JayS:
^ Talent won’t help you save stock brakes at Dunnville. There are decent straights with sharp turns and no amount of driving skill is going to get you around the turn at the end of each straight without some serious braking. Perfect line and pro-racing ability might carry you through 5 mph faster, but you’re still scrubbing off 30mph or more.
And I’m not quite sure how a talented driver isn’t beating the hell out of their brakes. To go as fast as possible you want to be either 100% on the gas or 100% on the brakes. Anything less is coasting and that’s not what great drivers do on a track. Obviously in the turn you don’t have 100% to work with, but you still want to be using as close to 100% of your traction as possible. That’s how you go fast.
I’ve only been to TMP and Dunnville, two pretty small tracks when compared to Watkins or Nelson Ledges but through the SCCA I’ve met a lot of people who had been to much more serious track days than I’ve been at and not one has ever said, “oh yeah, stock brakes are fine as long as you’re a good enough driver”. Completely the opposite actually; the better you get the harder you’re going to push and the faster your stock system is going to fail.
Unlike most topics on NYSpeed this one is pretty serious. If you’re going 100 mph behind someone who actually spent a few bucks to properly prepare their car for the track day, and that person jams on the brakes for turn one, you better be able to slow down as well. All these cheaper track days need is some noob rear ending someone at racing speeds to end it for all of us.
Like I said, there are a lot of factors.
Knowing your limits is important.
sidenote; I did change the brake fluid on my Evo when I went.
