2022 BRZ Street/Track Days in FL

[Caithness]

Hello all. I pre-ordered a 2022 WR Blue BRZ and took delivery early December 2021. I intend to document occasional maintenance, upgrade, road trip, and track day experiences and information in this thread as I progress through my ownership of the car.

I had previously driven a roommate's Gen1 and loved the handling and general feel of the car, but did not love the power delivery. When I saw the reviews on the new car, particularly from The Smoking Tire and Jason Cammisa's excellent Hagerty review, it seemed that my primary concern had been addressed. After driving the car for a few thousand miles and once at the track, the car has lived up to the hype. With the car now trapping at around the 100mph mark- my personal benchmark for a "quick" car, and with vastly better seat-of-the-pants feel through the range, plus refinements to the interior and exterior design, I am very happy with the purchase.

I have road tripped, tracked, and wrenched on cars ranging from a 100hp Mazda2 to a 500hp C6 Z06, and bikes from an SV650 to a Hayabusa. The HPDE bug bit me about five years ago and I have done about 50 track days at various tracks since then. I love taking road trips with some past trips including riding the Hayabusa from Florida to Seattle, driving the Z06 back from California to Florida in three days, and doing a 5,000 mile loop through Colorado up to Yellowstone then up to Glacier and back in about a week of riding on my old Triumph Sprint.

Initial picture of my car next to my brother's car. When I told him about putting my order in he decided to one-up me by ordering one in the higher trim.

[Caithness]

I thought I would be happy with the Primacy tires for street use. I was wrong; I have been spoiled by years of driving on 200 and 300TW premium rubber. I was going to order a set of Firestone Indy 500 tires having had a good experience with them on my Fiesta ST, but my friend goaded me into buying Michelin PS4S instead (didn't take much persuading ). Then because I'm a weirdo I bought a set of the Indy 500's anyway when a good sale came up.

One thing the Primacy tires highlighted was a bit of a tendency toward understeer. I decided to start small with the Subaru OEM crash bolts and an alignment. I asked for zero toe and as much camber as they could get out of the crash bolts and ended up with about -1.1L -1.5R as you can see below. That was with no weight in the driver's seat and a bit of cross camber isn't the worst thing for a street car, but I wasn't entirely satisfied with the result numbers-wise.

Driving impressions showed a huge improvement from the combination of tires and alignment. The stiffer sidewalls and better compound on the PS4S improved the side-to-side feel and combined with the alignment improved steering feel. The car felt more balanced and less understeer-y. As an interesting observation, my car on 17" PS4S still feels less responsive than my brother's car on 18" PS4 tires. My car is a little bit sharper up front because of the camber, but his car is more planted-feeling at the tradeoff of a rougher ride on degraded pavement.

[BRZ FTW]

Nice!

[Caithness]

I went for an aggressive break-in. At around the 1000 mile mark, after reading posts from people who changed their oil early and found a lot of debris, I decided I should do an early oil change.

I ordered up a box of filters and when they arrived was amused by how short and relatively small they are compared to some of my previous cars.

On draining the oil there was a ton of debris. There was plenty of suspended fine particulate which wasn't too concerning, but there was also a shocking amount of bigger particulate matter that settled to the bottom of the pan, up to pin-head-sized chunks of I am guessing bearing material. I was slightly disconcerted by this but also glad I had done the early change. I've done the aggressive break-in on other cars and never had this kind of result from the first oil change.

As a point of comparison, my brother broke his car in by driving mostly normally, trying to vary RPM but otherwise cruising around town with a bit of spirited driving enjoying the new car. He didn't follow any strict RPM limit or any other special procedures. But nothing like my active efforts to do full throttle acceleration followed by heavy engine braking which I did throughout the first few hundred miles under the theory of maximum combustion pressure followed by high vacuum for maximum ring seal (and power hopefully). We changed his oil at 1000 miles and he had none of the detritus I saw in my change; his oil looked fine and probably would have gone the 6000 miles no problem. Food for thought.

