BRZ trackday at Laguna Seca
 

So I took the BRZ to it's first track day this past weekend. This was my 5th time at this particular track. I've driven my old Evo X and my boxster spyder there. The BRZ was definitely a different experience. It's painfully slow when accelerating. It just doesn't reach the speeds coming into corners that I'm used to. That being said, because it's so much slower, I can control the car so much easier and put it exactly where I want it. Despite being passed by almost everyone, it was still fun to drive. Tail out on turn 11? Just kept the throttle down with some countersteer and the car corrects itself. Turn 1 apprehension/fear? Full throttle all the way to the brake marker for turn 2 with zero hesistation. There's a video shot my friend riding with me and I'm doing turn 1 one handed, laughing because it's so much less terrifying at slower speeds. That would never happen in the spyder. The stock toyota prius tires are horrible. The outer shoulders started to chunk away on me. My only modification was swapping out the OEM brake pads for track pads. The project mu club racers were fantastic. Zero fade, excellent bite, lots of confidence, mismatched to the cruddy stock tires. There was still some serious brake smoke after a session, but it never boiled over. The best part? The pads had only a few mm of wear vs. losing HALF of the pad when I tracked the Evo at Laguna Seca, which would boilover the brake fluid every time.

If you can get over the fact that you are no faster than a well sorted miata, then it's a fun car. I can run consistent 1:45 lap times with my Boxster Spyder, but was only getting 1:56 with the BRZ. 11 seconds is a LONG time. I don't know how randy Pobst did 1:51 in the car. I guess I could go faster through the corners still, but I'm not sure that would account for 5 seconds. The challenge for this car will be to see how I can whiddle down my times to get as close to Pobst as I can. My theoretical best lap based on my best sector times was 1:54, if I can be more consistent and shave off one more second, I'll be happy with being 2 seconds off pace of Pobst. :-) I'm already itching to go back for more. BTW, mpg to the track was 34mpg, 8mpg at the track. With the Evo it was 16 mpg to the track, and 3.4mpg at the track. LOL. The coolant stayed nice and cool at 180F most of the time and a peak of 196 at one point. Contrast that with 244F in my old Evo... I'm still hoping that AiM can add the oil temp channel for me.


I took a look at Pobst's number and then placed my own numbers next to him based on my 1:54 theoretical best lap. I'm about 2mph slower than him on most sections. I did beat him by 1mph down the main straight. LOL. I think the fun with this car will be seeing how close I can get to the Pobst benchmark in stock trim.

http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/5605/mevspobst.jpg

Here's my video I put together. Unfortunately, I had camera issues all day. My best session had a camera snafu and I ended up with nothing. I usually put the external mic out underneath the rear license plate to catch the exhaust noise, but the stock exhaust is so quiet, all you get is wind noise. So, I placed the mic in the engine bay next to the battery. I think it turned out well:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SdsO7GBx8A"]Subaru BRZ trackday at Laguna Seca - YouTube[/ame]

Awesome video
I was the extra 180lb slow orthojoe down
I'll tell u I never had a "o sh%t" moment the whole time...

I had a 200# passenger with me on another session too, and the end of that session had my brakes smoking REALLY bad and my tire psi was about 3psi MORE than the other sessions. LOL

You can hear those bastard stock tires squealing all the way...I would love to see what you could do with some decent rubber on the car :burnrubber:

I will definitely be mounting my external mic in the engine bay...great sounds from the engine, shifts, and tires (well...not good sounds, but good sounds).

Are you planning on keeping it stock and trying to increase based on familiarity of the car alone, or are you going to mod at all? Also, how many laps did you do at a time with the pad upgrades?

I'm considering going 17" RPF1s with 225 sized NT01s. I may stick with the stock tires at Laguna Seca though, just to keep plugging away at that Pobst time.

Session times were 20-25 minutes, and you can get about 10 laps in. I will keep the car totally stock in terms of power. The only upgrades I am considering are track wheels/tires and maybe an ohlins coilover setup.

What's your laptimer? That overlay looked pretty slick.

Timer is the AiM Solo DL connected to obd2 port. Video is gopro. Data overlay is trackvision. Video editing is Adobe premier elements.

Here's a graph of a lap in my spyder vs a lap in the BRZ. Interesting to see the differences. BRZ is green line. Spyder is blue.

http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/9545/brzvsspy.jpg

Nice job with the comparison between your lap and Randy's. This is probably obvious, but wow Randy is fast.

Thanks, and no kidding! :happy0180:

Cool comparison! Pobst is no slouch, I think you would really have to ring her out and smooth up the corners to close in on him... or put on real rubber. good luck

re: Pobst.

He has a penchant for entering corners fast. This car is VERY easy to do a slow-in, fast-out style of driving, but the fastest way around a track with the BRZ (imo) is to brake earlier than you think you should, and ease the car into the turn. You do this on your video, but Pobst just does this to a much more extreme degree.

I'd be more than happy to do some free data analysis for you and give you some feedback on where I think you can get faster.

That AIM render on the lower right looks suspiciously like a IQ3... :bellyroll:

Nice vid! Loved it! I'm interested as well on your times with a better/wider tire

^^^Regarding that driving style, I found that I got a lot faster this year by doing just that. Slow earlier than I used to, ease the car into the corner, and be at full throttle wayyyy before apex. The car is very stable, and exit speeds were a lot higher than. Not only that, but I no longer take the risk of braking too late and running out of space. All in all, I feel that driving style has really evolved my driving.