Review of "Track Mode" on the MY17+ cars
 

So I took my '17 BRZ to High Plains here in Denver a couple nights ago. I had previously owned a '13 FR-S for just over 3 years, and had done probably 20 track days with that car anywhere from completely stock to STX autocross trim. In the old car, I also had TC all the way off because sport mode was far too intrusive. Fast forward a few years, I had gotten rid of that car, got engaged, and my lovely fiance wanted another twin, so we got the new one. She's a pretty darn good autocrosser but has yet to do a track day, and she's a little nervous about pushing the car hard on track and writing it off.

Sooooo, I decided to see what "Track Mode" is like on the new cars. Subaru touted this as being a more "relaxed and unobtrusive" version of the prior cars' Sport Mode. I have to say, I'm incredibly impressed with the level of interaction it provides.

If I had to sum it up in one sentence, I would say "If it's saving you, you weren't going to be fast anyways." It allows a very surprising amount of slip angle. I started out my final session of the day trying to put in a few good laps and not slide the car too much because I was curious to what the car was capable of in stock trim. After that, the tires were a little hot and greasy, so I started getting a little more sideways to see where the limit was. At many points, I had half a turn of lock in (wheel upside down) just standing on the gas sliding it around. So I tried to give it more, wondering where the limit was. It honestly took almost a full turn of lock before the TC grabbed and said that's enough.

In summary, I think this is the perfect mode for the budding track day enthusiast who wants to become a better driver but doesn't trust himself to not loop the car into a wall. It will stay out of your way if you're driving correctly, and will only interfere when you've gone a bit too far. If it grabs, it wasn't going to be your fastest laps anyways. That having been said, you can't use this for all-out drifting, and seasoned drivers will still probably prefer TC all the way off because they don't want to worry about losing their man card.

Video for reference, all in track mode.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FllKEb0U2_U[/ame]

100% agree with the statement "I think this is the perfect mode for the budding track day enthusiast who wants to become a better driver but doesn't trust himself to not loop the car into a wall."
I just started this year doing track days. First one was in the rain, left all nannies on and only had them kick in a few times. Next track day was dry, put in track mode and never had it kick on, so obviously I was not driving at the cars limit yet.
3rd Track day was Lime Rock, and those that have driven there know the uphill at the end of no name straight can be interesting if you don't get squared up going over the crest.
First few times going over the crest TC would kick in to stop the wheel spin, then I got the hang of just when to lift on the crest to prevent wheel spin and never saw it kick in again. I will say it did save me once on the left hander as I turned in to late and back was kicking out pretty good. Track mode let me slip almost 3/4 of the way around the turn and as the OP said, then it decided that was enough and helped correct.

The nicest thing about it in my mind is the correction when TC kicks in is so unobtrusive, a few times I wouldn't have even known it was helping if not for the light flashing on dash. Subaru really got this one right imo.

Great write up! "I think this is the perfect mode for the budding track day enthusiast who wants to become a better driver but doesn't trust himself to not loop the car into a wall."
Great way to describe it .

I have a '16 and used the sport modes for about 4 track days before turning on my @86Nanny which totally disables TC and VSC and keeps ABS on which is key. Track mode should be a better starter tool.

When I was attempting to get it to kick in on my MY17, I had to go well into "im making a huge driving error right now" territory for it to kick in. I had to force myself to get to that point, as I was driving in a manner i never normally would be.

It's quite impressive, and an excellent fail-safe for the novice.

That being said, experienced drivers, or those getting coached should still be pedal dancing!

There is no "e-diff" on the 17+ cars, which is what the pedal dance was disabling. If you hold TC off down for 5 seconds, that's all you need.

And yeah, I had to consciously chuck the car into the car and whip it around. Always ran into the same problem at our go-kart track in Cincinnati. We'd see someone have some crazy wreck and go out and try to replicate it, then common sense and self preservation would take over. It's very weird trying to make "big mistakes" to test something haha. But it sure was fun!

E-diff and EBD is still present. Pedal dance is still needed for mechanical control.

That's not correct. I work for Subaru :) MY17 changed to disable brake assist on the LSD when TC/ESC is disabled by holding the button down.

That's news to me, but it's not something I enjoy testing, as it's... rather risky.

at 11:12 in your video, in that place, the tc light consistently blinks when you're coming off of the berm. I can't tell from the video. Are you actually losing traction, or is it prematurely engaging? That type of scenario is where the e-diff might activate, but tends to be more frequently with low droop suspensions.