I also took this opportunity to do a few "mods". First was ripping out the charcoal air filter based on the theory from this video

that it could be worth a few horsepower. Pulling the filter was easy; carefully removing the leftover glued-on fibers was a pain in the rear. Seat of the pants any difference was imperceptible. The biggest change is that the intake grunt and whoosh on free revs is a tiny bit louder. I wouldn't go out of my way to do this unless you're really bored.

The other mod was an MTEC clutch spring. I absolutely hated the factory clutch feel. I started driving stick with 90's Japanese cars which had relatively heavy clutches with a lot of feedback. I daily drove an 11-second DSM with an ACT 2600 and lightened flywheel and other than bruising my left foot in traffic thought it was tolerable. The overly-assisted, totally vague clutch in the BRZ made me feel like a novice stick driver again. Taking off I would chirp tires or bog, shifts were jerky. The MTEC spring was a huge improvement in that it restored at least some feel to the clutch pedal so your left foot could tell what the pressure plate was doing. I have a theory that the factory assist spring is so stiff it overwrites any feel from the pressure plate springs leaving you guessing. I still don't love the clutch engagement- it is still in my mind a bit vague, with a large slip range, so that around town my timing on entering and exiting the engagement range is sometimes a bit off leaving me with a bit too much clutch slip on a shift or starting to engage a bit too soon for a perfectly smooth shift. One of my least favorite interfaces to the car. No issues when driving aggressively, fortunately.

[Caithness]

At this point I figured the car was almost ready for a track day. I signed up for a day at the FIRM in Starke, FL. It's a 1.6 mile track which has a nice balance of technical and a few higher-speed sections. It's a track I felt equally happy driving my S2000 and Z06 on, not feeling too big or too small for either. This is effectively my "home track" as I have done probably 20 days here.

The one remaining piece of the puzzle was doing something about my brakes. All of the magazine guys said the stock brakes were inadequate for track work. I also read some comments to that effect here. I am pretty hard on brakes; my braking style right or wrong is to run up on the braking zone as far as I dare then put the car as close to ABS activation as I can without swapping ends before tapering off into some trail braking as I turn into the corner. FIRM is one of the hardest tracks on braking systems that I have been to. To fit some higher-speed sections into 1.6 miles there are necessarily heavy braking zones and not enough time between them to give the brakes a break.

I decided to start with a simple pad and fluid swap. I was a big fan of Carbotech pads on my previous cars, but I had heard from folks at the track that some of the Carbotech people had split off to form their own company - GLOC. I decided to try the GLOC R10 pads front and rear. I paired these with Castrol Advanced Performance fluid I had hanging around from use on my track R6. I generally use Castrol SRF on my cars but at the time it was going through some kind of supply chain shortage and was ungodly expensive if you could even find it.

I splurged and had the pads pre-bedded which was nice for saving me the back road heat cycling process. I gave them a few hard stops and they were pretty much good to go. Feel on the R10s is interesting- they have less initial bite than the Carbotech XP10s. More progressive which is good for modulating them, but still a good firm feel. I admit I got used to the grabby right-now feel of the Carbotechs and kind of prefer it, but I can get used to this too. As expected they dusted like crazy and made a bit of noise, though not nearly as much squealing as my XP10s on previous cars.

LOL, if anybody knows how to get the attachment feature to put pictures right-side-up, please let me know. I tried rotating the photo of the car and reuploading but nothing I tried changed the posted result.

[Caithness]

Track day! I met up with my long-time partner in crime for car shenanigans, a guy I've known since we were in elementary school. He brought his Mk7.5 Golf R for its first time out. He was on 255 RE71R and running Ferodo DS2500 pads. We spent the day swapping cars back and forth which is always a fun experience when we meet up at the track. I would describe my skill level as "enthusiastic intermediate"- I like to push hard and play around with the limits of the car, I have solid track fundamentals and car control, but I am very aware that I could refine my driving significantly and go faster.

The BRZ was excellent on track. It quickly climbed my ranks to landing at currently my second favorite car I've ever run on track. For context between my cars, friends' cars, and rentals, I've driven the following on track or autocross: C6 Z06, AP1 S2000, SW20 MR2 Turbo, Gen2 Cayman S, 1G AWD DSM, Mazda2, S13 240SX, Mk7.5 Golf R, NA Miata. Most of that was in the Z06 and S2000.

