Ready for first trackday!

B

brillomaster

Senior member
 Leamington Spa
So excited! my Z4 is ready for its first trackday - Bedford GT, on Saturday with MSV.

Sharing the drive with a mate, certainly wont be my first trackday, but it is my first in a car other than a 3 series saloon.

as expected my old track wheels went straight on, just a few pre trackday checks already completed (oil, water, new track tyres and new brake pads and fluid)

Bedford is a track I know well, so really interested to see how the Z4 takes to it. Also using this as a bit of a shakedown, the first trackday in a new car always worries me slightly, but I've taken it on a few spirited drives already and all seems well, so we should be ok.

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Will hopefully report back a successful day on sunday!
 
Question. Can you transplant the 25% diff from a 3.0 Z3 on a Z4? Reason for asking is there is a nicely spanked one in the breakers near me. Thinking if I can get it for cheap will be worthwhile once I've ess'd mine.
 
gonna drive it there... don't have the facilities to trailer it unfortunately. which means driving there and back on the track tyres, but the old tyres lasted 12 trackdays, so should be fine.

and an LSD has been considered in the past... but when I switched to decent tyres I found all rear traction issues went away, so haven't pursued it any further.

PS checked the weather and it should be cold but dry and sunny... which should be fine, should be able to get heat in the tyres no problem.
 
I was hooning round Bedford a couple of weeks ago, we were delayed getting on due to some icy parts of the track. Made it really interesting.
 
Happy days! What pads did you fit? Brakes have been the only thing to ruin my fun on track, I wouldn't even bother attempting a track day on OEM pads. The E46 M3 has Performance Friction Z-rated pads (.11 compound) and they have been superb. Very low dust as well. The OEM discs and calipers are more than up to the job.
 
brillomaster said:
went for some ebc bluestuffs, worked well on previous cars so reckon we should be ok :)
Click to expand...

Yeh, I think you will be fine with those... certainly in terms of fade, perhaps don't quite have the outright stopping ability of some of the more dedicated pads. A good thread on various EBC pads here.... https://z4-forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=40525
 
Well the car survived the day which is good, though not without drama...

first thing is the car threw an check engine light 5 miles into the journey over there... which I was fairly confident was emissions related, so pressed on. I'd been checking the forecast all week and it said dry and sunny, but then on the day, it was actually chucking it down all day, ah well. and despite my track tyres having a lot of tread, the outside shoulders were pretty smooth so could only turn in a little bit before the understeer started... which slowed us down somewhat.

overall nice balance, good fun and sounds lovely. probably had a handful of spins... I had 3... if you know Bedford, you'll know the first corner is an ice rink in the wet, and the short wheelbase made the car quite snappy round there. but no harm done. My mate managed to spin it coming through the last fast right hander which is the one place I said to make sure you're careful lol... and somehow he managed to spin with all the TCS and DSC on!

Come the afternoon there was a lot of standing water... a river across the second to last corner, big lakes on the back straight and one chicane we nicknamed 'swimming pool chicane' which was interesting... lotsa people went off there as they aquaplaned.

we have some go pro footage to review which I might post up, but we're looking forward to the next one already, which will be Silverstone in mid march.

And one quick image (thanks MSVT photography)

Bedford jan 18 2.JPG
 
I've never spun it :P

In some ways tracks are more fun in the wet, but I do always worry about aquaplaning at speed. Sounds like you had a good day :thumbsup:
 
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