Vince's Stuff: First track outing of 2023

The Civic with its spare front wheels

In what is now a Spring ritual, the gang from the ASE Lapping Club headed to Calabogie for our annual high performance driving and race licensing school. Last year, the Civic was still is pieces so I made the three-hour drive in the comfort of the M3. I had also headed out for a few laps at lunch time with the BMW. This year, the M3 was not quite ready to make a trip, but the Civic was. I figured this would be a good opportunity to get some lunch-break laps in the Civic, and to see how much faster it would go around the short track at Calabogie (the M3, on not very aggressive tires, did a 1:31.09). There was one small problem with this plan however: I had not anticipated how dead last year's tires were...

I picked up Choo in the West Island and we left the Montreal area before rush hour. The Civic is not a terrible highway car, but the driver's side window does not seel properly and makes an annoying whistling sound. We bought some pizza in Arnprior and this would become my Friday dinner, Saturday lunch, and Sunday lunch and dinner. We had a nice Friday evening hanging out with our instructor buddies. Saturday morning, I noticed that there was some cord showing on one of the front tires... oops. Luckily, I had a pair of spare wheels in the trunk, but the mystery tires, which came with the wheels, were several years old (I checked the date stamps afterwards, they were 9 years old). I didn't have any other option than to drive the car with these old tires in front.

How was my driving?

During the lunch hour on Saturday, I was practically alone on track (Dylan had a full aero Civic of the same generation as mine, lapping in 1:19's!). There was also a Toyota GT86 race car. I was by far the slowest of the three cars. I took it very easy until I knew that there was at least some grip in front. I recently read an article about how old tires can be almost completely unusable and let go at any time. Indeed, the car was not super confidence inspiring, but, as Choo told me, I wasn't there to set any records. I was not driving flat out in sections where I had been in the past, albeit with fewer horsepower. I could see the lap times dropping but it was a slow process. It took me longer than I thought to be faster than last year in the M3, half the session in fact, but by the end of the session, I was pushing more, mainly in the slower sections. There was no sound coming from the front tires, and I was mainly afraid they would let go without warning in one of the higher speed sections. Even though this was the "short track" version of Calabogie, the Civic's top speed was still pretty high: 170 km/h according to the data. I managed a 1:28.28 on my 14th lap and decided to pit in. I knew I could go faster, but I just didn't have the confidence to know that I would be able to catch the car if it let go, especially in a case of terminal understeer. Other than that, the car felt good, the engine was pulling strongly, the brakes were excellent, as usual, and the car seemed as if it could run all day. The session lasted almost 30 minutes.

On Sunday, I headed back out without having made any adjustments to the tires. Following a discussion with a student about instructions he had received from the legendary Peter Cohen, I focused on relaxing my upper body more and tried to feel what the car was doing. On one lap, I decided to keep the gas pedal on the floor through the whole section after turn 1 until the braking zone. It actually felt fine and I probably should have been doing it the whole time. Anyway, I managed a 1:27.73 on my last lap (lap 17) and was satisfied with that. I had hit 175km/h as a peak speed. The car still felt good over all, but I still didn't feel I could push with these tires. In all likelihood, I could have gone 1 or 2 seconds faster, but I wasn't "feeling it". I truly believe that with some fresh tires, I can run in the 1:25's or even 1:24's. I just never got to the point where I felt I could really lean on the car and trust it in the high speed sections. Still, I had fun, the car was in one piece (as it needed to be to get Choo and myself home) and I had managed to get about an hour of track time in all, which made it worthwhile to have brought the Civic. I timed some advanced students in their Porsche Cayman GT4's and they were running in the 1:24 range. It makes me happy that my car is not that much slower than your typical quick trackday car (yes, I know those GT4's can probably run a 1:19 with en expert driver!).

All in all, it was a fun weekend, the weather was beautiful, and I made it home on Sunday before the kids were in bed. Oh, and I saw the new Civic Type R for the first time... I like it a lot!