madgen

I took my car up to Mosport DDT today for a Lapping Day with Ian Law Racing. He has a joint Track School/Lapping Day where we got to do lapping while the Track School students are in the classroom and they were switching sessions between students and lappers every hour so I got a decent amount of track time.

This is the first time I've taken my car out to the track since I bought it last fall and this is also the first time doing any sort of lapping in years (my previous jaunts were in my old '97 Avenger). Needless to say, I had fun!





There were only about 7-8 people doing lapping so it was nice and wide open. There were a couple of Porsche Cayman S and one souped-up M-class BMW. Here's me holding up the Beemer before the next passing zone.



Now, I'm sure evo_soul, Widoww etc. are gonna give me grief on this but I was running the car bone stock, right down to the craptastic OE Dunlops. Those no-season tires did make things a bit lively at times but I still had a blast. I also now have a good idea of how the car behaves so I now have a decent baseline for when I start to do any mods in the future. First item on the agenda will be to get some proper summer tires for the car.

TrailBrake

Good stuff. I did Ian Law's track school back 7 or 8 years ago in my 928 S4. His school will give you a solid base for lapping.

I ran my RA on the DDT back in May, and will be doing so again shortly. Once you get some decent rubber and start going faster, the limitations of the undersized stock brakes will become the next area that needs attention.

Widoww

No grief atleast it's seen the track . Nice body roll tho

Crester

It's good you took your car out to the track and had fun. There's nothing wrong with tracking a stock Ralliart.
And as you said... it will give you a good baseline so that when you do make changes... you will know what difference that mod made.

Crester

I was at a Porsche dealership recently... and they actually encourage people to goto the track. They even had track days posted in their dealership! I wish more car companies were like that. Cars like EVO's and Ralliarts need to see track time.

LIVEEVIL

Out of curiosity how much does it cost to take your car to the track for the day? I might be interested in this even though I only have an 08 GTS. But being able to see how the car actually performs under "Stress" would be nice.

robertg

iTrader: (1)

Glad you had a good time, nice to see someone enjoying the car bone stock!

madgen

I took all four of Ian's courses back in '04-'05 which allows me to get a bit of a discount for lapping. Even with these tires I was starting to feel a bit of brake fade towards the end.

I figure after tires, a good set of brake pads will be the order of the day, likely also better brake fluid and maybe braided lines. At least I've got some room to put in bigger rotors and calipers eventually.

I guess after tires and brakes, I'll need to look at suspension too, eh?

For comparison, here one of the Caymans rounding the same corner as in my first pic. Those guys had very little roll compared to my car sloshing about.



I think I'm going to focus any mods I do on handling only and leave the powerplant alone. I'm not concerned with having sick 1/4-mile times or squeezing tenths out of a lap, I prefer just throwing it around a track to have fun.

Oddly enough, the Porsche Club was out at the big track that day, we could hear 'em over at the DDT. The two Cayman guys were at the DDT because they hadn't yet completed their endorsements to run the big track. Apparently, the Porsche club is very structured wrt letting their membership on the big track as they want to make sure their guys know how to handle their cars before letting them solo there.

For what it's worth I wasn't the only Mitsu there but I was the only Ralliart. One of my buddies had his '08 Evo GSR lapping as well. Also, one of Ian's instructors was driving a '08 GSR too, and one of the students had a '10 GSR.

I think his normal price is $175 for lapping but as I mentioned above I had taken all 4 of his courses (Car Control, Advanced Autoslalom, Winter Driving, and Track School) so for me the price was only $50. That was for ~4 one-hour lapping sessions that were interleaved with the student's track time. I was tired by the end, but I got my money's worth.

In case anybody is curious, info on Ian Law's courses can be found at http://www.carcontrolschool.com/

LIVEEVIL

Thanks man.