[ddeflyer]

Originally Posted by jvincent

I can provide a beginner's perspective to this discussion since I just went to my first track day a couple of weeks ago.

This was at Calabogie, just west of Ottawa. 5km track with 20 turns including elevation changes.

Based on the information in this and other threads, here is what I did to prep my car:
- OFT tune (would have done this anyway)
- Upgraded brake fluid and pads (stopping is more important than going fast)
- Front camber adjusted to max on OEM camber bolts (-1.2*) and alignment done
- Stock tires.

My lapping day was a full day, alternating 30 min on track sessions with an instructor and classroom sessions. First session was instructor driving, the next 7 were me driving.

After my first set of laps my instructor suggested just keeping it in 4th gear and focusing on getting the lines right in the turns. I figured out most of the turns pretty quickly but there was one hairpin that was giving me trouble because I was turning in too early and getting on the gas too early. I finally figured that one out on session 5.

Personally I found that running with the stock tires was a good experience. In the later sessions as my speeds increased, I had a couple of instances where the tires started to lose grip. A couple of those were due to bad inputs (steering/gas) but a couple were purely speed related, i.e. I was on a good line, just too fast for the tires.

I only actually timed one set of laps, session 5, just to get an idea of where I was. Based on other videos from that track, I am about 25-30 seconds slower than the really fast guys in an FRS.

I know that even on the stock tires I can shave off time because I was definitely slower around the "low speed" corners staying in fourth. There's lots of time to gain there. On the high speed corners better tires will eventually help, but those aren't what's slowing me down now.

Next time out I figure I'll do a few laps in fourth again to refresh my memory of the turn-in points and line, and then try to work on getting through the corners faster.

I will say that I had a very good experience with my instructor. He figured out exactly how to give me the information I needed and I was noticed a big improvement in the way I got around the track from the start of the day to the end.

One of the interesting things that happens which is pretty hard to observe is that in the exact same car the faster people (ie. instructors) will actually be faster in the fast sections of the track too. They actually will modify their lines for the car and in general have more grip (and hence speed) on the same line as a beginner. As an example there is a video that I believe @orthojoe posted of himself in his stock BRZ (except for alignment and Michelin PSS instead of Primacy) at T-Hill: [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI08YWtfX3w"]2:15 lap time at Thunderhill in a Subaru BRZ - YouTube[/ame]
2:15 is crazy fast for a stock car; I have better tires on my car and last time I was there I was getting 2:21 on a pretty decent line. He just gets more grip pretty much everywhere.