Hi, everyone;

I am new to this area of the board, and I'm looking for a little sage advice re: setting up my car for the track. I have been searching and reading extensively on the board here, but want some opinions on my individual setup. I appreciate any help offered and thank you in advance.

Now; specifics: My car is a 2005 6mt Touring. Wheels/tires will be 17x9 MB weapons with 17 mm offsets all around. Tires will be RT 615's in 255/40 front, 275/40 rear. Brakes will be stock with ebc rotors on the front and ebc yellow pads all around. Fluid is Ford HD. Suspension is stock except for substituton of a set of Motordyne adjustable sway bars front and rear.

Me: I have one day of high performance driver training to date, and will be doing another day on track to get my license to compete in this series prior to actual timed events, so I am a relative novice on the track, but do have some knowledge and skills. I have chosen to go with the staggered setup at this point because of my relative inexperience, and also because I will have to drive the car 400 miles to the tracks I will be driving on, and wanted a setup that wouldn't be too painful/twitchy/ to drive on the highway.

Tracks/events: Solosprint I (time attack) sanctioned by Western Canada Sports Car Club. Tracks are Race City in Calgary Alberta and Stratotech Park in Fort Saskatchewan (outside Edmonton) Alberta. Race City is a 3.4 km (about 2 miles) track with a very long, fast front straight, a shorter back straight, and connecting low, medium and high speed turns. Stratotech is half the length, with a decent back straight, but is generally a slower track with much more emphasis on the turns.

So, my questions:
-Have I chosen wisely with the tire sizes? I mentioned my reasons for not going square initially; does that reasoning make sense, and do you think this tire/wheel combination will work okay? I understand there is likely to be some understeer with this setup, but I'm operating under the assumption that that is safer for me at this stage in my developmet as a driver. I'm hoping that as my skills improve I can start to dial this out somewhat with the sway bars, and eventually go square if I stick with this into the future. Is that realistic?
-How should I set up the sway bars? My thoughts were to use the softest settings to start (110% stock stiffness) and go from there. I'd appreciate thoughts on this.
-Tire inflations: Looking for target hot inflations, and also advice on what pressures to use for the highway stints; I would imagine for road use that I would be using lower than stock pressures with the bigger tires.

Sorry to write a novel, but I realize that accurate advice on track applications is very difficult to give without knowing specifics, so I've tried to provide that. Again, thanks in advance for any opinions offered.

 

Looks like your off to a good start...I have done 8 track days my self and still prefer a staggered 265/285 tire setup as I too, am still learning...I even went square 275s and went back to staggered because I wasn't comfortable with the twitchyness...I set my sways on med when I installed them and havent touched them since....they seem to be pretty good, no problems so Ill leave them for now...I have been having doing good with 32 psi cold rising up to 37 hot...Im running hankook rs3's if it makes a difference...

 

Thanks for the input, Quicksilver; very helpful and greatly appreciated.

 

Do you already have the RT615's? If it were me I would look for a different tire.

 

They're on order along with the wheels. The other tires I looked at were the Sumitomo HTR ZIII's and Hankook V12 Evo 110's. I ended up settling on the Falkens largely due to availability in the sizes I wanted (I need these quickly) and the fact that Discount had a very good deal on them to start, with an $80 rebate to boot. Based on what I've been reading, I think I might have gone with the Hankooks if the sizes I was looking for were available, but for the most part the 615's seemed to be pretty well thought of, particularly on the track, so they seemed like an okay option.

What tires would you have recommended?

 

AD08's, Star Specs, RS3's (dislike cooler pavement temps even more than the other extreme performance tires in the segment), RE-11's, and even the Kuhmo XS's (hate water though) are all very good and a step above the RT615's. That being said, you pay a bit more of premium for the above tires.

Another reason many go for square set-ups, aside from the added front grip, is the convenience of tire rotation, etc.

 

Price is definitely a major consideration for me; I'm in enough trouble with my wife already! Between the car and my airplane, I am maxing out in the toy department, so VFM was a huge consideration. I did really look at the Kumhos, though. The wet performance was one of the reasons I didn't get them since I will have a long drive to and from the track rain or shine.

The ability to rotate the tires with a square setup really made my choice difficult, and I considered the possibility of a square setup with 255's. Since ordering, I've done more reading and realized a number of people have used 255's all around on road courses with good results, so that might have been a good choice; I just didn't think I was ready for 275's all around on the track, and really wasn't sure how they'd be for 7 hours each way on the highway.

 

I too am participating in solo 1 this year. Have you done you're classification yet? I was going to get sways but didn't want the additional pips to push me up another class. I'll be running street tires/staggered setup as I too drive to the track (albeit not 400km!!).

I've ended up in gt1 class. There are a few other members who will provide better input regarding the setup of your car then I can but from what I know sounds to me like you're ready to go!

 

I'd just like to say that 03threefiftyz is freakin awesome!

Always giving out good advice and never flames ppl for asking similar questions. Good job man, can't wait to meet you at ZdayZ

Now to the question on hand:

I started out running a staggered setup and was really comfortable pushing the car. But once I changed to square, I got scared, the car felt completely different. Now keep in mind that I was running a square setup on used 615's that were heat cycled a ton so they didn't keep much grip and got really greasy when hot. But on the track it definitely felt twitchy and slightly unstable when in a turn.

Yet when it came time to buy new tires, I still went with a square setup of RE-11's. Why? Because of two reason:

1) Ability to flip, flop, rotate. Doing this saves a ton of money and allowed me to buy more expensive tires cuz i know I could make them last a bit longer.

2) I've been told that a square setup allows you to go faster when you can control the car. So that's where I want to get to, I just have this feeling that if I learn staggered, I'll have to start all over when I go square. So why not just start square?

And regarding street driving, I didn't notice a difference going from staggered to square on the street or highway. Maybe there's a bit more pull when going over bumps or in ruts, but that's because I have a wider tire in the front now generating a lot more grip than before.

btw I'm running 265/40/18's on (4) 18x8.5 +33 Rear Rays Track Wheels.

Regarding the swaybars, since your tires are already staggered, I think you should start off med/med. With my square setup, I'm actually dialing a bit understeer with my swaybars set stiffer up front (cuz I'm a chicken lol)

Hope this helps, and it's just my opinion/preference.

 

It doesn't look like I'll make it to zdayz .....being somewhat low on the cooperate totem pole sucks. I've been known to load up some threads with fail gifs, but if the question is more narrow and focused I have no problem answering. If it is pop charger vs xxx intake I will hammer that thread without mercy with fail gifs .

 

Brady; I haven't been classified yet, and I don't actually know how Calgary Sports Car Club does its classification. I'll probably find out at the track school day in a couple of weeks. As for the drive to the tracks, I wish it was 400 km! Unfortunately, its 400 miles instead I'm in Moose Jaw, the tracks are Calgary and Edmonton; one province and 7 or 8 hours away. Oh, well, I guess I'm doing this because I ike driving my car, right?

AznSky: Thanks for the input. I was thinking the same thing about setting the sways neutral because of the inherent understeer in the staggered setup, and maybe dialling out understeer later as my car control improves. Good to know the square setup wasn't too hairy on the street; I'll probably end up there eventually.