I have seen some Mini brakes burn up or catch fire at the track with the wrong pads. Just ask Eddie or GKP. GKP can show you his caliper piston welded into his brake pad.

I believe he can run stock rotors, even stock calipers but not stock brake pads.

Remember, street pads are designed to run around 600 F while race pads go up to 1800 F. Typical rotor temperatures after a spirited session is around 1000 to 1200 F. There is just little or no safety margin with stock pads.

 

There is nothing you can invest in that will make the car better than seat time. I agree at the minimum, at least do fluids and better pads. Time and time again I have had students that put so much time and money into their cars, only to be very humbled at the track and the basic skills they are missing for driving at speed. No clue as to what track in vs track out is, braking thresholds, rev matching, heel and toe, throttle lift over steer, etc. Hell I have even had some that have never ever experienced ABS until they got it to the track then they freak out the first few times because they don't know what it's communicating to them. I have seen many, many lower hp cars walk all over cars like 911's, vettes, etc, largely due to driver skills. With the skills comes the confidence to "pull the sting out" as folks in my instructor/super solo group often state. Get as many people as you can in that right seat as much as you can. I still do it all the time. There is always something that someone out there can teach/show you.

Learn the car and how to use your butt meter. You'll appreciate the mods you do down the road much more. It's about having fun and being safe at speed. It's a hoot. Beware!! Once you hit the track pipe, it's hard to not want to keep doing it........

 

Couldn't agree more! Had 2 fantastic instructors who "walked" me through everything. So much so that my first time out I barely got over 80 mph Barely faster than on the highways. Pure stock (different tires so I could save the street tires) was just fine ... except the brakes then the track pipe hit

My experience - The Gen 2 "S" rotors should be just fine for most track use, especially for someone new. I know people who are running the stock Gen 1 "S" rotors. However, I have seen rotor temps that were at a minimum of 1100 deg as a novice driver...this is beyond street pads and the Hawk HPS and HP+ pads (both 900 deg), for example.

 

Eddie,

You are one late dive bombing maniac. Looking forward to next year's events with you.

I agree with your assessment.

 

 

wow thx guys!!

im having a lil trouble finding instructors here in PR... but no worries i appreciate everything!

 

Do I assume correctly that PR is Puerto Rico? If it is, then contact/join the local BMW car club, they are listed at the bottom of this page link

http://stage.bmwcca.org/index.php?pageid=sa

They should be able to help.

You can also try your local SCCA:
http://www.scca.com/home.aspx?hub=

 

thanyou eddie imma try contacting them this week!

 

I have to agree with Way,
Come up with a Plan, decide what you want to do with the car. Wheel to Wheel racing, Time trial, just HPDE (LAME), or Autocross. The problem is for wheel to wheel racing there isn't a readily availble class that car can be competetive in (well there is, but untill I get it built, it's my secrete). Also taking a street car and making it race car is like taking money and lighting it on fire. Most race cars start life as salvage titles or theft recoveries to lessen the burden of taking a car worth a value and essentially destroying it's value. If you REALLY want to go racing, buy a competetive built car for a class. A couple years ago I bought a Showroom Stock C 1999 Honda Civic Si with a blown motor for $2k. Put a $800 junk yard motor in it and 8 months later was racing in a televised race with it for a whopping $2800(minus expenses I had in maintaining it thoughout the season coming up to the championship).
Making a street car a race car costs broken down....
Cage $3k-$5k
Seat $300-$1000
Extra wheels (3 sets min)$500-$2000
Window Net $100
Fire bottle or fire system $50-$500
Seat Belts $100-$200

Thats at a Bare min of $4k in stuff that already comes in a built race car. So any race car asking less then $4k your essentially getting the car FREE. And that's if the original Builder put only the CHEAP stuff in it. Most cars come with at least a $700 seat.
Word to the wise... BUY A BUILT CAR.. let someone else loose the money on it.
Now for the license. Don't listen to all this stuff of go to driving schools, get lots of practice etc etc. If you want to go racing, just go do it. At Any given SCCA Racing School they have people out there that learned to drive stick that DAY. They toss you out on track in your race car and say go pass people and watch the flags. Soon as your not a hazard on track you get a license. You'll figure out how to go fast when the leaders come by and lap you. The issue with most HPDE's is the instructors are there so they can drive for free. Some are good, most are not. I spend a lot of time with my students unteaching the silly stuff other instructors have told them.
Going and being instructed has it's benefits but it's much better (coming from an instructor) to work with a student that's already got the basic's and is just looking to go faster rather then working with someone who essentially just needs to know the first corner is a left. For the price of doing a skip barber school or such you can buy your first race car and go get some experience, come back and do that school later when the instructors won't be talking completely over your head. It's VERY hard instructing someone who doesn't understand the concept of trail braking, apex's, or even things as simple as "rolling into the throttle". Explaining understeer and oversteer rather then getting track time is always fun too.

Now there is a new thing in recent years called Time Trails, NASA does it. SCCA is starting to do it. There are other forms of it with much looser rule sets they call Time Attack. This form of racing is very appealing. You can run a street car, you don't have to chop it up with saftey gear (currently, however as people are dying in this it's only a matter of time till cages are required). But in most forms of time trials where the rule sets are actually decent it's easier to get a full blown racing license then it is to get a time trial license. There are reasons for this, without the saftey gear they want to Make sure you know what your doing. In time trials it's no contact, no drafting. if you wreck... it's your fault. Prize money is good, competition is sometimes lacking. It depends on your region. Mid Atlantic, Southeast, and Florida Region it's very hard to win. The rest of the country.... kinda lacks competition. I hear the Texas area is getting faster though. I know the times for Socal look relatively uncompetitive.
Anyway, sorry for the Rant. The short of it is.... want to go real racing. Sell the street car, buy a truck and trailer and something cheap to race that you won't cry about when you smash it up.
Ian

 

Ian,
You had it right, right up to “BUY A BUILT CAR.. let someone else loose the money on it.” then you, I don’t know, took a wrong turn or something. This sounds like demolition derby. Did I miss something or are you are advocating sending someone out on the track with no instruction, training or anything, in a full blown race car and tell them to just drive as fast as you can to learn how to drive on a track? This is why you are going to have to put full cages in the cars – people kill themselves because they don’t know what they are doing. You say just go out, pass people and “watch the flags” and you will learn by having the leader/fastest car pass and lap you. What, by following them? Oh, but wait, being an instructor, you wouldn’t tell someone to learn to drive a track by following the car in front of you because you know that, if nothing else, they will drive right off the track into the guardrail when the car in front of you does. Would you?

