C8 Corvette Track Day at NJMP Thunderbolt - June 3 2022
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- čas přidán 25. 08. 2024
- NASA North East ran this event - great job folks! This is group 3 and 4 together with instructors (with X's on their cars).
I spent two days at Thunderbolt. It was my first time here. Day 1 had better track conditions, with day 2 getting hotter and rubber marbles building up from the race group's tires. Turns 9 & 10 became very tricky. Even on day 1 people were saying the track was not as grippy as usual.
Fastest lap I did was in this session (1:34.5 on lap 3) even though my familiarity and lines improved over the two days. I'm still using the original Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires but it's likely their last track outing.
Nice driving Matt. Can I offer you one small tidbit of info? You're scrubbing a ton of speed on the entry to turn 3 (The fast right hander). Fast guys go in there at 100+mph. I've taken it at 103mph at the apex. If you can set up your car to keep it above 95 and closer to 100mph there, you'll knock off another 2 seconds per lap. Otherwise, your driving is excellent as well as your ability to read the traffic. Oh, one more thing.... I noticed your traction light came on a couple of times at the exit of 12 onto the front straight. Please be cautious there, especially since you mentioned that traction was weird that day. A snap oversteer event will put you into the wall.
Wow! Awesome!
Looks like a blast! Is it set up with track alignment, or factory?
It has the Chevy recommended track alignment. I have found it works great. Very balanced or perhaps a little oversteer depending on my inputs. e.g. trail braking into corners a little late and you can induce some oversteer (but what car doesn't do that...) and very rarely like in this video at the 8min mark I've had the rear slide a bit under hard acceleration out of a slippery corner.
Oh and to add to the insights - My Chevy dealer was over the top on warning that tire wear would be bad with the track alignment then they wanted to charge a lot so I ended up going elsewhere to get the alignment done. For me, with a track day each month or so, the tire wear is still greater on the outside edge of the tires compared to the inside edge. That is to say, if you do enough track time then the track set up is fine. I need to find extra time on the street to wear out the inside and middle of the tires to get my monies worth out of them before replacing.
@@mattevans2003 Thanks. Thinking about getting this done on mine and joining a track club after the blast I had at Ron Fellows, but worried about tires getting chewed up on the street. Though thinking about it, I normally only drive it on twisties out in the country on weekends…so might not be too bad. How many sessions are you getting out of the 4S’s?
@@markw9512 I've done 8 days so far and expect 10. Then they will still be ok for street use for a while. I don't think they get chewed up on the street much, but with the camber at about 3 degrees it simply places all the wear on the inside edges so you need to keep an eye on that. I have a second set of wheels and tires for use on street normally (prettier wheels), so for each track outing I'm swapping and measuring tread depth. Front tires on the outside edges are going to be the first to be used up.
@@mattevans2003 Great info, thanks a lot!! Stay safe out there, watch out for those overbraking types! 😁👍
What do you think about doing whats called a hybrid alignment ? 1/2 of the track setting .
Originally I thought that might be a good idea (prior to setting it up with the Chevy track camber). After doing a few track days at different tracks (with the recommended camber), I found it performed well and I believe the concern about inside edge tire wear is not that big a deal for the cycle of road and track driving that I'm doing. I've done about 8000 miles with 4 weekends of track days and the outside edge of the front tires is the first part to wear down. Of course if you aren't doing track days for a long time it's possibly worth going back to standard camber. I'm more likely to continue doing a 6-10 track days or or more per season and a moderate amount of street driving so I doubt I'll change it back. Street driving is using the inside edges at a slow rate of wear and just helps equalize out the tread wear. People exaggerate how bad it could be for wearing inside edges, but that means they probably aren't aggressively using the tires on a track - track use is far more significant tread wear. If there was less camber it may work well enough but based on my experience it looks like it could have a higher rate of tread wear at the outside edges with less camber... so potentially less performance and the tires would wear out quicker.