My lap at High Plains Raceway in Deer Trail Colorado - Corvette C7 Z51
My lap at High Plains Raceway in Deer Trail Colorado - Corvette C7 Z51
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