But then, if you are not telling someone to follow the car in front of them, how do you propose that someone learn line they should be on for the car they are driving or braking zones, track-in, apex, track-out, heal-and-toe and trail braking – what they mean and how to use/do them - without instruction? Trial and error? Osmosis? That’s like sending a beginner skier to the top of Snowbird and telling them to learn to ski by going down the expert trail. And, oh by the way, I’m not going to tell you how to do it. I’ve seen that done and, trust me, it doesn’t work. I’ve also been out on the track with hotheads who wouldn’t listen to their instructor and it is scary. And you expect these people to be better by themselves in the car? You say that this is what SCCA advocates? What division is that? Not the division I belong to. I think SCCA calls it a PDX and they use that to introduce novice drivers to a track and to teach the basics. Most SCCA divisions have good instructors who are willing to spend the time with a novice to teach them how to drive on a track, with or without a full blown race car. You complain that you find yourself talking over the heads of students who don’t know the basics and that you spend a lot of time undoing the teachings of all of those lousy instructors out there. But then you expect a student to come to you knowing all the basics by teaching themselves. Those drivers won’t come with any bad habits, will they?

I’m no expert on the track – it sounds like you might be. But an instructor you are not. An instructor doesn’t talk over a student’s head no matter what level they are at. Anyone going out on the track needs instruction first to learn the basics and they need to be in a controlled environment where they are not going to harm themselves or, worse yet, someone around them.
Jon

 

Jon, not at all. It's far from a wreckathon. Many of the guys I race with don't even know what HPDE's are. In fact one of them was very surprised that they existed and that he could get free track time for instructing. What I see is people that start doing HPDE's get a syndrome that W2W racing is dangerious and very few make the jump. Trackday's breed the mentality that you must have all this experience before you go racing when in fact the truth is more then half the people on any given competition school weekend have very little experience at all. Most are soooo timid with no instructor in the car that they are afraid to pass for the first half of the day on a school weekend. That Timidness and fear of wrecking with no one in the passangerseat as your saftey line is more then enough for most people to keep them well behaved. I've instructed for these and you do give ride alongs on track in your daily driver (my truck) to give student an idea of the line and brake points but you spend the 1st day on the sideline encouraging the student to pass, because most are so timid. I recently rented my race car to a buddy with no experience for driving school and he made the whole weekend without a dent and was one of the quickest cars there running only a couple seconds off my times in the car by the end of the school..... with essentially no instruction other then what I could pass off when he rode shotgun in my truck at 10% of the pace. But the competition school isn't there to make sure your making Forumla one Lap times, They want to see you watching your mirrors, watching flags, not going off, not wrecking and running consistant laps. Once you can do that. You can go race. Usually the 2 day school is all you need.
In short, My point is.... If you want to start racing.... GO RACE
If you want to drive on a track and that is all. GO do HPDE's.

My point about the fastest guys going past you comes from a buddy of mine that's very quick told me a funny story from racing in the 90's. He had been taught, smooth is fast. Done all kinds of racing schools and was at best mid pack. One day he got lapped in an enduro by the leaders in his class. The guy came by him sliding sideways, using grass on the inside and exit of the corner... He said he had an "ahhhh ha" moment. Since that point he's gotten quicker.

 

Ian,
This sound much more sane than your last post. And as you admit there are instructions at these SCCA events. My point is that instruction is important in anything that a person does like this. Maybe HPDEs are not the greatest in all cases, but it is an easy way to get out on the track and see what it is like. From my experience there are a number of good instructors out there. But, then again I am only looking to maintain/improve my driving skills.

My guess is that you see a lot of people who have been around cars since they were kids. They have read car magazines and watched racing on TV so they have an idea of what racing is about. They probably know what a lot of terms are and what they mean. However, while I may be wrong, I would guess that kadaj (the person who started this tread) is not one of these people which is why he was asking even the most basic of questions. It seemed that an HPDE would be a good place to start. As you noted some find HPDE too intimidating. If kadaj is scared away by that, the he may not be a racer. And he has found out without buying a race car or even spending much money.

However, while my earlier post did suggest a HPDE, I also suggested that he find his local SCCA to see what it is like and to talk to people to see what racing is all about. Not a bad place to start as you suggest. I just suggest that instruction is an important part of it.

 

A GREAT starting place many people overlook is Autocross. I did it for nearly 10years before I did my first race. Autocross is an entirely safe starting place where the chance of damage to your car is little to none and you really improve your skills. It teaches you to drive aginst the clock (the big thing HPDE's don't do). My only regret I had with Autocross was that I did it for soo long before going road racing.

 

A great suggestion
That is actually what got me going. Still do it. A great way to improve the eye-brain-hand coordination thing. On an autocross track you will find out really quickly how disconnect they can be. However, it is one thing when you are just crushing cones; its another thing when the disconnect occurs out on the street. This is a sure way to improve upon that. I digress, it is a great way to learn your car, what it can do and push the clock.