For no reason other than "it will be hilarious" I went to Spa Francorchamps for a track day in the Stagea with some friends. The result? Well I survived, and so did the car. What a brilliant day. If you want to make friends, go on a track day with a Stagea! We paid extra to get a garage (good idea as it rained!) and our garage was full of people having a nosey all day long. There was nothing else like it there, the rest of the field was about 40% Porsche 911's piloted by fat middle aged businessmen in full racing suits, 30% BMW 3 series of various forms and the rest were track day special hatchbacks, Clio's, Corsas, Meganes etc and a smattering of Caterhams, and quite inexplicably a Le Mans prototype Lola-esque thing.
As far as the driving went, the car was a lot better than I expected, even though as suspected the brakes were the obvious weak link. On my first run out I did my outlap, one hot lap and then a gentle in-lap, but even on a slow in-lap you still have to brake a lot for some of the corners so I came into the garage with my brakes actually on fire. That earned us a lot of street cred. Went back out again and the brakes were still poo but I had learned to manage it and started building speed. I had some tuition to learn proper lines mainly for Eau Rouge, Blanchimont and the corner before Blanchimont which is critical to good speed down the straight. Oh and the downhill right hand haiprin Bruxelles, which no one could agree what the best line was. Even the good drivers seemed to all have different ideas there.
In the lunch break I bled the brakes as the pedal was very soft and squishy. Immediately after bleeding it was loads better - like the pedal was a block of wood so I had high hopes for the next session however the fluid I drained was nasty. I'm annoyed I didnt flush the fluid before going as it was very old. One hot lap after bleeding and the pedal was back to soft and squishy again so I just had to cope with it. I can only assume that the old fluid had so much water in that it was boiling really quickly.
Anyway, back to the circuit and after getting the tuition and getting more confident with the car I improved by 10 seconds a lap over the whole day and in the end did 3:30.9 which I was quite pleased with considering I've never done any track driving before. For reference there was a mid 90's non-wrx impreza doing roughly 3:27 and my friends new Fiesta ST with the 230 Mountune kit was getting 3:23 so I was very happy.
With it being Spa, obviously it chucked it down a couple of times and when it did I literally ran for my helmet and gloves and got straight out there and passed everyone else tiptoeing round then for 4 glorious half wet/half dry laps I was the only car on track, I had Spa to myself and didn't have to check my mirror every 2 seconds so had some serious fun and have gained new respect for the car as it handled everything brilliantly, including my cack handed driving.
The only damage I did to the car was on the rear bumper. It turns out that exhausts get very hot from prolonged spanking - all of the exhaust. I may have slightly set fire and melted the bumper where the exhaust exits, whoops!
In preparation for Spa and with no research at all I put some Michelin PS3's on. This car still has the original 16" wheels so they are 205/55 but the highest load rating, my logic being that with the high load rating they would have a fairly stiff sidewall so it wouldn't be too bad.
My logic just about held up (sort of). Please forgive my lack of in depth knowledge about these things, I'll try and describe as best I can what I did in case anyone is interested. Based on what my mate said (best source of info), when hot from track use the tyres would gain somewhere around 4psi. I carried a lot of tools there so I pumped my tyres up a bit due to the heavy load so I started off at 34 front / 36 rear (cold). We took an infra red temp gauge but completely forgot to use it so I just went on what it felt like to drive.
After the first run the tyres were up at 38 front / 40 rear so the 4psi guess seemed to hold. Now I know on the standard anti roll bar (sway bar for Americans) and standard suspension its a bit understeery. Also at the start of the day the track was damp and cold, about 7 deg C. Through trial and error and a bit of guidance and tuition the best way was to try and be gentle with initial turn in to prevent instant understeer overload of the front end and let the load build up. Once the car was settled in a bend it wasn't actually that bad. I carried on taking air out at 2psi at a time. I know 2psi is a lot but I purposely did large amounts so any difference would be obvious and we would be able to tell if we were going in the right/wrong direction with pressure.
After 3 morning runs I ended up with (hot) 31 front / 33 rear. This was still a little understeery mid corner so I dropped the fronts to 29. This seemed to cross some magical barrier where the front tyres just turned to jelly and it was awful. Had a moment at La Source where on the exit we just floated straight over the sleeping policeman onto the run off, much to the surprise of an Impreza following close behind who was probably expecting me to peel off to the right so he could pass.
After lunch the solution we ended up with was to put the fronts back to a hot pressure of 31psi and raise the rears to 35 (again, hot reading). Obviously there's several compromises going on at the same time here but applying the method of gentle initial turn in, then feel the load build, I was amazed that in long corners for example Bruxelles downhill off camber hairpin and Double Gauche/Pouhon (what a corner!) I could hold the steering wheel steady and modulate the throttle and bring the nose in/out of understeer/oversteer, then as the corner opens just nail the throttle and let it drift to the outside kerb. Obviously when I say "drift" I mean let the car smoothly run to the outside, not tyre screeching madness. In long corners like that I could feel the 4wd system working. You can't get power oversteer in the Stagea due to the automatic gearbox but if I nailed the throttle in the middle of Double Gauche it would understeer wide, then I could feel the front wheels come on and it would magically drag it back to the inside again. Just my own small experience only half knowing what I'm doing of course, but the 4wd system worked well even on such a big lumbering hulk of a car so I can only imagine how good a proper Skyline GTR would be around those same bends!
In preparation for Spa and with no research at all I put some Michelin PS3's on. This car still has the original 16" wheels so they are 205/55 but the highest load rating, my logic being that with the high load rating they would have a fairly stiff sidewall so it wouldn't be too bad.
My logic just about held up (sort of). Please forgive my lack of in depth knowledge about these things, I'll try and describe as best I can what I did in case anyone is interested. Based on what my mate said (best source of info), when hot from track use the tyres would gain somewhere around 4psi. I carried a lot of tools there so I pumped my tyres up a bit due to the heavy load so I started off at 34 front / 36 rear (cold). We took an infra red temp gauge but completely forgot to use it so I just went on what it felt like to drive.
After the first run the tyres were up at 38 front / 40 rear so the 4psi guess seemed to hold. Now I know on the standard anti roll bar (sway bar for Americans) and standard suspension its a bit understeery. Also at the start of the day the track was damp and cold, about 7 deg C. Through trial and error and a bit of guidance and tuition the best way was to try and be gentle with initial turn in to prevent instant understeer overload of the front end and let the load build up. Once the car was settled in a bend it wasn't actually that bad. I carried on taking air out at 2psi at a time. I know 2psi is a lot but I purposely did large amounts so any difference would be obvious and we would be able to tell if we were going in the right/wrong direction with pressure.
After 3 morning runs I ended up with (hot) 31 front / 33 rear. This was still a little understeery mid corner so I dropped the fronts to 29. This seemed to cross some magical barrier where the front tyres just turned to jelly and it was awful. Had a moment at La Source where on the exit we just floated straight over the sleeping policeman onto the run off, much to the surprise of an Impreza following close behind who was probably expecting me to peel off to the right so he could pass.
After lunch the solution we ended up with was to put the fronts back to a hot pressure of 31psi and raise the rears to 35 (again, hot reading). Obviously there's several compromises going on at the same time here but applying the method of gentle initial turn in, then feel the load build, I was amazed that in long corners for example Bruxelles downhill off camber hairpin and Double Gauche/Pouhon (what a corner!) I could hold the steering wheel steady and modulate the throttle and bring the nose in/out of understeer/oversteer, then as the corner opens just nail the throttle and let it drift to the outside kerb. Obviously when I say "drift" I mean let the car smoothly run to the outside, not tyre screeching madness. In long corners like that I could feel the 4wd system working. You can't get power oversteer in the Stagea due to the automatic gearbox but if I nailed the throttle in the middle of Double Gauche it would understeer wide, then I could feel the front wheels come on and it would magically drag it back to the inside again. Just my own small experience only half knowing what I'm doing of course, but the 4wd system worked well even on such a big lumbering hulk of a car so I can only imagine how good a proper Skyline GTR would be around those same bends!
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