So I gave G-Loc's support a call and talked to a guy that has some 06+ S2000 track experience. His recommendation was R10 fronts/R8 rears. He said that he was experiencing the rears triggering ABS prior to the fronts when using the same compound front and rear. That's enough for me to stop questioning the stagger and run with it for a while. It also sounds like I'm fine to swap between the G-Loc pads and OEM pads on the same rotors between track days. Next set of street pads will likely be the GS-1's as long as I like the track pads. I'm sure my laziness and lack of having a garage will have me using the R10/R8 on the street sometimes so I'll see how that goes. At worst, I'll make sure they're off come fall when temps start dropping.

Thank you for the notes on thickness and heat tolerance as well. I think/hope I have a while before I start burning through track pads. Hoping I'll have STR mods before I need to buy a BBK out of necessity.

I'm running at Pittsburgh Race Complex for an SCCA Track Night in America in May. Here's a video of an intermediate S2000 guy on the track. Looks like a fun track and has pretty good runoff in most spots.

 

Since you're basically running a square setup, I'd run a staggered pad setup. It's been hashed out here many times before but for square setups that seems to be the best combination. Regarding pads? HP+ don't cut it on track imo. Can they work a few weekends? Sure, but they fall off pretty badly at higher temps, especially with a bigger front tire I don't think they'll hold up. This is largely track dependent though. If there aren't a lot of heavy braking zones then hp+ might work fine. I'm a believer that there's no such thing as a track/street pad, especially on the oem brakes. If you're running a BBK up front, you might be able to get by with HP+, but the front oem brakes just aren't upto snuff on track, especially w/ a square setup imo.

Finally, regarding swapping pads, for track days, I personally did it with Hawks when I started, and now do it with performance friction pads. I swap pads for track days, then back to street pads after track days. It takes a few hard brakes to bed them in and they're ready to go. Carbotech says you shouldn't swap pads with the same rotors but some other local track guys didn't have a problem swapping them for track days and swapping back. Only "problem" with hawks is that the break dust is more corrosive for your paint, so you don't want to let it sit after track days.

 

That's interesting that they found the brake bias shifted rear even with AP2v2s, with EBD. Doesn't match what I've read, but I don't doubt his experience. In theory the EBD system should prevent that, but maybe with the square wheel setup, race pads with more bite, and track conditions, you can get outside of what it can handle. Only time I ran square pads on the track before I got my BBK (which also shifts bias slightly to the front to compensate for the wider tires) was with the HP+.

Certainly shouldn't hurt to go R10/R8—in fact it should be slightly cheaper. With 245/255 on the stock staggered wheel widths (which I assume you're running since you're in stock class for autocross) you'll still have a fair amount more contact patch in the rear than the front, but the EBD should prevent you from using too much front brake. (And worst case it's better to sacrifice a bit of braking force than to spin out trail braking into a corner!)

BTW, if you do get into doing multiple track days, a roll bar and seat/harness are a good idea (as I'm sure you've read). That's actually why I decided to go for STR in the first place—wanted the racing seat and harness for safety, so figured I might as well do everything else!

 

That is a cool track, visiting there in a few weeks with Chin for the second year straight. Your times are pretty good, best I got was a 2:11 albeit on 2 year old staggered RS4. I'll have to see where you're picking up most of the time over what I was running.

Back on topic, I'd go a bit more agressive than R10/8, maybe 12/10. The flipside is once you get too agressive of a pad you can start cracking rotors quicker. After moving to ST-43 I cracked 2 rotors quickly.

 

I have an '06, and I'm not sure how much the EBD does, but maybe not that much. Perhaps it's like VSA, works on the street fine on staggered tires putzing around, but not on track. Just as an interesting datapoint, I ran dtc60/dtc30's on a 225/255 tire setup for one day, and it had too much front bias and not enough rear bias, as you would expect. The front would dive down under hard braking. Next day I switched to dtc60's all around on a staggered setup and it behaved well.

 

Past the point of no return, R10/R8's ordered. For the record, that is not me in the video posted. I do not expect to be nearly that good on my first day out, especially without an instructor. I shouldn't be cracking rotors anytime soon I don't think. I just think that I'll overwhelm the OEM pads very soon, if not on the first track day. I also figure I'm better off just going to track pads immediately as opposed to needing to buy new street pads after the track day and track pads for my next track day.

We'll see how much seat time I can get. I'd love to go roll-bar, seat, harnesses, STR prep but that's not in the cards quite yet.

 

I'd definitely expect that pad stagger on stock tire sizes to be too front biased. That said, the front diving just sounds like weight transfer under hard braking. In fact, if the front is diving less, it just means the car isn't slowing down as well, so potentially the braking distribution is less ideal. With too much front braking, you'd expect to go into antilock at the front wheels sooner, and so not use all your available braking force. With too much rear you'd get the same, plus the chance of losing the rear end.