Vince's Stuff: Finally! The Civic runs a complete session on track!

Civic in the paddocks at Sanair

After confirming that the Civic still overheated on track, I decided to bite the bullet and just buy another engine. I had been trying to avoid this option to save money, but it would have cost several hundred dollars to fix the old engine (which had 278 000 km on it) and that didn't make a ton of sense when you can buy a fresh Japanese-market engine for 1300 $. I went to Osaka JDM, who had the best price. My plan was to bring the engine to JS so he could install it in his spare time. When the guy at Osaka said it could be installed in one week for 500$, I decided to go that route instead. It took a little more than one week, and they called me to tell me I should put in a new clutch (231$ unplanned expense), but I got the car back on Tuesday, after a total of 11 days. I had them put the dead engine in the passenger area (I had removed the passenger seat for this) and drove off. From a seat-of-the-pants perscpective, it felt like there was more power than the old engine. There was no opportunity to go to ICAR Tuesday (I had other commitments, but also, it was cancelled because they were cleaning up after their big air show). I figured my best option was to head to Sanair, where they also had occasional lapping nights on Thursdays. In fact, it was their last lapping night of the season.

I loaded up the car with the usual gear, and a bunch of fluids, hoping to be ready for any eventuality. I spend the afternoon in St-Hyacinthe, less than 15 minutes from the track. They have a lovely library on the Yamaska river where I was able to work with my laptop.

View from my spot in the library

Civic viewed from the library

I headed to the track nice and early and started chatting with some of the other drivers. I met Nick, who was planning to do some shakedown laps in his vintage racing Mini. This was no ordinary Mini... it was chopped (in the 60's!) and the roofline was almost comically low. He was hoping to take it to a vintage race weekend at Tremblant in a couple of weeks. The other cars were pretty much what you would expect at a grassroots event in Quebec: Hondas, BMW's, Miatas, Toyota GT86's and a couple of luxury sports cars.

I hadn't been to Sanair in about 10 years, but it's not a super technical track. I didn't have my usual GPS receiver as there was an issue with it, so I would be using the less precise GPS of my phone to time my laps. It's not like I needed high precision. I remembered the lap being about 1 minute (actually, low 1:01 with my old Civic with the H23 in 2014, on dead tires) so I was curious to see what this car could do. I was chatting with the guy parked beside me with a second-gen Integra (roll bar, Porsche calipers) and he said he was in the 59's.

I asked about the rules (windows down, point-bys to pass, passing only on the straight) and got ready for my first session. Contrary to ICAR, you don't need to wait for your group's session: there are no groups and it's open pitlane. This was a new experence for me. I realized why people were so chill all around me, since there were 4 hours of available track time.

I went out for my first laps and the car felt really good. The handling was predictable. I didn't feel I was struggling to stay comfortable as I had my Schroth 4-point harness. The straight was bumpy and my helmet was bouncing off the ceiling, so I decided it would be better to recline my seat a bit for my second session. My first laps were in the 1:12 range. I was trying to figure out if it was worth it to use 2nd gear in the slower corners (it wasn't) and whether I could take the high speed kink flat out (I could, easily). By the end of the session (well, I decided when the end was, as there was never a checker), I was down into the 1:08's, my last lap being a 1:08.01. Even with only 127 hp, the braking zone at the end of the straight was intense. I was using brake marker 4 to have a bit of margin for error. I saw the faster cars braking at the 5, since they had a much higher top speed. I set as a goal to run 1:07's in the second session. I checked the oil level and it hadn't moved. Nice!

During the break, I chatted with the Mini guys. They were having overheating issues and weren't on track. I went out again after a few minutes and was soon in the 1:07's. I was mostly being passed by the others (that white Integra was indeed much faster than me) but I did pass a couple of cars. My best lap of the session was a 1:06.35. I figured I could dip into the 1:05's. The car felt really good and I was having fun. There was a ton of brake dust on my front wheels and I knew I was gradually destroying my "performance" street pads.

My third session was uneventful, with a bunch of laps in the 1:06's. I had a breakthrough on lap 17: I realized that on the before last corner before the straight, it was better to leave a car-width beside the apex cone than to try and get close to it. Until then, I had been fighting to get the car to the cone for no good reason, tightening the corner for nothing. This resulted in a 1:05.75, and I decided to pit in.

My fourth and last session was the most fun. I ended up mixing it up with some other cars (Miata, TSX) and the extra motivation resulted in my best laps of the night, back to back 1:05.36's. I made a video of these laps. I could feel the brakes fading (the pedal was still firm) so I pulled in. It turned out that there was no more material left on the pads... the wear was even worse than I thought. I won't be buying those pads again. Even if the pads had been fine, I think four sessions were enough. The sun had set and I didn't really feel the need to drive on the track in darkness. Open pit lapping is kind of awesome!

I packed up and drove home, braking as little as possible so as not to ruin my discs (the handbrake was useful for this). I am fully satisfied with how the evening went. Although it was not as cheap as I had hoped to get on track with this car, I am happy with the result. The car feels comfortable and confident on track, and it's not as slow as I expected it to be. I have ordered another set of street pads (Bosch, this time) to see if it's possible to drive this car on track without 200$ race pads. I hope the car stays reliable, so I can head to a few more events before the season ends. Stay tuned!

The video: