Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Well, my first track lapping experience on Sunday was "interesting"...
After spending my Saturday switching the front springs, front strut mounts, front pads, rotors, and front bumpstops, I was feeling pretty beat. Some rusty nuts on the top of the struts and having to manually crank my spring compressor with a wrench made the job take a while.
At about 8pm I went out for a test drive and everything seemed to be fine with the suspension but my new brakes wouldn't bite hard at all... Even after a half dozen 60-0 stops that had the pads smoking, I couldn't lock the front tires even using both feet... I wasn't happy and was considering switch back to the old pads but I thought I'll leave them in and see how they do on the way to the track. Well the next morning it took dragging the brakes on the highway a dozen times to finally get the pads working only a half mile from the track.
Good news is that my car and transmission seems no worse for wear, trans fluid looks and smells the same as before. I was expecting my cooling system to be a bit marginal and it was. It was around 225-230F for the morning sessions, but in the afternoon I was getting on the gas more and not watching the gauge when I heard a warning beeper go off in the dash. I looked down and the stock temp gauge was nearly pegged and my scanguage was reading 240F... I pulled off at the pits and there was no boiling so I cranked the heat on full and temps stayed around 225 after that.
The bad news is that my buddy was starting to push abit more in our second session in the morning and finally lost it on a blind highspeed kink. This was the result...
He went sideways into the grass and the tires cut hard into it and onto its side the car went. He was fine and the car was mechanically undamaged, but the bodywork on that side isn't happy... and I imagine neither is his wife!
Anyways it was a good reminder not to go off, I found the higher speed cornering addictive as my car has pretty much neutral balance, but if I got the car too sideways the back tires would give up and I'd have to do some quick counter steering. My Neon isn't as tippy as the Vibe but I didn't want to test the theory out sliding sideways across the grass.
Here's a pic of the Peon in action.
I've got some old old yokohama A001R and A008R 205/60/13" tires which seemed to warm up and grip quite well after a couple laps.
I took a ride with a more experienced driver and started working on using his lines in the afternoon and starting to push harder but be consistent and not get the car sliding too much, but just the right amount
I did miss having lap times like in autocross but I can see myself doing many more lapping events in the future!
Those car does not belong their, put it on the street where it belong lol.
