First Track Day

[Ft.S]

What an experience. Although I came away with mixed feelings, the car performed superbly. I put some of my thoughts in the journal.

Here is the video clips, not very exciting to watch frankly, but I thought I’d share.

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[Raab]

Great job.! The link to your journal didn’t work for me. Mind mentioning some of your takeaways, mixed feelings?

Summit Point was my first track day ever last year in October and I also took my Emira. I went with the RTR PCA, they run a great event. Did most of their events this year including Summit but bought an e36 M3 this spring. That’s my new (old) track mule only 213K miles lol. I didn’t want to learn on the Emira and I didn’t want to trackify it just yet and it was such a struggle staying in the seats and heel toeing. Here’s my videos of both last year in the Emira and this year in the M3. The Emira video is green group and the m3 vid from this year I was promoted from blue to white. I’ve learned a lot this year… and still so much more to learn. Can’t wait for next season.

 

[Raab]

Ft.S. Found your journal through your other posts! Good write up!

 

[Ft.S]

Thank you @Raab

To be very frank, I like your driving better than mine, haha!

I certainly can relate to the path you chose with the E36, great platform for your purposes. I did something similar in my early days of DE'ing. Then, the maintenance, cost of running it, trailering a track car, continuously building it out, made me get off that path. I do not plan on club racing, I might do one or two time trial events once I get comfortable with the car.

I am attending a BMW event next weekend, actually I will be there only on Friday, then following weekend I will be at the NASA event. You may already know this: Our local PCA Potomac (they run superb events as well) opens registration for all of their events at midnight on February 1. Most often all spots are filled within 30 mins for the entire season. I intend to do 2 or 3 with them next year. I hope we'll get to meet at the track.

Cheers.

 

[MiamiBlue]

Interesting that you spent a lot of money on the brakes, but then went cheap on the tyres and went out knowing the geo was off. I think the LTS Cup 2's and a geo would solve most of your issues. I find the stock APS racing setup pretty good. I'm based in Northern Europe so high track temperatures are not usually a factor.

 

[Ft.S]

Interesting that you spent a lot of money on the brakes, but then went cheap on the tyres and went out knowing the geo was off.

It wasn't quite that I went cheap on tires, although you do have a point. The Cup 2 tires also overheat in my experience with other cars. Since I am in the learning phase, I thought I need endurance tires that won't overheat and last long time (1 year), I alright compromising cornering grip, but I wasn't expecting issues under braking.

I am hopeful of two things: (1) geo fixes will also help with better braking performance, (2) as the ECF get worn down, their grip is going to improve. We'll see how off base I might be on these