Howdy, I finally took the time to make a one lap video with no identifiers of myself or other drivers.
My lap time was 2:31, in the simulator I can get a 2:07 in the same car so I left a lot out on the track. In the sim there is no break fade and on track I could get 2 or 3 really hard breaking zones before I’d start to experience fade.
My fastest lap on the day was a 2:19 mostly due to the break fade. I have good video of it but the audio is just wind, and the only laps I did with the GoPro on the rear of my car for good sound were pretty casual laps. So I took a casual lap and paired it with the audio.
I’m going back in September for my last outing of the year most likely, then likely working on better breaks and cooling system as I could only get about 5 laps full out before I had heat soak issues and needed to pull into the cold pit to let the car cool off.
Fantastic track, quite technical. I put about 150 laps in the simulator before I went out and I’m glad I did. While there is pretty much nothing to hit, a few off camber turns and a few late apex turns would have thrown me into the weeds otherwise.
I trained a ton in asseto Corsa before my first track day and while I had to adjust to my own car in the track (since it doesn’t exist even as a mod for the game) I found that it was a lot easier to nail the corners in real life because you can feel the g forces and get a better feeling of where the car is going. Did you feel the same?
My car is fairly slow and we’d only do 3-4 hot laps tops each session and it’s also a very light car so I didn’t have to deal with brake fade (frankly I struggled to brake hard enough since I’m so used to being smooth when driving as well)
And of course I also had the same thought you did about there being no way I could go as hard as I did throughout the day without going into the grass if I hadn’t trained in the sim (and gone into the grass multiple times in there)
I totally found the same thing! It also made me much better at the sim and learning tracks I don’t know happens so much faster now. Used to take me hours to figure out a new track and I would need the race line now I can do it in about half an hour of hot laps without any assists.
What car did you track if you don’t mind me asking? And what track?
I got about the same for hot laps before oil temps became problematic. The Corvette forums say not to follow the owners manual for track days and use a different type of oil then the manual says. I’m try that and see if I get a few more laps before my car needs to cool down.
Then I’ll consider if I want to upgrade the breaks / cooling or maybe get a dedicated track car. I feel like maybe an atom or a spec Miata might do the trick. I think the spec Miata will cost more but there is a racing league out here for it that I could participate in.
But I need to make more money than I do now for that, racing ain’t cheap.
I used AC to learn the track as well. It has my car but the track was a mod. No mod for other cars AI sadly so if I add other cars they just go straight down the middle of the track. I got pretty concerned about driving through traffic. I got lucky, it was a pretty light day and other than a few mustangs I was by far the slowest car on the track. The spec Miatas were faster, man can they take corners. Of course McLarens, Lambos, Ferraris and more just making me look like I’m standing still.
In AC I was in the grass constantly the first 40+ laps before I started to get a feel for the track. In real life I did go in the grass once, I had traffic coming up behind me and I was too focused on them and missed my breaking point and went all four off the track. I kept the same racing line and just casually reentered the track after the traffic passed. My son who was riding with me was very chill about it.
I live in Argentina so you probably won’t know the car or the track but the car is a 2008 Gol Power 1.6(current picture the car rides 4cm higher in stock form) and the track is the N°6 circuit with the slide of the Gálvez speedway in Buenos Aires
The car is basically the south American version of the golf 3 but with a very old inline 4 1.6L 8V engine that they tuned up from the factory over the years and the different redesigns to have multi point injection and 97 HP (but it’s all on the top end since it’s an 8 valve engine).
The car was bone stock (I still have to go again but I’ve been upgrading the suspension and rigidity of the car while keeping it as a daily) with cheap oil shocks and tired springs so it was a wild ride around the corners, I would literally fall off my seat on the tighter ones if I tried to do anything but hold the wheel and drive with one foot. I was not fast at all (although I almost beat some cars with double the HP because it was an amateur event) and because of that it was very difficult to set a good lap time since I think I only got two or three laps in the entire event where I didn’t have to slow down to let someone pass me. Still managed to do a 2:40:539:
The fun part was a lot of people would approach me in the boxes and congratulate me for having the balls to go so hard at it with a bone stock econo hatchback from south America, it was really touching I had so much fun that day.