That was all in track mode so e-diff and EBD are still working. Those curbs are pretty damn big and my faster laps didn't pound over those downhill esses like that, but yeah I think a wheel was probably in the air for those. I don't recall feeling any huge intrusion though during those. I think in one of the earlier sessions I hit the curb in T3 pretty hard and it grabbed some brake though.

So is there a separate computer module for VSC that could be easily swapped out for a new one on earlier year cars to enable us to have track mode?

Work up to using this

@86Nanny

http://www.beastronix.com/

I'd love to have you come out and drive WSIR. We've had more than a few people unexpectedly fly off track sideways when brakes were grabbed at 115+ speeds over a bumpy surface...

If I had anything to do with product development, I'd love to pass feedback along. Unfortunately, that all comes from Japan. Definitely don't disagree with what you're saying though.

Were those people driving 2017's? With the stability control disabled (not track mode and not pedal dance)?

Because what i've seen in at least 2 official document (the car manual and the leaked 17' revison document), is that for the model year 2017, with stability control completely off, the e-diff is disabled. Except for the automatic transmission, which for some reason, keep the e-diff. They also acknowledge that prior to 2017, the e-diff is still active even with the stability control disabled.

Of course maybe they didn't tell everything, but I've yet to see any report that would indicate on the manual transmission 2017's that the pedal dance is doing anything different than stability off.

Likewise. But, also knowing that Subaru is a tiny car company that doesn't always get documentation correct, I'm interested to know if those on track have a differing experience.

Case in point, our training website referenced cross-drilled calipers on the '18 WRX performance package :) Awesome for on-the-fly fluid changes. Not so awesome for stopping the car.

Tested the track mode out at Thunderhill Raceway last weekend and can confirm it is amazingly good. It's borderline cheating, because it covers up throttle modulation mistakes and entry speed mistakes without being noticeable to most people.

Jealous of the track mode the '17+ get. I would've loved using it to learn Road Atlanta this past weekend. Thanks for the great review of it.

I was at the same track event and @trippinbillies40 and I were going on about how good the track mode was. Pretty surprising for me, actually. I can really only recall one time I noticed it coming on, and that was during a pretty sweet 70mph drift where it kept me going where I needed to go, and not totally off the track :o

So for those of you with a good bit of experience in both '17 and '13-'16 cars, do the newer cars react any different in normal mode when VSC engages compared to the older ones?

https://i.imgur.com/LJpDFlo.png
My not be the exact answer you're looking for but it looks like a normal mode the 2017's are a little less invasive.

I still dont get why people would want to go to a track and not learn proper car control. I know wrong post, dead horse and whatever but still, thinking that you are learing with stability controls is a slippery slope were the more you drive with it on, the more you learn to rely on it and the harder it gets to depart from it. Besides, car control skills transfer because they stay with the driver, habits relying on stability controls have to change from car to car.

That's a pretty simple answer: people don't want to wreck their car. To learn, you have to make mistakes. Hence the reason for this post. I feel the MY17 track mode is a great learning tool for people. It allows you to drive well without being intrusive. If it does kick in, you know you made a big mistake and shouldn't do that again. Very different from the early cars where driving in sport mode would massively hold back a driver. You never really learned whee the limits were in the car.

I'd bet for most track people it's a 'see it to believe it'

I know some HPDE's are taking the approach that newer cars traction control is non-intrusive enough to allow for learning the limits, when I heard that (well before the '17 model came out) I laughed because the mk1.0 86's TC is certainly not conducive to learning the limits. But the expensive cars that usually show up to casual HPDE's with clueless drivers in brand new C7 Corvettes and M3 and 911 probably do have track modes that allow drivers to approach 102% of the cars capabilities without having to get their car towed home.

The point these reviews are trying to get across is that you can learn car control, even with track mode on. It is so non-intrusive that the only time it intervenes is when the car was about to be tossed anyways (ie: saving your nice car from a crash). It is a stepping stone for those that are not ready to jump straight to full nannies off. For me, I will probably continue to use track mode on the track, because I like my nice BRZ and have no desire to throw it off track.

I rented a 2017 Toyota 86 at the Nurburgring last weekend and was very pleased to find that the "track mode" was much less intrusive than the sport mode on my 2013. I was able to get the car to smoothly oversteer or understeer without it kicking in (at least not that I could tell).

Also I would like to say that my experience with Rent Race Car was excellent. The people were very helpful and the car was in perfect condition with roll bar, good tires and racing brake pads.

To answer the person who asked why someone would not turn everything off and learn car control, I bet they have not been in a new to them car, on new to them tires, on a new to them track, which was half wet and half dry... anyway, the new track mode is good enough that it didn't interfere with my fun at all where I'm sure that the sport mode on my 2013 would have.

