GTO track day
 

Yesterday I got to go experience the one day high performance driving school at Pacific Raceways. I have to say that the experience was well worth the cost in both time and dollars. I had a blast, and at one point I was headed down the front straight in the middle of three ZO6's. My instructor looked around and said "smile, right now you are in a rolling advertisement for GM high performance" Two of them were at the track for afternoon lapping, so they soon left me behind, but the third I was able to stay with and eventually pull away from. I have to say that I would love to go back, but there are a few things I need before I do that. The Goat runs wonderfully for about two laps, then the brakes begin to fade in the heavy braking zones, making things a little interesting. Also the stock tires didn't fare too well with chunks of rubber now missing from the outer edge of the right front tire.

All in all, I would have to give the experience three thumbs up!

:drool:

Sounds like you had a great time.........sux about the tires but it is just money. ;)

Someday I will go there.......... :bang:

That's good to know about the brakes. I will be there on the 1st.

I'm curious, did you feel the goat has oversteer or understeer?

Brakes huh? Interesting. The TA should be fine, but my GTO....sounds like you had a blast! Jealous as Hell. :drive:

They had me leave the traction control on, so for the most part it stayed pretty neutral. When I got into corners a little hot it would understeer, and if I gave it a little too much coming out it would kick the rear out a bit, but overall nothing unmanageable.

That's good to know. So, with 275s on the rear I can probably get away with an SLP swaybar w/o upsetting the balance too much. :)

Sweet... glad you had a great time! I'm looking forward to going as well... August 2nd is when my Big Red Boat gets to go oversteer its way around the track. :lol:

Stock brakes are definately not for tracks man! DRILLED/SLOTTED rotorz ;)

Was that you in the blue goat? I showed up really really late.

You'll want to avoid most drilled rotors for the track. Even the eradispeeds crack from most high temp pads. Get a good set of clean-face rotors for the track.

That was me. Were you in the class or the afternoon lapping group?

I showed up to do about an hour of lapping.

Yeah, they suggested that I maybe go with some "track pads" and just switch them out if I plan to go lapping. The ones that are on there now do pretty well, considering I am not at threshold braking every 30 seconds on the street. If that doesn't work, I can upgrade to a big brake kit of some kind as I have larger wheels already on there way to me.

Awesome.

Never heard a bad thing about these classes, hopefully I get my butt out there and take some corners. I guess the biggest reason being lack of tires and proper brakes.

So you were the silver Z that was lapping. There was another silver Z in my group, so I couldn't keep the two of you straight while on the track, but viewing from the grandstand between runs you looked good from what I could see.

If you do that, make sure the different pads are wearing similarly on the rotor. Better yet, don't do that. Since rotors are less than $50 apiece, you'll want to match rotors to pads. Otherwise, you'll hot-spot, glaze, and crack your rotors very quickly when using your track pads.

Get a second set of pads and rotors for the track and you'll see a huge difference. Street pads suck.

If you want to get out there, I would say to do it soon (like this year) Don was talking about a bad crash that happened down in Cali at a track that will have the insurance companies thinking twice about covering schools like his. At the very best, prices will probably have to go way up just to cover increased premiums.

If I end up liking the school when I go, and want to do more lapping, I will definitely invest in a dedicated set of track brakes/rotors. Right now, I just wanna see how much I enjoy it compared to drag racing. :)

Jason, your gonna love open tracking. Never met anybody who didn't. You might want to consider doing a front end alignment and adding some negative camber to minimize the "chunking" of the rubber on the outside edges. It'll also help keep your car from "pushing" too bad. I ran street pads the first time out and it wasn't too bad, although like was mentioned, 2 consecutive hot laps and the brakes were toast :)

Oh wow ... didn't know insurance WOULD assist. I figured once you're out there you're on your own.

I know at least that's the case with open track / drag.