The car is extremely well-balanced with no bad habits. The S2000 had a major problem with corner exit snap oversteer due to the old Japanese favorite suspension design- major toe change under compression leading to unpredictable behavior as you're unloading the suspension and getting on the power. Combined with the short wheelbase, I would exit every corner ready to whip the wheel over to catch a spin. Good training for reflexes but tiring. The MR2 is similar but the movement is slower then much bigger once the weight starts swinging. The BRZ is as neutral as any FR car I've driven. Great corner entry, balanced through mid corner, then very predictable putting the power down exiting the corner. Steering is precise though lacking slightly in feel, but like the Z06 you get more feedback at the limit and it's enough to know what's going on.

The power is adequate for a mid-sized track like the FIRM. I never felt like I was lacking for power to have some fun on the straights and keep a pace suitable to the overall capabilities of the car. I can see power becoming a limiting factor at big tracks like Sebring, Road Atlanta, especially VIR which is the fastest track I've driven so far. Power delivery is good- the car likes revving out but has enough flexibility in the upper midrange that it doesn't feel awful staying a gear lower instead of banging the redline through certain corners.

Braking was adequate with the R10 pads and Castrol fluid. A few laps into a session the pedal would soften but then stabilize there, not continuing into fade territory. I had confidence to fully dive the braking zones until the last laps of a 20 minute session. I don't think it would hold up to longer sessions or swapping drivers. Feel was OK, about as good as I could expect from a sliding caliper. At the end of the day pad wear was pretty intense. I used between 1/3-1/2 of the front pads in one day of hard lapping at the FIRM. The front rotors were pretty thoroughly cooked, with some grooving. They were bad enough that I ended up buying a whole new set of rotors to swap back in with the stock pads. Rear pads had minimal wear; could get 4-5 full weekends on them if I had to guess. Rear rotors were also OK but I swapped them anyway.

I would expect things to be a little better at tracks with more cooldown time between heavy braking sections, but this is still an expensive proposition and something I need to remedy. If you're only going out once or twice a year on street tires, just swap the pads, but if you're going to go more often and/or running sticky tires, I think an upgrade is in order.

The Michelin PS4S tires were great. They held up to the heat well on an 80 degree day, stayed consistent through 20 minute sessions. Peak grip was in the first lap or two, but they didn't drop off too badly. Grip levels were good for a 300TW 215-width tire. My buddy's Golf R on 255 RE71R obviously had way more static grip- I was carrying another 5-10 mph through the high-speed kink turn 4 which is my personal confidence test at this track purely based on the extra grip of the tires, even leaving more margin on the table because it wasn't my car. His tires fell off way more as the sessions and the day went on, though. By the end of the day I was starting to see some excess wear around the edges of the tread blocks, mild cupping on the outside edges, slight grinding/chunking of the inner tread lines. The PS4S held up a lot better in this regard on my Z06, which I attribute to better dynamic camber out of the double wishbone/SLA suspension, much wider tires for more heat dissipation, and along with the wider tires much wider tread blocks being more stable under cornering.

I think the PS4S are the best summer street tires with occasional track thrown in. They could definitely benefit from more static camber than stock/crash bolts offered up from a wear perspective. If you are more track focused I would look at the Hankook RS-4s, which were actually my first choice as I'll discuss shortly but were backordered (more supply chain fun).

Coolant temps were stable on an 80 degree day. Oil temps started to creep up- I don't think I saw them go over 260 but I will be keeping a very close eye on that this summer. My rule of thumb on oil temps is 260 or below, good to go, 270 and I'm on borrowed time and definitely changing oil after the event, 280 and I'm shutting down to cool off. I want coolant to be in the 220 range; 230 and I'm watchful, 240 and I'm shutting down. For reliability and just the sheer hassle of extra oil changes I may be looking at an external oil cooler after I see how it does this summer.

Quick comparison to the Golf R: The Golf has significantly more power. It walks away on the straights. On the 255 RE71Rs it has a big advantage in mechanical grip, but cornering speeds aren't as far apart as you'd think. The Golf starts with understeer on corner entry becoming more neutral as you feed in power. Power delivery is a very different experience between the turbo and DSG, and combined with the front-biased AWD system it took me all day to start to get some real pace out of the car. Heavy trail braking transitioning into feeding the power on early to get the turbo spooling and the rear pushing to get you through the corner. Left foot braking would have helped but I wasn't comfortable enough with the technique or car to give it more than a few cursory goes. Very different line- early apex and early on the power. The brakes were way better than the BRZ brakes even with a less aggressive pad. Feel, consistency- they are way bigger rotors and fixed 4 piston calipers so it makes sense. In the end I managed about to go about 1.5 seconds faster in the Golf than in the BRZ which seemed pretty reasonable given the difference in power and tire compound. Both my friend and I agreed that even though the Golf was faster, the BRZ was way more fun. Nimble, balanced, rewarding of the classic and very satisfying FR driving style and line, revvy, just ticking all the right boxes to put a smile on your face.

Overall I was very pleased. I couldn't imagine a better sports car driving experience for the money and I think this car will keep me entertained for the next few years.

[mr.whiskers]

Originally Posted by Caithness

I decided to start small with the Subaru OEM crash bolts and an alignment.

Hey thank you for the write up

What are those crash bolts called exactly, would be nice if you could throw a link or a part # in here.

I want to eventually get those but searching for them gets me nothing for OEM results (from what I understand thats the only ones we are allowed to use in autocross)

[mr.whiskers]

Originally Posted by Caithness

The other mod was an MTEC clutch spring. The MTEC spring was a huge improvement in that it restored at least some feel to the clutch pedal so your left foot could tell what the pressure plate was doing.

Weird I did the MTEC spring and didn't feel much difference. Other people on forum also reported same experience as me.

I still don't love the clutch engagement- it is still in my mind a bit vague, with a large slip range, so that around town my timing on entering and exiting the engagement range is sometimes a bit off leaving me with a bit too much clutch slip on a shift or starting to engage a bit too soon for a perfectly smooth shift. One of my least favorite interfaces to the car. No issues when driving aggressively, fortunately.

This makes me feel a bit better, I don't have a lot of experience driving manual so I thought that not being as smooth as I'd like to be on some shifts was issue with my shifting. But seeing much more experienced drivers experience this makes me think it not all me.
I have to admit driving my brothers MK5 base model Golf (Rabbit) I am able to shift much smoother even though the clutch is pretty light.

[Caithness]

After seeing the results of the first track day, I decided to splurge ahead of schedule on a more substantial brake and tire upgrade.

I did some reading and decided to go with the AP/Essex Sprint/299mm big brake kit. AP comes up as a gold standard in conversations at track days and online and this kit has good fitment with a variety of wheels including a lot of 17" wheels which I intend to stick with primarily for lower tire cost. I went ahead and picked up a set of track wheels which showed compatibility on the Essex site. Once I mentally worked myself up to spending the money, I called Essex to place the order.

In the course of the conversation Wade at Essex talked me into bumping my order up to the Endurance/325mm kit (https://www.essexparts.com/essex-des...t-cp8350325brz). The advantages he presented that really sold me were: 1. the 325mm full-floating rotors with the taller 50mm pad height may cost more, but they wear significantly slower meaning less maintenance and similar cost for better performance 2. future proofing for any kind of power adder, sticky tire setup I could envision.

The number one goal for this car is consistency. I don't want to ever have to think about anything at the track other than driving. I want to be able to push as hard on the last lap of the session as the first, and ideally, be able to flip the keys to somebody else to go right back out. Among all the systems that I don't want to have to babysit or worry about on track, brakes are by far the #1 thing I want to have complete confidence in. I had a bad experience once with a subpar braking setup that could have ended badly but didn't, and I don't want to repeat it. This is what pushed me over the edge to spring for the bigger kit.

I placed the order about a month ago and then hit a supply chain issue. The brackets for the new 2022 BRZ spindle were delayed. I called yesterday and have an ETA of about 10-14 days.

In the mean time I ordered pads. I liked my initial experience with the GLOC R10s, so I decided to order a set of R10 compound pads. GLOC matched the size as a "GPX50" in their system. I also ordered a set of "GS-1" street compound pads for the new front and stock rear brakes. The theory is that these pads are much nicer to live with on the street in terms of dust, noise, wear, and are compatible with the track compounds such that you can swap them after events without having to rebed and without having any pad compatibility issues. I had heard about this concept of street and track pad compatibility from other manufacturers but always just lived with the aggressive brakes on the street. I am keen to see how this works out, especially with the easy front pad swaps on the AP calipers.

I had already ordered wheels that worked with the smaller 299mm kit - 949Racing 6UL 17x8ET40. I was originally going to wait for more folks to test fitments in hope of finding the cookie cutter ideal setup. Initial results on the forums led me to believe that no combination of offset and street-reasonable camber would fit a 17x9 with a 245 or 255 tire with 100% reliable clearance on track without cutting the rear fenders. I looked at the very limited selection of 17x8.5 wheels in our strange 5x100 bolt pattern and then saw that the 17x8 6ULs were on closeout for a very cheap price and decided to pull the trigger for now and think about going wider later.

Before I committed to buying the bigger kit I printed out the fitment templates from the Essex site to try with the stock 17" wheels and the 6ULs. The stock wheels have a flat spoke design with very good clearance for bigger brakes. The 6ULs unfortunately curve in more toward the barrel of the wheel and as best I could tell from imprecise cardboard templates would either be an interference fit, slightly worse than interference, or at best would only have 1-2mm clearance. I decided the benefits of the bigger setup would outweigh the potential clearance issues. I hope to be able to get enough clearance with a 3mm spacer. If I need more clearance I will have to start looking at 5mm+ spacers and at that point probably an extended wheel stud and open lug nut combo. I have read that the Subaru studs are short and weak and looking at them I agree at least on the length aspect.

To go with the 6UL track wheels I ordered a set of 225/45/17 Nitto NT01 tires. I have never had a set of dedicated track wheels and tires before. In the past I would run the more durable 200TW tires like the Hankook RS-4 full time, putting up with the noise, harsh ride, excess wear, and rapid heat cycling in street use. More recently I have been choosing 300TW street tires like the Michelin PS4S/PSS and accepting the compromise at the track. The NT01 has a reputation for being long-lasting and providing high levels of consistent grip through a session. I am keen to see if the benefits are worth the hassle of swapping wheels at the track. Of course like everything else these days the NT01s are supply chained; theoretically they will show up later this month.

Finally I ordered SPC rear lower control arms and camber bolts. The SPC RLCAs are gen1-spec. I thought they were the same until just after I ordered them, when this thread (https://www.ft86club.com/forums/show...147142&page=11) clued me in that the shock mounting point was slightly different gen1 to gen2. This means that the gen1 arms provide a slightly sub-optimal motion ratio, but I agree with the posts in that thread that the camber adjustability is much more important especially with the NT01s. I may swap the arms at a later date or take one of the ideas from that thread, weld plates to these arms and redrill the holes.

[Caithness]

Originally Posted by mr.whiskers

Weird I did the MTEC spring and didn't feel much difference. Other people on forum also reported same experience as me.

This makes me feel a bit better, I don't have a lot of experience driving manual so I thought that not being as smooth as I'd like to be on some shifts was issue with my shifting. But seeing much more experienced drivers experience this makes me think it not all me.
I have to admit driving my brothers MK5 base model Golf (Rabbit) I am able to shift much smoother even though the clutch is pretty light.

What are those crash bolts called exactly, would be nice if you could throw a link or a part # in here.

I want to eventually get those but searching for them gets me nothing for OEM results (from what I understand thats the only ones we are allowed to use in autocross)

My order email says the part was 901000394. It's the stock lower strut bolt. The stock upper hole is bigger and the stock upper bolt has a lip on it. When you put the lower bolt in the upper hole it gives you a bit of play in the assembly. If you push in hard on the top of the brake rotor and then tighten the bolts down you get some camber. Some folks have had better results than what I got; seems to vary car-to-car.
https://www.subarupartsmall.com/oem-...bolt-901000394

I have primarily driven manual trans cars for 20 years now. My father has been driving stick on and off for 50 years. My brother has driven stick on and off for 10 years. All three of us had trouble with the factory spring and noticed an immediate improvement after switching to the MTEC spring on both my car and my brother's car. It's still not great, but it's tolerable now. I wouldn't judge your stick driving ability based on this car especially if you can hop in the Golf and immediately drive more smoothly.

[mr.whiskers]

Originally Posted by Caithness

My order email says the part was 901000394. It's the stock lower strut bolt. The stock upper hole is bigger and the stock upper bolt has a lip on it. When you put the lower bolt in the upper hole it gives you a bit of play in the assembly. If you push in hard on the top of the brake rotor and then tighten the bolts down you get some camber. Some folks have had better results than what I got; seems to vary car-to-car.
https://www.subarupartsmall.com/oem-...bolt-901000394

.

Thank you very much

I am very new to autocross so I wanna start with a completely stock car and maybe sometime midsummer order these bolts to actually feel what a difference in camber can do

[Caithness]

That is smart. When you're first starting it's good to focus on your driving and establish a baseline driving skill and feel for the car before making changes. You also learn more and appreciate what the changes do to the handling of the car, which helps down the road if you get more invested into the hobby.

My post yesterday caught things up to the present. Waiting on brakes, waiting on tires. I am going to install the camber bolts and RLCAs and get another alignment here soon and will post an update when I do.

My approach to modding is to do only what is necessary to accomplish my goals. The next steps after I get the new wheels/tires, brakes, and alignment going are to see how the car does on stickier rubber in summer heat. I am guessing I will eventually end up with an oil cooler and radiator upgrade on the cooling side. The stock suspension felt fine on track with PS4S, but if I start to feel like the suspension isn't keeping up once I go to the NT01s I will look at coilovers. I may upgrade the engine and transmission mounts and rear subframe/differential mounts. I'm hearing a clunk somewhere under the car when I bang hard shifts doing pulls from stoplights; I suspect the diff is hitting the underside of the car or something along those lines, but it hasn't bothered me on track.

A lot of this is in preparation for my final mod goal which is bolting on a centrifugal supercharger to get up to around the 300whp mark. 300whp has always felt like the sweet spot for these small, light sports cars and I think this car would be awesome at around that level. Looking at results from supercharging the 2.0 I am speculating that a safe, conservative 290-300whp is easily doable on the standard 6-8lbs on the 2.4 with no other changes. I like the centrifugal blower option because it adds minimal heat to the engine bay for track use, is very efficient on the compressor side so less heat into the intercooler and lower charge temps in general, and the smooth build of boost with rpm will reduce stress on the engine while providing good top-end power at the track. I'll admit to being a bit of a skeptic on the robustness and longevity of Subaru boxer engines, so the less stress, the better. From reading I might have to upgrade the clutch, but with the smooth centrifugal torque curve and given that I'm not drag racing the thing I might be able to get away with the factory clutch for a while. All the FI stuff is a few years down the road as I want to get some value out of my warranty and it will take time for the tuning solutions to be developed.

My points of comparison for the final build will be the Camaro SS1LE and Porsche Cayman which I consider to be two of the ultimate "affordable" track cars at the moment. I don't know if the car will put down the same lap times as a 1LE, but if I can get close with a lighter, more nimble driving experience and lower running costs I would be happy. I've taken a quick test drive in a 1LE and while it was extremely competent you could feel the weight and size of the car and the interior was claustrophobic. I see the Cayman as the true next step up from the BRZ in performance in the realm of small, nimble cars, but a Cayman GTS costs easily double what I'll spend on the total BRZ build, so if I can get anywhere near one of those I will be thrilled.

[imprezive]

Caithness - Were you, by chance, at PBIR on Tuesday?

[MacSpeed]

CFR SCCA is doing a TE/TT and Track Sprint at the FIRM on 5/14 if you're interested.