The go pro memory’s card was on the fritz so I don’t have the video of my personal best but here’s the one lap that it did record entirely
As you might notice I never quite nailed the braking distances (I usually just engine break everywhere and only use the brakes the last few meters so I really didn’t have a feel of how hard I could brake and how much distance I needed for it) and there’s no heel and toe at all because the car has a weird pedal layout (because of the position of the steering components the pedals and steering wheel are actually slightly towards the center console rather than straight in front of you) and the only way to heel and toe it is to use the sides of your feet which I found out it’s actually rather difficult, specially if you didn’t set the pedal height to accommodate for it.
Either way I’m sure a good/pro driver could get 10 or even 15 seconds out of that lap time even with the car in that condition
I’ve driven the top trim Audi A5 Sportback with the big engine at full throttle trough a reduced version of the track when I did a driving course and let me tell you I actually had way more fun on my crappy car than I did on the Audi, it might sound stupid but having no traction control, no ABS, a mechanical throttle, poor sound proofing and a very light car makes for a way more raw and thrilling track experience even if you’re going way slower
Anyways, I assume you’ve been all over forums looking up what upgrades to make to the car but cheap and easy for helping with the brakes is changing all the brake fluid (as in making sure to drain all the old liquid out of the lines) for new competition liquid and for a car like yours buying race pads and putting them on only for the trackday and putting the street ones back on when you’re done. That way you can have really aggressive pads on the track that require a lot of heat to work and then just daily the car with the regular ones afterwards, changing pads isn’t that hard you can do it in the boxes before the event starts if you want.
Also really sticky tires make a ton of difference but I’m assuming you already know that
I do think having a dedicated track car is the way to go if you actually want to compete (I just wanted to have the experience of going full send in a cheap car, grew up watching MCM on YouTube) but as you’ve said racing ain’t cheap so it’s up to you to do the math. Reality is if you can tow a trailer you can do things to a track car that simply won’t fly for a street a car that probably make a huge difference but that’s way out of my knowledge lol
That’s amazing! The track is gorgeous and it looks like a beautiful day. Is that track notes taped to your dash? Your car looks like a blast around the track and your racing lines look perfect to me!
And I agree with you on car feel. I was disappointed with my car on the track, 3500lbs even in track mode is a lot of car. Didn’t feel nearly as sharp or capable as I wanted it to feel.
What other plans do you have for your car?
Do you follow any racing leagues or teams? My son and I love F1 and I’m team Norris all the way this year.
I hand drew the circuit layout with the idea of writing notes like corner speed and the like after each session and being able to look at it as a minimap since there’s a couple of corners where you kinda get lost (as in they don’t stick in your memory at all so you have a hard time remembering what comes next) but I didn’t really use it at all. Frankly it would have been a lot more useful to have the list of flags and their meanings written but I’d forget to write it in the note in all the excitement after each session.
The car is really fun to drive but it really could use a little more power for that track, you can see in the video I clearly have time to calmly scratch my face in a lot of the short straightaways. And yeah it was a beautiful sunny day in winter, the temperature was close to 15°C perfect temperature for track driving (in the middle of a week of full rain it really felt like a lot of things came together to make that day one of the best in my life)
Hey if you were disappointed on how your Vette felt on the track maybe your expectations where too high haha, that’s a mean piece of machine right there. I think it’s important to remember to enjoy the event itself over self imposed time targets or placements when you’re just going to a track day with your daily driver
In regards of my car I’m more or less trying to do the upgrades somewhat on the cheap and reversible for now. I swapped over the springs for new stiffer and lower ones, put new gas shocks on it (OEM) to keep it somewhat daily drivable (at first it was annoyingly bouncy but it smoothed out a bit), changed the valve cover gasket that leaked all over the exhaust during the event (not fun seeing faint smoke coming out below the hood after the session ends lol) and this next month I’m changing the sub frame bushings for elastomer ones, installing a sub frame reinforcing plate since this car has a C shaped subframe instead of a rectangular one which causes the body to crack at the transmission tunnel if you track it after stiffening everything else, changing engine and transmission mounts for new slightly more solid ones (I’m pretty sure they’ve never been changed).
The particular engine on this car is actually a Mercedes design from the 80s so the block is actually a really solid platform for mods, in other cars it also came as an 1.8L and 2.0L configuration and even a 1.9 diesel, you can literally stroke the 1.6 to 1.8 by just changing the crankshaft and the pistons with OEM parts. Technically you can also take it 2.0L but it requires some grinding for clearance inside the block and its not as reliable. Oh and it’s also the same engine as the pointer GTI so you can literally throw the cam from that one in for around 15-20 extra HP without needing to do anything else to the car other than maybe adjusting timing a bit.
Sorry I geek out about it because it’s my first car and I’ve wanted to buy it for years. But yeah, for now just suspension stuff, also looking into getting slicks for the trackdays (expensive although they sell used ones on the track’s tire shop), a bucket seat and a 5 point harness to go with it (using a metal bar between the mounting points of the driver and passenger side seat belts).
As far as the engine mods go I’m kinda holding out on that since it’s my daily driver and I don’t want it sitting out in a shop for 6 months, but I’d love to make it into a small rocket 1.8 turbo car that could beat a stock GTI in a straight and take corners like a champ simply because of its 2200 lbs stock weight.
Hell there are even 16v and 20v heads for this engine that are actually not that difficult to adapt if you’re going with a programmable ECU anyways and they help a ton with intake temp and low end power but for now it’s just a pipe dream for me to geek over haha
Frankly until track day I didn’t want to do any mods to the car, I was just restoring it to it’s best self because I loved it but I had the intention to buy a mk6 golf GTI. After the event I’m so enamored with it that I decided to keep it and do all the mods I want to it. I do want it to continue to look as OEM as possible however, if I ever do the engine build I intend to do it in the most sleeper way possible. Imagine if someone in a stock looking fiesta gave you a run for your money in a highway pull hahaha
Sorry my car is one of the few things I’m passionate about so I kinda talk too much when asked about it.
I don’t really follow F1, nor any sports really. I’m more of wanting to compete than watching other people compete kind of guy
I look forward to hearing more about your car! My son and I are big car enthusiasts, but I’m past the age where I want to wrench on a car but am happy to live through other people!
When I was young I had a second generation Mitsubishi Eclipse, the DSM motor could take a lot of punishment and I planned to do a ton of work to it, then I started having kids.
As for my car yeah it’s fast and gets a ton of attention. But I’ve driven a McLaren 650s and I felt like I could tell you the exact shape of every pebble on the road. It was fantastic! And in my sim rig (Moza with VR) I get a lot more communication in the steering than in my Vette. The Vette in the sim is about as lacking though so it’s is a good model.
This winter I’ll consider my options and see what I come up with. Looks like there are used spec Miatas for as little as $8k, not sure what all work it would need but right now that’s feeling like the best option.
But I’m going back to the track in September so clearly the Vette not being as visceral as I want isn’t enough to stop me from enjoying my time on track.
Well once the kids grow old enough they become apprentices, would have loved it if my dad was into motorsport and asked me to help him hahaha
Does the Vette have electric steering? Mine’s hidraulic and I always felt a big difference going from it to a softer electric, most manufacturers tune their electric steering to be soft for comfort. I did notice the stiffer suspension really improved steering feel a ton in that regard, I can feel the road so much more now (which at times gets annoying since the roads I daily are a mess)
Either way comparing the Vette to a Maclaren is kinda unfair, not only because of price but because of what the cars are actually designed for lol
I’d say you should see if there aren’t any events or private courses where you can drive a Miata around a track before you buy one. You know make sure you’ll actually fit in it and enjoy it
Yeah it’s electric, one of the main reasons people track C6s over C7s is the steering.
My son is bigger into motorsports than I am. He reignited my excitement for it that had died out when he was born. He is going to college to be an aerodynamicist and design race cars.
We race in the sim together and he’s still a bit faster than me but I’m catching up! I don’t know that I’ll ever catch him, the advantage of youth is real.
I’ve driven a few Miatas of different generations and there is a surprising amount of room once I get in it. The day after my track day is the 24 hours of lemons and there are always a handful of Miatas there. I’m hoping there will be a few testing that day that I can get a ride in or maybe drive.
At this track the track day drivers are pretty open about that which is cool. Everybody is just excited to talk about and share the experience of their cars.
