Track Driving Tips

Next week I will be driving my tuned bella JTD on the racing track in Serres Greece.

It will be nice fellow Alfa Owners to share some of the tips on track driving they have coma across and learned during the years....like tire pressure and other things.

There will be a few sites on the internet that have good general track day advice. Here are a couple to get you going.

Driving tips for track days
Track Day car preparation

For tyre pressure I suggest you start with standard settings and adjust on the day with a cigarette lighter compressor and a digital guage. You will then establish a pressure setting that suits ytour driving style.

I would emphasise the need for a decent brake set up. If you've got OEM brake pads on and have had them for any length of time you may want to consider getting them replaced ahead of the track day. Something like EBC Green stuff will provide a good compromise between general road use and occasional track use.

If you plan to do more track days than consider upgrading your brakes first (e.g. high boil point brake fluid, uprated front disks braided brake lines) before any other performance enhancements .

Thanks for your help Monty

So far the car has;

1. New coolant fluid

2. Motul Racing Brake Fluid 600*F

3. Powerflex bushes all road the front and the rear, also on the front ARB (superpro is the maker of these for the 147/156)

4. Koni-FSD

5. Q2 limited slip differential

6. Wheel alignment was done

7. Valve clearance was checked

8. New timing belt

9. I do have to clean the BMC-CDA air filter

It would be really nice to know what tire pressures I need to run at the track...or at least a starting point. I will be using 215/45/17 or 225

Originally Posted by kgb

It would be really nice to know what tire pressures I need to run at the track...or at least a starting point. I will be using 215/45/17 or 225

You generally run a few PSI higher on the track, so maybe 38psi or so? Whats the limit of the tyres?

Try 10% higher than book pressure.

I would watch the pressure thing, I have known different car's react differently. I generally start on stock pressure's for a while and take it from there.

There are many things I have learnt over the years from my amateur track day experience, but the one thing that took me the longest to pick un and get right is being smooth. Try not to use the lower gears, I don’t know the track, but you will be tempted to drive it to the ragged edge. Try and be mechanically sympathetic, stay calm and learn track etiquette and stick to it. If someone catches you up, irrespective of what car it is, let it pass. Take it easy, listen to what you are told by the briefing staff and enjoy.

My first track day was 10 years ago at Silverstone [UK] in a modified Peugeot 306 D-Turbo and I was hopeless, in fact I am surprised I managed to live through it! I drove it like I stole it, tyres screeching all over the place braking and turning in, in the wrong places etc etc........nightmare.

Check out these x2 vids. The first is Nigel Mansell doing his thing around the top gear track. He was very fast around the track, but make note of the lack of screaming tyre’s. It was a smooth lap. The second is also from top gear, James May being educated on how to drive a TVR by Jackie Stewart!

YouTube - Carareok Nigel MAnsel

YouTube - top gear james mays lesson

Hello kgb,

Some things I can say about the track: It is quite an open track so you'll be mostly using 3rd, 4th and 5th gear and you won't need to be too hard on your brakes. The tarmac is really good and very grippy so it will be hard to lose traction but if you manage to actually lose it you will be wearing your tires very quickly.

There will be a warm up and a cool down lap for each session. I would avoid very high tire pressures because the grippy tarmac will get your tires to working temperature fast and increase their pressure considerably. We will try to have a pyrometer so anyone can measure their tread temperature and see how hot the tires are running and whether there is a big front/rear bias. I would suggest that you use your first session to try to find a good front/rear tire pressure balance so that the car is as less understeering as possible (it will be unavoidably understeering considering the amount of torque you have).

I'll be doing the briefing at the Serres Circuit TD so we'll have a chance to meet.

Some stuff about tyre pressures is below:
..but the most important thing is to use all the track and be as smooth as possible.
Have an absolutely clear plan of what part of the apex you are aiming for and the flow of the line you see through the corner.
Make sure to attack the corner entry as slow as is neccessary to make that apex you have picked. Slow in-fast out sounds simple right? Male testosterone normally makes us go really-fast-in, and pathetic scrubbing out - it takes quite a few laps to get that out of your system normally!
When you start track days everybody enters the corners way to quickly (you want to go fast right? wrong! ) on their first day, they miss the apex by miles and have to wait ages before the can apply full throttle out of the corner

The best tip I ever got, was that if you need to apply extra lock after the apex you are generally doing somehting wrong - likely trying to carry an unrealistic amount of speed but could be an error of line or balance. Generally the minute you make the apex you should be able to gradually let off lock as you apply extra throttle.
This tip will probably not make too much sense to you on your first day, but if you watch a video of what you are doing it is an easy thing to see if you are doing.

Pressures:
10% over normal pressure is a good start.
You may have to let some out once its warmed up - take the first session very handy since your tyres will get the pressure a little high near the end.

However it is much better to let some hot air out after your first session than put way less air in at the beginning and heat it up way more to get the same target HOT pressure..
With the former way the tyre temperature will be cooler for the same pressure (Charles law).
If you start with too little air your tyres will quickly heat up due to the extra movement of the tyre so you will reach your target pressure okay ..but with higher air temperatures.


With 225/45/17 I normally start at 2.5 or 2.6 bar cold and let it up to 2.8 or 2.9 bar hot (just after coming in from a session) .

You can monitor the pressure simply by checking the amount of wear over the sidewall line that marks the end of the area of the sidewall that was designed to be used for cornering.
If any wear shows over it then increase the pressure.
If the edge of the wear on the tyre is nowhere near the line that makrs the limit then you could reduce the pressure to gain traction (or drive faster!).

Have fun!

Oh check you oil is topped up to the max to avoid surge.

Not sure how much the diesels suffer from fuel surge, but GTAs seem to suffer from it below 1/4 tank for really hard cornering.
Sandys would probaby know for diesels..

One more thing: We are planning to have traffic cones indicating turn-in, apex and track-out point of most turns during the first day so aiming for the apex will be easier.

Also, if you manage to come to the track really early (before 8:30) you may be able to do some free laps before the sessions begin. You will have the chance to check your tire pressures then.

Originally Posted by Trailbraker

Oh check you oil is topped up to the max to avoid surge.

Not sure how much the diesels suffer from fuel surge, but GTAs seem to suffer from it below 1/4 tank for really hard cornering.
Sandys would probaby know for diesels..

Not really sure what you mean by surge, but I have had a problem with the car on really hard right hand cornering where the car will almost stall but this was a very extreme flick on an autotest/sprint style event where you do a slalom then flick it around into a coned parking space, reverse out into another and back down the track, after parking all the warning lights/beeps came on, the car smoked out and I had no control or the engine it was barely ticking over I assumed that it was either all the oil gathering one side troubling the crank or perhaps because I was low on fuel so I just stopped doing it, I'd already proved a point and battered nearly everyone elses times if I didn't have to sit there waiting for the car to wake up for 2-3 seconds I would have been top.

Oddly an earlier event in the day had me doing something similar but on a left hand bend and there was no trouble so maybe it was fuel pick up related?

This scenario has never been a concern on a track for me though as I've never attacked a corner so vicously, I drive a lot smoother in these cases even little tight go kart tracks like curborough weren't a problem, JTD will just run around the track all day long with no bother, I typically start with full load pressures and check where the tyre wear is after a few laps.

I knew Sandy was the man for the job

It could well have been fuel surge if you were lowish on fuel, at least the GTA can sometimes go into a limp home mode temporarily when this happens.

If it was oil surge I think you would have got a low oil pressure light, although this can occur too if the engine stalls while moving I think.

I would have half thought that relative sludgyness (okay okay, higher viscosity if you want me to be PC ) of diesel might have helped a little over petrol.

Cheers,
TB

Oil pressure light was one of the many messages but as you said that happens near a stall.

diesel is not really that thick at all and sloshes about just like petrol would.

Thinking about it I'm rarely low on fuel at a track day, normally go with half a tank and being a diesel leave with most of it even after I've had my fill of laps that may be the difference between that test day where I had an issue as thats the only day I've ever done driving with the tank low, so more convinced it could be fuel related.

Thanks for your replies

Alfasud.ti,

If everything goes as planned I will be in Serres on Thursday.

Tans mieux.