A few weeks ago I was invited to join in with a neighbor to attend a track day at the Talladega Grand Prix track with his Ford SVT club. Yesterday was the day and was my first opportunity to check out 8 under extreme conditions.

You can read about The Talladega Grand Prix (aka Little Talladega) here: http://www.tgprace.com. What’s nice about this track is that it was built primarily to test motorcycles and so it has no guard rails or barriers to crash into; just nice lawn to slide on and stacked tires if you get too carried away. There was one mishap with a race-prepped Dodge Neon driven by a poor driver that slid completely off the lawn, through the tires, and into a ditch. The driver and passenger are fine, but the car will need some work. Other than that, there were a lot of spin outs whose worst affect were muddy cars. BTW, the 8 never lost it.

My buddy is chapter president for the Atlanta SVT Club – a great bunch of guys. I was happy to join in for a track day because 1) it was $135 for a day of track driving with a small group (20 cars) and 2) there were pros on hand to show you the ropes (I’m a novice on a track). I have to admit that I was a little worried being there with all those supercharged V8’s, but there was also a mix of other cars including Focuses, Miatas, a Bug, an Infinity G85, an M3, and a Viper.

Without being too long winded let me just say that, with the exception of the Viper (he was in a different group than me), there was nothing on that track that that my little 8 couldn’t match. The Infinity and the Beamer were even competitors (they were also better drivers). But I lapped every other car there. The Fords would consistently pull ahead on the straights, but the track is pretty tight and top speed was around 100 for the Fords (I hit the low 90’s), so I always got on their tails in the turns. Within two or three laps of catching someone, they just let me pass. Nothing on the track seemed to stick as well at the 8.

If anyone tells you that the RX-8 is not a competitive sports car, they don’t know what they are talking about. Sure it will never win a drag race, but in a handling competition, it shines. After the event was over, I got a lot of admiring remarks including one guy who shook my hand, thanked me for coming, and said that although he tried to catch up, there was no way he could. He was driving a nice yellow ’01 Cobra.

 

That's the way to represent!!!

 

Very cool.

Were you using stock suspension and tires?

 

Great post. Just think how much better you would have done if you had performance lowering springs :D

 

Nice story! Our 8's balance + good power + great handling = lots of fun on the track! We are blessed.

 

Some more details…

With the exception of a couple of cosmetic mods, my 8 is 100% stock; including the suspension. I do feel that a spring upgrade would have helped a lot. Better-than-stock tires couldn’t hurt either.

During the morning runs I just went out and learned by pure guts. I left the DSC on and found that I was riding the curves with the DSC lighting up the whole way. The morning run was counter-clockwise on the track and I found that I was shifting between 3rd and 4th throughout the track. For the first afternoon session I rode with an instructor during the senior group run. He was in a Miata and showed me how to take the turns correctly. I found I was breaking way too early and carrying the braking into the turn which explained why I was pushing the DSC so much. I was chatting with another instructor and was talking about the 8’s redline and that I was shifting briefly into 4th to get some more speed at the end of the straights. His advice was to ride the redline as far as it would go and that the car would not let itself get hurt.

Armed with this new information I ran the rest of the afternoon (this time we turned the track around going clockwise) much better. Although I left the electronics on, I rarely hit the DSC and found that I could push to the limit of the tires and really take the turns well. I was planning to turn off the DSC once I got comfortable with the track, but then it rained for a while and the track got a bit slick. With a wet track I found I could get all four wheels to drift and just barely flicker the DSC light so I’m not sure that turning it off would have made much of difference. I was also not that brave. I also found I could run the entire track in 3rd gear allowing me to concentrate more on finding the best line. I varied between about 4500rpm all the way up to where the rev limiter kicked in. By that point I was doing just over 90 and had about 50 feet to break for the next turn.

My summary impression is that with the stock setup and the electronics on, there is a fair amount of suspension dive to the outside-front corner and the car definitely wants to understeer. The next time I go out I will ditch the DSC and try to take full advantage of the rear wheel drive and 50-50 weight distribution. If I do this often enough I will definitely splurge for some upgrades.

Of course, all this is purely optional because this little 8 still kicks butt right off the showroom floor.

 

very awesome.

 

Yeah, I think having the DSC on would probably lead to more understeer than if it were off.

Sounds like you had a lot of fun.

 

Track days are awesome. Don't waste (well, maybe "waste" isn't the right word) your money on suspension. Spend it on more track days!

 

Glad you had fun at your track day. I am considering doing the NASA HPDE there next month. How did your tires do at the end of the day? Are they blistered or have a rough surface at all? I heard the track there is pretty abrasive.

I did the Road Atlanta track day and I have some spots on my tires where the rubber looks melted. The spots are along the edge of the row of tread blocks to the outside of the tire center.

 

All I can say is stiffer sway bars. You'll be amazed at the difference, and theya re cheap and easy to do. My first time on a track with the car I noticed the body roll immediately. I got the front bar and was very happy, but a gremlin whispered in my ear, and I got the rear too, and it's even better.

