Track Day 42 -- Ridge Motorsports Park W/ Turn 2 - Testing Heads + Cam + More
The first track day of the year for PNW'ers tends to be a big deal, as folks have had all winter to wrench on their car. That's also a long time to build up some rust with. I was no exception to all of this, and so this post will be a bit longer than normal season posts.
- Leading Up to The Event
- The Track Day Itself
- Pictures of the Car on the Track
- Results, Data Analysis and Takeaways
Leading up to the event
First track day of the 2025 season for the Corvette! While a few track day opportunities had come and gone, most of my early season energy was expended on getting our Lemons Accord through through it's first event. When this event finally came up though... there was an awful lot that had happened with the car, making this both an event to shake off the dust for myself personally along with make sure the car would be sorted for the season.
First thing's first... I did a TON of engine work on the car. New heads, cam, upgraded trunion bearings, valve springs, push rods, ls3 water pump, you name it... I did it. It was a ton of work, and to be honest I had to take apart so much stuff and put so much back on the car that even screwing up 1% would be at least 10 items weren't right. The margin of error here was slim!
I also fully caged the car. Safety first right? Plus some chassis rigidity and as I'm competing more and more with this car maybe I'll wind up wheel to wheel racing with it at some point? Probably not, so just safety first as the current plan.
There's a lot that goes into installing a cage, and lots of stuff that has to go down after the fact. This wasn't even all of it either, this is just when I remebered to snap a photo.
With the car cage finished and the engine modifications complete I took the Corvette to get Dyno tuned. I think the tune still has some issues with general livability grade stuff... but as far as full power on the dyno it's alive and well now.
Here you can see the power gains over the original run on this car. Substantial power gains everywhere from 3250 or so RPM on upwards. I've got some adjustments to likely make for sure with the car!
As I had a bit of time before my first track day... I figured why not add some minor aero and aesthetic bits. I added the above side skirts. They were cheap to add and eh maybe they're helping. At the very least, they were cheap and I like the look. They have however made my life a bit harder for accessing under the corvette. Doh.
Here's another aero bit you may have noticed in the picture of the car at the track, I added cannards from King Performance to my car. I deviated a bit from the original process of bolting these onto the bumper and instead went with rivnuts. This not only seems to more than have done the trick, but also simplified install as in order to bolt these on I'd have had to remove my splitter, which would have been a nightmare.
Here's something I did that's DIY and ugly as heck... the fender vent on my drivers side took a hit from some track debris and cracked. Doh. So I got a roll of cheap carbon fiber, mixed up some epoxy and slapped on some DIY carbon fiber to the fender vent. Now i've got a carbon fiber fender vent. It's also in that "raw" finish that's trendy with all the cool kids these days.
Fun little thing I found when cleaning up my car... I've been carrying this chunk of dirt around in my brake duct since I went off the track at Thunderhill West last Fall.
With the car caged and notably more gutted I decided to weigh it, and I came in at 3159lbs. That's not actually too shabby, as my previous weight was 3142 lb, a gain of only 18 lbs. I also had a half full tank versus the previous 1/4 tank of fuel, which is about 4.6 gallons of fuel if you trust the gauge to be an accurate correlation. Gasoline weighs 6 gallons... so if there was just 3 gallons of gas difference between the measurements, the weight is the same! For more information check out my article on C5 Corvette weight loss.Other fun detail, with my body weight in there the car corner balanced at 50.2% balanced so... taking that win as well!
Of course there were some last minute headaches, in my case self inflicted ones. I was trying to move quick and decided to blast the lug nuts on in order to save time. Nope... all I did was manage to snap a stud when I went to torque everything. That was dumb. Fortunately, I have entirely new hubs from MPI around that I need to install anyways. So I chucked one on and sent it.
Not picture is the headache I went through with my new EBC SR11 brake pads. They were squealling like crazy while decelerating. I went out and put a bunch of bedding time in on them on the street and sure enough the migraine inducing squeall remained. So I pulled all of the pads, cleaned the rotors, cleaned the pads, cleaned and greased all applicable pins, made sure any retaining springs were in place. Everything was fine so there was no obvious smoking gun. Turns out though I just needed to send it at track speeds to finalize the bedding in process.
The Track Day Itself
The track day itself finally arrived, and I was a bit concerned going into the event. While I was cautiously optimistic about the car after a dyno session and some around town driving... I'm generally a pessimist, and there was all sorts of new things to figure out on the car. Maybe some of you other car folks can relate as well... you grow to know the noises your car makes, and when a new one comes along you're a bit cautious. After all the modifications above... my car was making a metric ton of new and different noises, and I wasn't certain that they all were just the new normal for this car...
The goals going into the event were:
- Have some fun and shake of the cobwebs.
- Figure out if the car had any issues or would need anything for the season.
- Stretch goal: Run some fast times
I was able to pit next to another rad fellow with a C5 Corvette. I'd actually met him a few times before and he had some pretty cool stuff going on with his car. He's decently quick as well, and I was quite happy to be able to during later sessions run a slightly faster pace despite myself being on endurance 200tw tires while he was on slicks.
(Pictures from photographer to come hopefully)
The first session out I was able to put myself at ease and figure things out pretty quick. I did experience some rather notable understeer in a few new places which was odd, but was able to crank out a best lap of 1:52.186, which is a pretty good lap time for me at the Ridge, but still about .6 seconds slower than my previous personal best. Considering the cooler temperatures, my rustiness, and some uncertainty in the plaform going out there, I felt pretty good.
I'd run yet another session and this time click off a 1:52.214. I was no able to pretty consistently run 1:52's, which before were very challenging times for me to run. Not too shabby. I was still geting some front end push in some places, while experiencing the car trying to oversteer in others... hmmm. I decided to check my front suspension settings and... hey come to find out I never re-adjuisted my front suspension settings and they were not only wide open on compression, but one side had a different rebound setting than the other side of the car. I reset the front suspension to 8 compression and 8 rebound, upped my tire pressure a bit and went back out.
Third session I was able to click off a 1:51.992. Which still .4 seconds or so slower than my previous best, I was now in the 1:51's again, which I've only ever accomplished once before so I felt pretty good. Handling was improved and confidence in the car was up. I was feeling pretty good overall and starting to have some fun.
Right as we were about to break for lunch, it started raining and some poor soul smashed up their car in turn 16, which in my experience at the track is the turn that always smashes somebody up every event. We all stopped, had some lunch, and were hoping to wait out the rain. The rain however kept up through lunch, so myself and most folks chose to sit things out for a bit. I pulled up a seat in my truck, leaned the seat back and took a nap.
Sure enough, waking up an hour later (and having missed a session) the track was now dry. Not too bad!
I'd go out and click off 2 more sessions with not many new things to reflect on besides areas of personal improvement. I'll discuss them below.
For the final session I went out on some new to me Vitour P1 tires, which are supposedly some of the latest and greatest "super 200" tires for putting down competitive times in time attack or other such events. I can't really judge the tires much as I was intentionally taking it easy intentionally to simply heat cycle the tires, but it sure seemed like they have some excellent potential.
Other things of note:
Oil temperatures never exceeded 250 degrees. While ambient temperatures were notably cooler than other track days, this bodes well that the larger oil cooler size is paying dividens.
I need a better low profile jack. The stupid Daytona one I got keeps having one of the pistons size up and I have to pull it apart and clean it. That caused me quite the bit of stress at the track, so I'm on the hunt!
Pictures Of the Car On the Track
Results, Data Analysis and Takeaways
So the first takeaway was that I was now consistently running 1:52 lap times, and that's rusty on a track that seemed to be struggling to get temperature into it. Overall, the car seems to be pretty happy, though I was noticing some areas I'd like to improve. I also clicked off a 1:51 lap time, which I've only ever done once before so I'm pretty happy about that!
Here's my best lap with some speeds to look at. My top speed has increased 3mph on the front straight, 5mph between turns 5-6, 10mph up coming into turn 10, and 2mph up through 12-13. Overall, some big improvements in speed. Corner speeds however were a bit down, which I think reflects a lack of confidence in the setup and just not feeling controlled at the limits. I think some adjustments need to be made, along with a slightly warmer track day with a slight more controlled feeling breakaway will have me feeling more confident when playing with the limits.
One area I know i need to improve, and have noticed and discussed before, is my braking. I'm doing side foot braking, as in ball of the foot on the brake, rolling foot to outside to rev the gas. This owrks, but I can't fully depress the brake without hitting the gas. I only need to briefly use this technique though to heel toe... and then I can get back on to full brake pedal coverage and push on it with a lot more force sooner. Thus, I was braking longer and without as much authority as I should be able to. Definitely an area to improve.
Here's a speed to time graph of my best lap. I recently read a Grassroots Motorsports article on the topic and how you can analyze your driving based on what you find here. Namely, looking for plateaus where you are coasting and should be accelerating or decelerating, and anywhere that your braking to accelerating dips are not crisp, as those are areas where your transition from braking to accelerating aren't smooth.
As you can probably see above, there's 4-5 areas I am coasting a bit. Now GRM was kind enough to say there are inevitably some areas where coasting has to happen, but I think in general you can see some of my confidence and platform concerns in a few areas. Ironing those out should yield some improvements... and now I gotta start to reflect on how or what I can do.
One thing for sure I want to figure out is the balance of the breakaway on the car. The rear still feels a bit squirrely and like it wants to break free early and without the most control. I'm tipe toeing up to the limit, where in the past I feel I could really hang it out there and the car would break away predictably. Maybe some of that was that I never really felt like I got my tires up to temperature? Or perhaps there's something still going on with the front bump stop situation on the Corvette... or maybe I'm getting towards the limits of these budget coilovers nobody else but me is trying to push this far?
A for sure mechanical improvement to consider is that I think the rear differential on this corvette is a 3.7 ratio, and I think I would be better served by a 3.4 rear differential. Second gear is almost uncontrollbly short, and results in me needing to take a quick shift. A reduced ratio would take some of the bite out of 2nd gear and let me carry it a bit further. I would lose some gusto in 3rd, where I find myself frequently, but not so much so that I think it would be to my detriment. Going with a 3.4 rear ratio would mean I'd also save on having to grab 5th on the front straight, which you can see as a distinct tapering in acceleration right at the end of the last incline of the graph. I know I'm losing top speed potential there for sure.