[X25]

Originally Posted by Macaro

Well how was the track? How does it compare? Please post up your findings...

Below is from Friday. I'm on my way to Oregon Raceway Park right now, and it will be 92 degrees; a real stress test!

Originally Posted by X25

Finally got to try the car at the track yesterday for the last few sessions of the track day. I had to take it easy since I am getting used to it, and GM wants us to take it easy during the first one for the sake of differential, so I did.


These are the settings that I went with. It did not show any excessive wear on any tire, so at least at the current level of pushing the car, these seem to work OK.


Right before it got pretty dirty with the debris : P


Here is the video.

• The camera position will be fixed once I install the harness bar next week.
• As you can see, I sandbagged quite a bit on braking zones, and also shifting on some of the corners, especially the beginning of the front straight (where I had an incident earlier this year). This was my first hot lap of the second session, and I could not do anything else after this lap since I hit the traffic.
• The remaining fuel % reported seems to be very fluctuating at the track. I'll remove it next time.

Remarks

• Temps:
  • I could not log the oil temp with RaceChrono since it does not yet support custom PIDs. I did keep an eye on it, though, and it seems to have stayed below ~260 degrees; pretty good!
  • Coolant's range was also in line with my experience with other V8 cars; nothing to worry about. As you can see from the video, it does not exceed ~220 or so, and it is stable lap after lap (no runaway).
  • Transmission did not exceed low 200s with the Z06 cooler core; looks good!
• The good:
  • Brakes: The brakes, combined with ST47/45 pads, have INSANE stopping power! This, combined with this chassis that does not lock up tires no matter how strong I apply brakes, makes the best brakes I've ever had in any of my cars. This also means that there is so much time to be made out of braking zones. We'll see!
  • Turn-in: The corkscrew turn right (just a few small turns) before the front straight was very challenging back when I owned a '13 Z06, since the car just did not want to turn. Looks like eDiff indeed works; the car turns a bit more than 90 degrees effortlessly, with no issues! I actually loved it. I am also wondering if I am over-breaking with my insane brakes, making the turn easier than it should be, but it is hard to say. I'll try to see next time.
• The bad:
  • Pedals:
    • Combined with the more retarded throttle mapping in track mode (GM thinks this makes it easier for us to modulate throttle in corners), you need to blip the throttle quite hard to get to the appropriate revs. My feet, at 10.5 shoe size, and perhaps my legs, are not big/tall enough to blip sufficiently.
    • I even started wondering if this was one of the reasons they came up with the rev-match feature. Anyhow, I try my best, and the rev match feature fills in the rest.
    • One of the nice things about rev-match feature, unlike the implementations at other cars, it does not engage until transmission is already shifted, so someone who does heel-and-toe can still do so, and the system would only 'add' throttle if the user's input was not enough; very nice!
    • High compression: I think as a consequence of having a very high compression engine, the engine does brake the car quite when you lift. This makes it a little trickier to find the right input when you need to lift. I fear I might lift it too much one day while negotiating a corner, getting myself into trouble. So far, though, it was very easy to control.
  • GT seat:
    • It's just not sufficient. I am a bit sore even now, and I was not able to down-shift as much as I'd like, since hard brake zones made it impossible for me to shift (use clutch) and also stay in my seat, since my left foot had to keep me in balance. I will convert the seats to Competition with suede-inserts as soon as I'm done with Monday track day.
    • I will also do the harness bar, which should remedy this issue, and also prove a much better place to mount the camera.