Corvette Forum Editor

You might be asking yourself, "What can I do to prepare my Corvette for the track, and maybe give myself that extra edge?" Well, today you'll find out. We've got science on our side.

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zrracer

You paint with tooo broad a brush.
An engineering race is misleading and possibly harmful. Having someone think that r or a tires will make them much faster is misleading. They could end up duck hooking their car into a wall because the super tires never warned them they were going to loose traction. Their brakes,pads rotors and brake fluid r not up to r tires. Not to mention alignment and air pressure.oh yea, shocks,settings,spring and the rest of the stuff that supports tires.
I try to keep students from getting r tires until group 3. They need education, prepared safe car, and experience. When they get everything sorted with the car,brakes,suspension,tire pressures and alignment and allllll the other stuff and have maxed out to a predictable lap time it's time for great tires.

Jay_Davis

Best upgrade: The driver.

Mjolitor 68

Nitrous!!!!!

Mjolitor 68

Or Bubbles

63Corvette

The Driver mod

zrracer

I am forced to change my opinion.
The hell with all that smart stuff, I want some bubbles

FASTFATBOY

Best upgrade, seat and belts.

SouthernSon

No showroom vehicle is up to the grind of a road course with a good driver. Add HP and you might want to stop, too! Got a good sticky tire, you may want to upgrade to better wheel bearings. Gonna run for more than just a minute or two, you might want to keep the driveline cool. IOW, there is no such thing as the single one thing that gives you the greatest benefit. When you break one aspect of the vehicle because you enhanced another the question of benefit really hits home.

ZedO6

Here I was thinking brakes...of course it's bubbles!

Mordeth

I know it is said over and over, but the driver mod thing is by far the best improvement. I didn't believe it, until I got on a track. I thought I was a great driver, until the first lap - and realized I had no clue what the hell was going on. Very humbling experience. Here was the conversation with the instructor after a few hot laps in my highly modified C6Z:

Instructor: "Do you own a gun?"
Me: "Yes, what does that have to do with anything?"
Instructor: "If you were showing someone how to shoot a gun for the first time, what kind of gun would you use?"
Me: "Probably a Sig Sauer P320 9mm. Compact version. Ergonomic, smooth trigger, very little recoil, easy to operate. You looking for a gun?"
Instructor: "No. So you are saying you wouldn't give a new gun owner a bazooka to practice with?"
Me: "Well no. That would be irresponsible. It takes years to learn proper gun control, marksmanship and most of all safety".
Instructor: "Ahh I see."

Took me a minute, but then I realized his point.

He told me to buy a Miata and then spend 5 years learning how to drive it!! Well that isn't happening, but it definitely opened my eyes. I am sitting on top of a 600rwhp godamn rocketship and I barely know how to walk. So now I spend all my time reading books, watching videos, taking online courses, talking to other drivers and reading on here. I take notes, map out the track from memory and focus on only a few things at a time.

I also watch videos (over and over and over) from Bill Dearborn (bless his soul for helping me), Poor Sha and other members who have years of experience. I don't expect to go as fast as them, nor will I try, but I can learn alot from just watching them repeatedly. I broadcast youtube from my computer to my big screen TV and just sit and watch. Bill is kind enough to maintain his youtube site that has many videos. It is useful to me because it is at my home track (Watkins Glen) and he used to drive a C6Z (same as me). When I get ready to take my C7Z out, he has many videos of that too for me to watch.

I am probably only using 50% of the available performance of my car right now. Maybe less than that. So all my time is now spent on being better and being safer. No reason to buy R tires. I will stick with my stockers, and just replace the racing pads, rotors and fluids as needed as I have been doing.

CaddyRacer

brake pads & brake fluid makes a HUGE difference after that, tires. These items build driver confidence so that driver can get more aggressive in the corners and laptimes fall :-)

l98tpi

well said. It's always a good idea to think ahead and ask; if I make this change, what will the impact be on other things? Ex; if you add hp/trq, what will the impact be on trains, suspension, brakes, driveline, and tires be?

apex26

The best mod at the time, for my particular car, began on day one when the instructor was nervous because I was running stock brakes. Sure enough, the faster you get, the next best mod will present itself--your brakes are marginal, your seats are lousy, your water temp is soaring, your bushings are compressing excessively, causing things to scuff, and on and on. The notion of choosing a mod like headers got murdered day two on the track when the above began, and has persisted as one gets faster. And, it toggles back and forth, as you invest in seat time and reach a new driving level, a host of new needs present themselves. Thus, the best mod is the most acute NEED, not the theory of what makes the car faster.

mp4659

hey Mordeth, I'm proof positive if you want it badly enough, there is no reason you can't keep progressing in your c6z06. That was actually my first weekend at the glen too. This was just a warmup session and wanted to put a flyer down at end of day but ended up shredding left rear tire.

​​​​​​​https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ywR8l0...ature=youtu.be

Mordeth

​​​​​​
Hey Mike! Thanks. And thanks again for keeping me safe! Nice Vid. I will study it this weekend. I took your advice on everything. Went with PS2s instead of the 888s. Did some XP12 and 10 pads and DRM Bilstein shocks. Also almost buttoned up on the brake duct mods. Ordered those Lingenfelter pedals too. I'll shoot you an email. I'm getting very impatient for next season!

​​​​​​​Anthony

gelpilot

Excellent video! I've seen these videos before with the embedded car performance stats and always wondered how they were hooked up. So my question is - What are you using that you get all the speed, time, etc telemetry on the video?

Thx,

0Anthony @ LGMotorsports

It's the entire package....driver, car, and setup.

A fast car is nothing without a fast driver, and a fast driver is nothing without a fast car.

Driver skill is going to come with seat time and also make it a point to go to a couple schools and read some books on it.

For the car...eyes is the biggest thing you can do. Put your eyes on every part. Tires, brakes, nuts, bolts, wires....stay on top of it if you are doing your own work paint mark bolts, keep notes on part changes and just look the car over. If you want more seat time the car has to run so take care of it.

Invest in some good tools to bring with you, and add things like tire temp gauge, alignment tools, and a tire gauges to your normal sockets and wrenches.

mp4659

That was from an aim solo and smarty cam, which belong to my coach (still use a coach and I am an instructor as well). The inexpensive route is a gopro, Bluetooth obd2 tool and a smart phone app (I prefer track addict) . I forgot to turn spot metering on for this session so that's why it's so bright, but this data is from iPhone and gopoint bt1 tool.

Poor-sha

FWIW my first track car was a C6 Z06 and my first event was NCM at VIR. I'm proud to tell people that I am a product of the NCM HPDE program. The first year I tracked it stock, then off to Katech it went for a Street Attack conversion, then over time in evolved in to a fully caged Track Attack with an RHS block and 660 HP. Then I sold it and now I just track my C7 Z06.

There's no reason you can't learn to drive fast in a high HP car. You have to respect the car and I ran with AH in Comp mode for most of the time I owned that car. If I got sloppy the AH would kick in and not only save me but also highlight where I wasn't smooth. The systems are even better on the C7 where I can turn some of my best times in Track - Sport 1 without the system ever kicking in.

Sure a high HP can mask some bad habits and it's easier to find the limits in a car with lower limits but it doesn't mean it can't be done in a high HP car.

The other thing that I think helped me get off to a quick start was a lot of time on "simulators". In my case it was Forza motorosports with a decent force feedback wheel (this was before iRacing). While it's not the same thing as doing it for real I feel that it helped me get comfortable with basics like when to turn, how much to turn and what the car felt like when you gave it too much steering, and most importantly the effect that throttle and brake inputs had while turning. One of the hardest things to learn on track is how to react when you've gone over the edge. In a game with a decent physics model and some feedback you can just try it and if you get it wrong hit the reset button.

Above everything, be patient, be smooth, listen to your instructor (and never stop using an instructor), and get as much seat time as you can.