A lovely summer evening at ICAR

The Civic between sessions

I headed to ICAR’s track evening last Wednesday to meet one of my high school friends who wanted to try out his brand new BMW M3 CS on the track. If he gets into the sport, I think he might enjoy driving my Civic in the future and we can share the car’s expenses.

I headed out for my yellow/green session and all went well. I was pushing more in the big esses (where I had my big crash in 2017) and the car felt very stable. I was right in the mix with the other cars, passing and being passed, which is always fun for me. As I’ve mentioned in the past, there is a wide variety of cars at ICAR. You see the Civics, Miatas and 350Z’s you would see at St-Eustache, but a lot more Porsches and BMW’s. In the student group, there were 2 Ferrari 488’s and 2 Lotus Seven-type cars. I look forward to all these cars graduating into the yellow/green group.

I kept missing my friend because he would be heading out onto the track as I came off, and vice versa. In my second session, I improved my best lap to 1:54.53, which is less than 2 seconds slower than the time I managed with my old 2000 Civic race car with the 2.3-liter motor. When I looked at the lap times in my phone, I saw that my previous best seemed to be a 1:55.1, but then I realized that that was my friend Pat’s time. My previous best had been 1:56.48. For comparison purposes, my best time with the EP3 before the crash was a 1:57.94. I was happy with the car’s performance and in the session, I passed more cars than usual too. I was satisfied with my performance, and picked up a few tricks to putting in a fast lap. I am still learning all the subtleties of the track, but I feel I have improved a lot.

I decided to forego a third session, otherwise I would not be able to chat with my friend at all. I was rewarded with a short test drive of the M3 CS… the car is a beast. It accelerates harder than almost anything on the road, but it’s still quite comfortable. I can’t imagine a better street/track sedan than this car.

I ended up lending the Civic to an American BMW instructor the following day for a 3-day event at Tremblant, but unfortunately, the engine-cutting-out problem returned with a vengeance and the car didn’t complete any problem-free sessions. Hopefully Pat can figure out what the problem is in the coming weeks. I also want to look at the most economical way to fix the excessive oil consumption issue.

A cool Miata with big flares

The M3 CS on track

Yes, that's a factory colour!

Cool mix of cars at ICAR

M4, one of several on hand