 

Yeah, the tires definity took some punishment. By the end of the day they were pretty pitted. Felt like extra course sandpaper. I also had a month's worth of brake dust on my rims.

 

So there was a m3 and a g35? How did they perform up against the 8. not relaly worried about the m3, just cause its out of my price range, but what about the g35?

 

I have to say that the g35 is an amazing car. In terms of performance against the 8, we seemed pretty evenly matched. At least he never passed me and I never passed him. Not a conclusive performance evaluation by any means.

Although I was impressed by the Infiniti, style wise I'll keep my 8.

 

The best money spent in making the car faster is always... on the driver. (okay, not always)

I am amazed with the stock levels of performance on the track with the 8. I'm sure springs, swaybars, tires, etc. would make my car faster... but if I got in a modified 8, and a better driver got in my stock 8... I'd expect to get my *** kicked by the more experienced driver.

This point was made by my total in ability to catch the professional driver in front of me in an Audi. Sure, it's a nice solid little European car. But it's no match for the 8... until that guy got behind the wheel. Any time I got "in range", he'd just step it up a bit... until he noticed that i'd fallen off the back... then he'd slow down.

 

I am kind of new to the 8 and have heard some talk about DSC and ABS. Why do some say it is a joke to have ABS on an 8.

 

I've never heard that myself.

 

I left the system(s) on all day - two sessions in the rain; two sessions in dry conditions. It saved my *** once - on an uphill, slightly off camber left hand turn at a bout 60 mph in 3rd gear (do the math... low RPM... low torque) the ***-end stepped out a bit. I countered, but the car caught it as fast (maybe faster?) as I did.

Why would someone not want ABS? There are no downsides on a track. Dirt sure, snow sometimes. But a roadcourse?

 

I dont know guys. I was making fun of a rice burner the other day and one of the guys heard me talking about the 8 and said ''why the hell would you want ABS on a sports car''. I asked my brother who is a sports car enthusiast and he didnt know. I know my cars, but not the mechanical things that go along with them. Maybe he was just mad because his car sucked. Also I heard having DSC on will give you slower track times

 

DSC on the track will slow you down, because the "fastest line" around the track involves a slip angle that the DSC will try to counteract. It takes a good amount of track time to learn how to control that slip angle, however, so the DSC helps to keep you safe on the track. I used it for my first couple track days. As to the whole thing about ABS on a sports car? Why not? On the track, your braking should be smooth enough to prevent engaging ABS (slamming on the brakes and causing ABS to engage is not the fastest way to slow down). However, 99% of sports cars on the market are driven on the street, where ABS is good.

 

It seems to me that technologies like ABS, TCS, and DSC are simply improvements that have come with the evolution of the automobile. They are not going to make you a better driver, but rather help you more safely reach the limit of performance of your car. Of course everything is a trade-off and so a better driver may not want some of these features because they can get a bit more performance by giving up the safety net and taking a car to its limits with better skill.

For us weekend trackdogs, I see no problem with it using these systems. If you’re going to go down the path of “real drivers don’t use…” then you might as well give up other automotive advances. How about driving a care without any power breaks or steering. Or maybe we should go back to drums instead of rotors. And of course, real race car drivers don’t have rev limiters and shift lights to keep them from blowing up their engines – except that they do.

 

Recently a magazine (I think it was R&T) did a test of that theory "pros don't need it" ... to paraphrase. They ran a Vette at Sebring (I think) with the systems on and off. The same driver, same conditions, alternating (to avoid getting faster because of practice) and the result: the professional racecar driver was faster with the traction, stability control ON.

Also, if the driver is so smooth as to not need the ABS... what is it hurting? It's there "in case". So the only down side is weight... Okay, so there is a downside

 

Agree with that! My one day at the track (Indianapolis Raceway Park at the Rotary Revolution), my instructor took me for a ride in his car...a celica with more or less stock engine but non-stock suspension. WOW! He could make that thing fly!

Also, if you where never getting out of the low 90's, you should NOT have been going to 4th gear. 3rd will get you about 92mph. IRP had a very tight and scary left turn (brick wall) onto the drag strip and drag shutdown area. The only place I'd hit 4th and got it up to about 115. Other than that, I stayed in 3rd except 2nd on that turn onto the drag strip.

But no matter how you do it, Track Time is AWSOME! If you've got an 8 and the chance for track time comes up, take it. Sell the wifes benie baby collection if you must to get the money, but get it!

Untill you get it on a track, there is just no way you can know how much car we really all have! You just can not drive on roads the same way as on a closed track!

Bob

 

How much dose it cost to just rent out a track and do this kind of racing? OR how much dose it cost to just show up and go to a place liek this. Is there any websites wehre i could find out more information? ANy places in SO-Cal?

 

http://track-days.org/

http://www.speedventures.net/

http://www.redlinetrackevents.com/


hth,
Mike