After the disappointment and the scare at Mid-Ohio, we made some changes to our Subaru WRX in preparation for the next Gridlife Track Battle event. Let’s get technical…
Ryan Dussex, another local Time Attack driver in the area, was getting rid of his APR rear wing and we were lucky enough to jump in and purchase it from him; at a cars and coffee meet, no less! In theory, this wing will provide a maximum of 420 (it’s funny because we live in Colorado) pounds of rear downforce at 100mph.
The team over at Flatirons Tuning then helped out and pointed us towards a great solution for racing brakes, getting us away from the factory upgrade 4-pot calipers into a set of Essex Design AP Racing 4-pot calipers with 2-piece rotors and Ferodo DS3.12 pads. For the rears, we upgraded from factory calipers to Brembo 2-pot calipers, DBA slotted rotors and Ferodo DSUNO pads.
Let’s get into a little bit of backstory on the WRX. The first time Nigel ever took it to a track was at High Plains Raceway, in Deer Trail, CO. It had a gutted interior, the rear half of the roll cage was installed, and we installed some ISC coilovers. Apart from that, it was almost entirely stock. The motor had 208k miles on it, so we were keen to shake the car down and find out how it handled without putting too much stress on it. We were lapping in the low 2m20s range, which we felt was on par for the stock car. However…
The motor stuck on the back straight due to a clogged oil passage. His cheap project WRX was now dead. As he was waiting to get hauled back in, Nigel got a nice, stern talking to by the tow truck driver for not having a front tow hook installed. Oh, and did we mention that it was his birthday?
Fast forward several years and we return to High Plains Raceway for the first time since then, but this time with a fully built motor, a practical goal of bedding in our brand new brakes, and quite a bit more experience.
After a few reconnaissance laps to heat up the brakes, we started recording lap times. 2m09s, 2m07s, 2m05s… Nigel got comfortable in the car and the times hovered at 2m05s for about a dozen laps. We called him in to install the rear wing and see if there was a noticeable drop in time.
On his first hot lap, he did a 2m03. Result!
He managed to knock that down to a 2m02 before the track closed for the evening. Overall, we were extremely happy with the shakedown and how it panned out for us. There were no reliability struggles, no incidents on or off track, it was, in reality, a little dull. Which, if we’re honest with ourselves, is exactly how we want our sessions to go.
