Track day at Buttonwillow

Posted November 28, 201014 yr

This is becoming a tradition for black Friday for us but a local guy that owns Bob's Donuts in SF is a major car guy and hosts this track day every year. I signed up this year to run grip, there are grip and drift spots available plus skid pad. He even arranged so everyone would get a photo CD from the track photographers, which is totally awesome since I don't get to the track more than a couple times per year.

I have to say this track is a heck of a lot of fun! Plenty of turns and it's a little tighter than Thunderhill so it's not as much of a top speed track. It's a 4 hour drive each way so I left at 3am and got home around 1am LOL

I still consider myself a track noob but here are my impressions.

No problems with the Z at all and it handled very well. I have sectioned struts on my car now with 225 fr / 200 rr spring rates and Illumina's. I did poly bushings when I swapped the suspension out. I have yet to upgrade my sway bar so I had some body roll in the first session out. The shocks were set at 3 fr/4rr and I bumped them up to see if it would help. I have read these shocks are un-usable at 5 but 4 ff/ 5 rr seemed to help with the body lean. I feel the shocks worked better at 3/4 so I definitely want to budget for at least a front sway bar. The car understeered a couple times but that was mostly my fault coming in to a corner too hot for the line I was on. Sawed the wheel though, more gas and the car went right on through.

The tires handled admirably and I am still happy with my choice. They are the General Exclaim UHP (ultra high perf summer) in the 205/50/16. A lower tread number would probably be better but these are great for a car that only see the track a couple times per year. They were very predictable and I could really feel what they were going to do. They complained audibly a few times going through the turns but they stayed composed.

By the end of the day I was becoming more aware that I wasn't using all of the track in some turns so I was really practicing my lines and having some major fun at the same time. It was nice to be able to drive the **** out the car in a controlled environment.

I attached some pictures from the photographer. I have to give them credit, they did a great job, I ordered the first one in a large print to take to work :cool: