Stock car on the road course
 

I will be taking my FR-S on the road course (Mid America Motorplex) in a few weeks and at this time I do want to keep it stock as much as possible. I'm planning to change rims/tires and rotors/pads in some near future...

I'm wondering what is your experience with stock car on the track.
My primary concern is brake pads. Will stock pads survive for 1 HPDE day? I don't think September will be very hot this year...

Thanks!

Don't bother doing a track day with stock pads. At the very, very least, get some high temp brake fluid and some quality pads. Right now, you can get some hawk pads for both front and rear it looks like, but race pads are only available for the front at the moment. I'd at least go with high temp brake fluid and some hawk eps's perhaps in the front. Keeping rear pads stock won't be terrible, but you'll at least need some good ones up front.

And yes, the pads will last a single track day, depending on how often you're running and the heat.

i wouldn't go so far as to say DONT BOTHER, just realize that your OEM brakes will be prone to heat soak rather quickly, so give yourself room in braking zones or just don't hit top speed so you won't be forced to be really hard on the brakes.

what are your thoughts on the oem pads for autocrossing?

assuming everything in your braking system is stock, are performance brake pads more for durability rather than reducing stopping distance?

in autocross, your runs usually don't last more than 1m 30s. i'm guessing the oem pads will be fine for that. can someone confirm this?

OEM pads are fine for autocross.

OEM pads are fine for autocross


OEM pads are fine for everything! The question is how fast and how often do you want to stop, if you want to stop fast and often then OEM are gonna disappoint you.

it's all relative, mang

Brake pads (Carbotech XP10/XP8)
Brake fluid (RBF600 is good enough)
Engine/differential/transmission oil to synthetic oil (all these components run really hot)
Tires (Dunlop Z1SS, Hankook RS3, Federal 595RS-R, Bridgestone RE11, Advan AD08, etc.)
Crash bolts to save your front tires...somewhat...

Safety first! :thumbup:

OEM tires will chunk!

only if you overheat them

drive within the cars limits!

Doh! :thumbup: Even Z1SS overheat too. Not enough front camber!! :mad0260:

besides the OEM crash bolts, are there other suspension modifications we can do in stock class? i know we can add a front or rear sway bar, but was there something else?

c-stock or rtr

going to stay c stock street tires.

i thought i read where you could add additional front camber by swapping the lower bolt? i think that puts you out of c stock though.

edit:

my bad. i wasn't familiar with the rtr class. it appears rtr is basically c stock but with street tires. i'll stick with the rtr class as i'm still relatively new at autocrossing.

Keep this in mind: Do NOT modify your car until you as a driver are ready for it. I mean, this is my advice, but the driver is what you need to work on before you work on the car. The ONLY modification I can say you should definetly do is your brakes. I wouldn't even bother with tires and suspension until you can take your car to the limits and keep it there and control it well.

Of course, do what you want, that's just my advice.

Sound advice. :thumbup: