Track day cars

[random hero]

I was watching a program on sky on sunday about track days and what cars are good to use, they mentioned 911's and showed a bloke in a white early RS putting in backwards into the armco !! Then they went on to say a good basis for a track car is a rover tomcat or maestro and had the cheek to not even mention anything about 944 turbo's which i thought was a bit odd as they are ideal !!!.Also said mk2 escorts were ideal but having owned a mk2 Rs2000 i disagree as you would spend all day going in every direction apart from forward !!! .Did anyone else see the program ??

 

[TTM]

Compared to the other cars mentioned a 944 turbo would most certainly turn out to be quite more expensive to run.

 

[sawood12]

I watched about 10 mins of one episode once and immediately turned over as I thought it was a bit rubbish! The guy was waffling on about a BMW M5 (one of the older models) and said the brakes were not upto much on track and quickly started to fade and then in the very next sentence said it was an ideal track day car for the person who wanted a family car to track. We all know that the single most important element of the car when it comes to running on a track is the brakes. If you have rubbish suspension, tyres or power you simply drive within the limitations, but if you brakes are not upto the job you will be a danger to yourself and other people on the track.

I was chatting to a guy at work today who's got an Escort Cosworth. He had just been on his first track day in his cossie after having it's engine rebuilt after blowing it up on a previous track day. He was chatting to a guy who ran a driving school and his track day weapon of choice was a 968 (i.e. a 944mk2) and he was commenting it was by far the best and most robust track car he has ever used. It was a standard clubsport and it just takes the punishment day after day, year after year and just keeps on going.

 

[random hero]

Ii wouldn't have said the 944 turbo worked out anymore expensive to run as to make a maestro or rover good enough to run on a track would take lots of mods but a 944 turbo would only need brakes and suspension to make it a good starting point,i would rather take a standard 944 on a track that a maestro any day. And as far as cost go i have found so far that parts for my 944 have been cheaper to buy than for my megane coupe and easier to get hold of. Scott i know what you mean about the bloke waffling on ,he has the most boring voice but i was hung over at the time and couldnt be bothered getting out of bed to change the channel as the remote didnt work !!!

 

[sawood12]

I doubt a 944 is anymore expensive to run on a track day as your typical hot hatch. A mate of mine used to track his Pug 306 GTi6 and he would go through a set of pads and discs every track day - not to mention the number of pairs of front tyres he would shred. It cost him a fortune and he no longer tracks his car (he's currently got a Civic Type R which has never seen the track). Because the 944 has very substantial brakes as standard they will stand upto years worth of track days. I used to change his disks and pads for him. I doubt the front disks are a quarter of the width of an early 944 Turbo/S2 disk and the later 944 turbo'scars have even thicker front disks. It's the same principle for othe components such as wheel bearings, transmission, gearbox, engine. I even managed to return relatively reasonable fuel consumption at my last track day considering!!

I'm struggling to think of a more suitable car than a 924/944/968 as a track day car. They are relatively cheap to buy, not too bad on running costs, are robust enough to drive to the track, run on the track and drive home again at the end of the day (unlike your Elises that have an appetite for head gaskets I believe), and can provide as much RWD fun as you want.

 

[TTM]

Hmm those British "classics" really do get expensive to run don't they [&:]

More seriously, a friend of mine runs a nicely modified Golf 2 with Audi TT/Golf VR6 underframes/Audi 1.8 turbo engine and he has spent much less than most guys I know who have tried themselves on modifying 944 turbos to get similar performance.
Needless to say said Golf leaves most Porsches (except race cars) for dead in all track circumstances bar perhaps in long enough straights.

The main problem IMHO with a 944 is it remains too heavy and not quite agile enough on anything but very fast tracks.

 

[random hero]

My friend put a mk2 golf gti 16v engine into his mk1 gti and i agree he had a very fast car for not alot of money,but not the best handling car i have driven even with coilovers on it !!!

 

[sawood12]

Well he must have done it on a shoe string considering that 300bhp is had for less than £1000 from a completely standard 944 turbo in the form of an off-the-shelf kit that can be installed in about 3 hrs, and state of the art aftermarket fully adjustable suspension systems (far superior to the VR6 platform) can be got for around £1400. That would get you a very capable car in anyones language for very little money.

Having said that you still have to be a capable driver. You just have to go to a karting track and see the difference between the fastest guys on the track and the slowest on the same karts to appreciate that there is more to driving fast on a track than simply picking out the right line. I was smoking a £50 996 turbo X50 at my last track day - that is no indication that my humble 944 is a faster car than a 996 turbo!

 

[random hero]

I think the whole conversion only cost about £500 as he did all the work himself with a little help from me. I agree with you about driver skill rather than the car making all the difference !!!

 

[zcacogp]

ORIGINAL: random hero

My friend put a mk2 golf gti 16v engine into his mk1 gti and i agree he had a very fast car for not alot of money,but not the best handling car i have driven even with coilovers on it !!!

He must have had a duff Mk1 then. I have owned two Mk1 GTi's, and they were both fantastically crisp and very, very nimble. I may add that they were possibly better cars to drive than a 944 S2, but were a tad fragile.

Still, fantastic cars.


Oli.

 

[TTM]

I don't know about Mk1s but on the same track (Dijon) this chap in his modified Mk2 is faster than in his own modified 964 C2 (Bilstein PSS9 + CarGraphic MAF/chip/exhaust). He may even have more bhp in the Golf than in his 964.

Granted 944s can be made quite fast for little money, but can be made very fast for not so little money.

 

[steve 944t]

cant comment on tracking a 944 as I have yet to do so (roll on next year hopefully []). However, although I didnt see the program in question, I would tend to agree with its claims that mk2 escorts make (or at least made) excellent track day cars. My only experience of track days was several years ago (probably about 1990-92 ish) at the RS owners club national days at Donnington. In those days I was the very proud owner of a signal yellow mk2 escort RS2000 X-Pack, complete with huge box arches and Carlos Fandango-style Wolfrace alloys. I have very fond memories of drifting down the Craner Curves, round the outside of the Sierra Cosworths who had blasted past me down the main straight (I guess such antics would get me black flagged these days [8|]). Admittedly the car did not spend much time pointing straight ahead, but it was a real blast to drive. I did have thoughts of building another one now, but the price of the cars is crazy, and She-who-must-be-placated was not particularly impressed when I showed her a photo of my old chariot. Shame really.

 

[Fen]

Real Escorts are so ludicrously expensive nowadays that the suggestion one would make a good track day car is ridiculous. Don't get me wrong; I love the things and my first 4 cars were RWD Escorts, but really unless you're competing in a class where they excel you'd be mad to choose one for track work as the same money could buy a much better weapon - or something equally good could be had for much less money.

In terms of early 90's sideways trackdays I remember my first ever experience on track was at Knockhill as a passenger in my mate's Manta with a 3.0 Senator engine running triple Del'Ortos. That didn't point straight ahead much at all even with an open diff. In fact he'd probably have been able to hold his head up in a drift competition if he still had it. I had a BBR stage 2 Renault 5 GT Turbo at that time and it was a blast on track (absolutely tonked a then new and being raved about 200SX up the start/finish straight having caught it through the preceding corners), but then I sold it and bought a 3.2 Carrera which was just about nearly able to hold on to the Manta in outright acceleration at real-world speeds. The Manta was no slouch then.

 

[944Turbo]

The one day I did at Bruntinghtorpe there was a modified Zetec engined mkII independant rear end, fully caged lots of new parts sticky tyres etc. - the guy worked for Ford, and I could tell he felt he would be giving us 944 turbo boys a whipping later in the day.
After I lapped him in a session, he was a bit more humble and a lot more interested in 944t's []

Tony