, because you never know what can happen at speed. I will admit it in a certain way it felt sort of good to blast through the gate when I look back on the situation, given it was the less bad of several outcomes.”

As far as the Z/28’s brake system, Tristan related, “On a normal street car, yes, you could possibly have a slight reserve of fluid not rendering the brakes completely useless. In this case though, the car runs a Tilton three-resevoir setup. There is one for the clutch and one each for front and rear brakes. This system allows us to have bias control front to rear and a knob to adjust more front or more rear stopping power from the driver’s seat. In this instance, we were testing a 70/30 ratio front to rear so when they failed we literally had nothing. This setup also deletes the stock booster as well but when you have this system fully dialed in with the right valving in the master cylinder, it can be a good advantage over the stock configuration.”

As for getting the car back together, Tristan said, “the black carbon hood in the picture after my thrill ride doesn’t match the yellow hood in the video because our crew hustled the whole front of the car back together after the incident with our spares. The hood, bumper cover, fenders, fender flares, headlights and splitter were all replaced as all the old parts were junk. It also popped all four tires and bent all four wheels when I jumped the curb. It was quite a scene being seen limping back to the paddock! The whole team jumped in and wrenched all night to get the car ready for racing the next day. I wish I was in the right state of mind to get some shots of the damage but we were determined to make the race the next day.” Close enough for government work, eh?