You may want to sign up for a skid pad day or a drift day and play with the limits of grip. That helped me be more comfortable with car sliding

 

If there is a local autocross club, and especially if they do test n tunes/practice days, take advantage of that. You can learn a TON of car control doing that. I started in autox long before going to the track and it was a super easy transition from one to the other and I was moved from novice to advanced on my fourth 20 minute session on track. Autox is all about the turns and transitions and you have very little time where you are not transitioning the cars weight, aka the part where you most lose control of a car. And most clubs have instructors (free ones too! ) and the entry fees are cheap. Where I used to live, our practice days were $40 and there were 2 courses. You worked 2 hours of the day and the rest you could just take as many runs as you wanted. I tended to cut myself off at 40 runs to save tires. Great place to learn, ride with fast people, have fast people ride with you, etc.

There are some that will say you "learn bad habits" autocrossing. If you do, then someone taught you wrong. You handle the car the exact same way and it 100% transfers over. Also, after autocrossing you will feel like you have time to eat a sandwich between turns on a track. Autox comes at you super fast, inputs are constantly happening, etc. So it gets you thinking way ahead which is very beneficial.

You have gotten plenty of critique and good info here so I wont pick on specifics from the video. I will just add a few general things about the track.
1. Look ahead, way ahead. Train yourself to not be looking right in front of the car. As soon as you enter a turn for example, you should be looking out towards the next key point (next apex, a critical exit point, etc). A good example is a carousel. You should pretty much be almost looking out the side window at the exit after you enter it. Your brain will figure out the arc.

2. Wheels pointed where the car is supposed to be going. This sounds like a "duh" kinda thing but think about it further. If the rear end breaks loose, you dont just "turn into it". Think more that the front wheels need to stay on line and the car is swinging around them. This is very important as the car starts to correct. The reason people overcorrect is because as the car comes back, the front wheels are still pointed too far into the slide, and thus are now pointed the other way and the car snaps back too far. So instead of just turning into a slide if it occurs, focus on keeping the front wheels on the line you want them to be as the car moves around them. You will get faster with your hands and have less chance of a tank slapper or a spin. Also never look at the thing you DONT want to hit if something happens You drive where your eyes are pointed. Always look where you want the car to go.

3. Know when not to save it. This has bitten lots of us. Once the car is going around past a point, you are not saving it and too much steering and throttle will put you in a bad spot. Sometimes, you just gotta punt and put both feet in and let the car spin out.

4. As you get more comfortable, start trying to focus more and more on where you want the cars weight to be throughout a turn. This is key. Your job in a corner is to manage that weight transfer. When the weight is on the front tires more, the rear is light and can move around more, when the weight is planted on the rear tires, they have more grip but then the car is more prone to pushing. Start off being aware of this and over time you will start using that to drive the car.

5. Try to imagine a string connecting your hands and throttle foot. In general as you add throttle, you remove steering angle. This can help with being too greedy out of corners and upsetting the car. If you are nowhere near the limit this may not seem as obvious. The closer to the limit you more important this gets.

6. Most importantly take your time, drive at your own pace and dont worry about how fast you are. There is always someone faster and that could be them, their car or both. It is irrelevant. Getting hung up on that makes you nervous and makes for mistakes. We are out there to have fun. Dont forget that!

 

Relistened to your intro, you have the right attitude regarding modifications and focusing on the driver mod as opposed to throwing more parts at the car. Keep it up

I think we've found what is probably the biggest thing holding you back. Ultimately, all of this goes hand-in-hand with you going faster as well as being safe on track.

You'll need to get comfortable with the car sliding and be able to feel when you're approaching the the grip limits. This will also address your fear. The fear will not go away until you start developing this skill.
You state that you're trying to avoid the correction completely instead of having to catch it on a moments notice. The avoidance part will require you to know where the grip limits are and being able to feel when you're starting to approach it.

You've received a lot of good feedback from others. AutoX is a great safe place for understanding grip limits and learning car control - spent a decent amount of time doing AutoX in my first 2 years of tracking. Skid pad time is great too. I would try to prioritize more time doing those over just general HPDE track days.

 

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I'll start pushing the envelop soon. By the way, I went to another weekend and I'll have another video uploaded soon.

Thank you all!

 

Thanks for all of your feedback so far, here's another video.

 

I forgot to comment on your last video after watching it. Good job finding so much time.
I've been following this guy, a sim-racer turned pro racer. He won the radical cup in north america and is now going to race in IMSA for 2025.

In this video he address:
- Fear. How do you deal with fear?
- What is the limit?
- How do you approach and find the limit?
- How you avoid getting "bitten" and losing control at the limit?

 

Thank you, I'll definitely check it out.

I haven't posted it because I'm still trying to rationalized what happened, or explain why on a recent outing, it felt like I was driving a totally different car. (I got slower, significantly slower).

Talked with a few friends and I told them my front tires are on their 18th day. Because I've only worn out the rear tires and replaced those. I felt a ton of understeer and was 5-10mph slower in virtually all corners. On higher speed corners with less steering input, it felt ok because I think I was still able to "steer" with the rear tires. But on any slower speed corners with significant steering input, the car felt like it was on ice. Kind of terrifying to be honest. Braking became a random event as to whether or not I miss my braking zone or extended beyond it and dive too deep into the corner entry.

They all told me that I've likely heat-cycled out my front tires.

 

Hi all, a little update. I'm kind of hitting a bit of a wall as far as lap times are concerned. Kind of stuck at 2:13 on Thunderhill East but that's ok. On the last few track days, I've been dealt with high volume traffic sessions after sessions. I've decided to just work on specific techniques, and specific segments/corners of the track instead of going for lap times. And reserve lap time attempts when I go with buddies on our private track days = open track.

I made an observation though, I noticed a very evident glaze when I worked on the car under direct sunlight. What do you think caused this two-tone glaze on my rotors? It's there on x4 corners, with the rears being a little less pronounced.

The fronts are almost brand new, just track 5 track days old with 2 of those under heavy traffic:
Pads = Project Mu 999
Rotors = Centric Blanks
Calipers = Stock OEM

The rears are from the previous brake job, so they're old:
Pads = Project Mu Club Racer
Rotors = Centric Blanks
Calipers = Stock OEM

Thank you!

 

looks like uneven pad pressure being applied to the rotor, usually from tapered pad wear. It's a characteristic of having a single piston sliding caliper.

As far as finding time, get one of your faster friends to drive your car on an open track day and make sure to record the telemetry data. Then you can overlay your own data to see the speed differentials at the end of the straights, braking points, cornering speeds, and exit speeds.

Back in the day, a whole bunch of used to do this with AIM Solo data (different cars, but very similarly modded).

 

Thanks, but the pads are relatively new? Just a few days is enough them to be this dramatic?

And is this a solvable issue (well, I mean, not really an issue, right?) with the current set up? I generally remove and inspect my brakes between track days and re-grease the pins. Let me know if there's something else I can do in the meantime?

Also, does this mean I'm not actually using ALL of the surface areas available to me and overheating my brakes?

I have some of this glazing in the rears as well, although not as pronounced.