A general question regarding wear on a road car from trackdays.
I used to ride sportsbikes a lot and have done from touring, to 5 trips to nurburgring, three times donnington, and one Silverstone GP - so I’m not really a newb doing trackdays. I know that you don’t really go there to race anyone - just to find your pace and try get quicker. I already had set my suspension, already had braided brake hoses, tire pressures were adjusted at the track and off i went. All i needed to do on my roadbike for the trackday is to make sure i have decent pads and decent tires. Some people have a dedicated bike for trackdays, others dont. However unless you bin the bike i can easily ride it there and then in the evening ride it back home.
Now i never really done a car trackday. I know preparation is somewhat similar regarding suspension, tires etc but would the car generally be drivable or would that expect any adverse wear that i did not anticipate? For example if i had fresh pads on my bike they would easily last a few trackdays - is this similar to a car? Can you wrap a stock disk on an mx5 if you push it too hard?
Also, why people want /fit an LSD, unless you have a modded car with enough power to poweslide you don’t really have a need for it? Also for road/track racing you are not really spinning one wheel freely so what benefits the LSD provide for road racing/track use?
Hi, my experience of track days in a standard road car is you can eat a half worn set of brake pads, but no issues with standard discs.
The tyres also wear a lot on the outer edges, maybe I should have kept off the kerbs😁
I used to take my bike to track days on a trailer, primarily as a safety net incase I binned it, but also I could be incredibly tired after a day muscling the bike around, and a car was more comfortable for the long drive home.
But I always drove my car to car track days.
I took spare pads, and spare wheels with me - but I was in a BMW 140 which loved going sideways and if I was enjoying myself could easily shred a pair of tyres. But if driving fast, and therefore avoiding excessive drifting, tyres would last a few trackdays. Brakepads would do two track days, but many fitted harder trackway pads for better longevity and performance - I simply swapped pads more frequently and as oem pads were soft, the brake discs lasted forever.
As regards the LSD, it helps going quickly as it stops that one wheel breaking loose. This means that on the limit of cornering traction any throttle increase will exceed the limits of traction and with an open LSD the inside wheel slips, which then means the outside wheel suddenly has to deal with all the sideways force on its own, and as it is already on the limit it, immediately lets go.
With a (working) LSD the inside wheel doesn’t break loose as suddenly. Throttle input applies forward force to both wheels and both start to slip giving a smoother transition to drifting.
So, open diff means more violent rear end snapping loose, and when you catch the over steer it is easy to over correct and lose it the other way.
An LSD gives a more progressive breakaway, easier to control transition and sliding.
A side effect of this is you will see faster laptimes with less hairy moments with an LSD.
The less power you have, the less important the effect is (a heavy foot on 100hp is less likely to promote loss of traction than if you have 400hp).
So much depends on your driving style and just how quick you are. If you simply potter around you’ll barely see any more wear and tear than if you were driving to Tesco and back. But if you really push your equipment as hard as or even harder than it was ever designed/set up for you can easily end up destroying, in particular, tyres and brakes pads. But the other common issues revolve around the much higher fluid temps that you’ll generate.
Yes, everything wears out quicker on a track car. As a minimum, upgrade brake pads, brake fluid and tyres, they’ll soon wear out, fade or overheat and you might not last a whole day on track even just doing 20min. stints.
I used to race an Anglia in the 1960’s when I was a teenager and now do just do trackdays for the last 30 years so quite experienced on track driving.
The most common car used on trackdays is the MX5 as it’s cheap and fun with a large upgrade market, you can’t go wrong with one.
Good luck.
I have been doing track days for the last 4 years with no issues and that’s with driving the car to and from the track.
Like others have mentioned, it depends on how hard you are going to be on the car. I’ve only had one track day in 4 years where I worn the rear brakes pads down to the minimum before the end of the day, but it was still legal to drive home, albeit with an annoying squeal from the wear indicator.
I have Federal 595 RSR tyres on the car and can easily get 10 track days out of them (some full track days and some evening), but I am quite easy on the car compared to some.
Decent brake fluid I have found to be a must. I have had track days ruined in the past because of fluid over heating, resulting in me not being able to do anymore than 2 hard laps at a time. I now use Motul RBF600 which costs around £15 and I change it myself each year.
Also, use a more track focussed brake pad as standard pads will soon fade (dependant on your driving style). I use EBC Yellowstuff with no issues. They’re cheap and last reasonably well.
Differential oil I change after around every third track day (depending on if they were full days and if the car was getting some stick). It’s around £15 and take less than half an hour to change.
I always take spare pads, a litre of engine oil, a few basic tools and that’s about it.
As a rule of thumb you’ll be fine with pressures around 30psi hot, although that could easily mean they drop back to the mid 20s for the drive home, so worth taking along a tyre pressure gauge and a pump. But if you’re running a standard geo setup you might find that at 30psi the outer edges of the fronts are wearing excessively. Adding more negative camber is the proper solution, but running higher pressures is the “quick fix”, albeit not ideal in terms of grip levels.
I only have as reference my sprorts bike as i was running higher pressures on the front than the back cold (but yea i understand bike tires work with different operating envelope than car tires)
Pretty much so on an NC. You could play around with a bit more or less on either axle depending on how you feel the car is handling, and given your particular driving style. But if things still don’t feel right you probably then need to start looking at making changes in geo setup, roll bar stiffness, spring rates, shocker bump and rebound, different tyres and so on and so on. But if you are going to try different things it’s always best to do one thing at a time. Inherently the NC drives and handles extremely well.
MX-5’s are light on brakes and tyres. Pick the right pads. Brake discs are also cheap, but you should have no issues particularly if you are not coming into the pits on fire. Treaded road tyres, you want to keep sessions short, short being defined by how hard you are pushing and what circuit and weather. The less tread, the longer you can stay out.
An open diff will simply let the power spin away as you lean hard into a corner limiting your ability to get out of the corner, if you have anything about you, you will notice. Most will find this on slower corners, with road tyres, but will easily happen of faster ones, if you have a greater grip, depending on your velocity through them. The actual driving dynamic is quite benign. A slippy diff will certainly help get the power down and were you in a dog fight in a car without one and one with one you would certainly notice the difference even at MX-5 power levels (Mazda did not add the cost of these to the car for no reason) but as for “needing one” on a track day is down to your requirements. You would certainly notice the lack on one at Donington chicane for instance if you were on it. But does it matter is down to you.
Just home from the MOT MX5 only trackday at Donnington in my NBfl - what a hoot !
My son and I share the tracktime, with 20 mins on, 20 mins off, 1 x warm up and 1 x cool down lap.
The car is absolutely 100k mile bog standard MX5, apart from goodridge lines and EBC yellowstuff pads.
We use Kumho Ecsta tyres on standard 16" wheels and WHAT FUN !!
The car has it’s suspension geo set-up for “fast road” and we’re on our third track day with the tyres and pads. The LSD makes it romp out of the corners really well.
Most important thing from my perspective is maintenance- my car is a daily drive too, so I do pamper the car with regular engine, gearbox and diff oil changes and a LOT of close inspection (cleaning and rust fighting !!) But 5 years into ownership- buying and tracking the car is the best thing I did
30psi warm in the tyres, pay for some instruction, watch the Driver 61 track guide videos & go for it
)