Sorry... my jealousy stopped me here...

When it does kick in, you never are given the opportunity to learn how to correct it yourself.

And we're fortunate to be driving a car where the engineers were given the freedom to make one of the most responsive chassis in the business, so you can correct a lot of mistakes that would have made you a passenger in other cars

Agreed. But, I would argue that the level of intrusion on these cars gives people the amount of sliding needed to learn to control the car, which then would be a great step towards turning everything off on a car they're making payments on. As opposed to the 16 and prior cars where if you're just learning, it's either in the way or you're on your own. I would absolutely have my fiance use track mode for her first track day experience, and probably several after that before going into discussions about how to correct the car when it was there to save her. Or better yet, how not to get into that position in the first place.

Track mode is pretty much perfect

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The longer you use it, the more dependent you become on it.

The problem is that as it keeps saving you, you don't ever get a slap on the wrist as you approach the limit "a little too much", and you keep pushing harder and harder, because of the lack of consequence.

The day you turn it off, either you realize you know nothing (like Jon Snow), and effectively start the learning process over, or catastrophically go beyond the limit, and still don't have the chance to learn to recover, with a much larger chance of consequence.

Those racing schools I teach at? Exclusively aids off (a lot of these cars don't have aids to begin with). Let the errors happen earlier, while the speeds are lower, and the consequences lesser.

If someone is just diving into tracking without any coaching or classroom, it's probably a good idea to have it on. With any sort of instruction, at all, it should be off.

That's a very different scenario than what most of us are using the car for. I know when I head out to the track for an HPDE and I'm already familiar with the track I'm out there to improve my skills and learn. I believe that's what most people are out there to do outside of the Novice groups.

It's great to hear that the new track mode is what most of us would want out of a traction control mode, I know I'd use it my first session out to knock some of the rust off, and I'd definitely recommend it to someone who's nervous and wants the safety net, but it certainly won't be a substitute for running full off for people who regularly track.

Is this from the user manual?

Nope it's from Subaru's "confedential" internal document disclosing the changes from my16 to my17. It's been leaked and shared for a while...

https://imgur.com/a/PmiSE

Just confirming that "Track" mode is aimed and advertised for users to use it on a track.:thumbsup:

Bringing this thread back from the dead. Went back out to High Plains to beat on the 17 some more. Was curious to see how much time I lost with track mode on vs. all off. Turns out I was .05 faster with everything off. That's down to driver input more than aid intervention. So, being the curious guy I am, I stuck a good friend of mine in the car to try both track mode and all off. He's a very, very talented driver, and had never driven the car before but knows that track way better than I do. He finished .07 FASTER in track mode, hehe. His all off time was nearly identical to my all off time, and his track mode time put almost a tenth on my fast lap.

So, ymmv, but I don't subscribe to the "you'll never be an F1 star unless you learn to drive with everything off" school of thought. I'm much more in the "99% of us tracking our cars will NEVER wheel to wheel race them, so track mode is a great way for someone to get the most out of their car on track but give you a little cushion in case you briefly run out of talent" camp. :) I'm sure most track day enthusiasts would be happy to trade half a tenth of some added insurance on bringing their car home in one piece.

I would recommend reviewing telemetry, and you'll be able to see where exactly track mode is intervening when you don't need it to, and ultimately become significantly faster in your car by exploiting that. I would consider 0.05-0.07s within error range. Intentionally push the car harder with track mode on, and see where you gain time, and where you lose time (from intervention). Use it as a tool to further your development.

When my car was NA, track mode was consistently over 1.5s slower on a 2 minute course, both stock suspension and with coilovers, while just utterly destroying my rear brakes by pouring unneeded heat into them.

Here's an example of a lap that is impossible to replicate in track mode; it just flat out won't let you. Some data attached for your perusal.

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...8a&oe=5B85B4BC

Whoops, forgot to link the video.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WreOz2k6Drk"]86Cup Buttonwillow 13CW - YouTube[/ame]

You guys don't know me or Chris and our driving abilities, so it seems a little errant to claim that I'm not pushing it hard enough. I'm not claiming you're wrong either, because obviously I don't know you or your driving ability. But I can't begin to fathom how track mode is slowing you down by 1.5 seconds. It doesn't interfere with anything except rate of change on slip angle, so unless your driving style is 45 degrees sideways everywhere, I don't see how it would slow it down that much.

That having been said, Chris (other guy that drove my car) is a multi-time national champion autocrosser, multi-track record holder in NASA and BMWCCA, and works for a major auto maker as a vehcile dynamics development driver, so I'd have to say that if he can also get in the car and be impressed that track mode isn't holding him back, it's probably true.