pfb

Spent some time at the track yesterday. It gave me a chance to check out the Proflow throttle bore, Porterfield R4s's, ATE blue fluid, Spoon X-brace and Mugen/King front stabilizer bar.

I was still running S02's on stock rims, about 41 lb/hot F, 42 lb/hot R. I played around with pressure some, but felt like this worked best for this track.

The stabilizer bar and the brace clearly improve the feel, and give me much more confidence go into a corner faster and carry more speed through it. I felt the rear start to slide two or three times (presumably due to driver error ), but was able to quickly recover with no threat of a spin.

The throttle body coupled with a K&N filter sure felt like it gave more power. Less pre-vtec lag coming out of some very tight corners in particular. Straightaway end speeds seemed up by a MPH or two.

The brakes were great. No reoccurance of the green fade incident I had immediately after install. Great modulation, no boiling of fluid, no real fade, but I still feel like I had to be somewhat gentle on the braking to avoid overheating the rotors. This was on a tight, fairly technical track. Ducted cooling is going to be a priority going forward. I haven't done a physical inspection of the pads yet, but I expect the wear to be much less than the stock pads after a track day.

The fun part was hunting down and passing the wide variety of cars on the track. Many a Porsche, mostly 964 and 996 generation 911's along with full race prepped earlier 911's were easy targets. A race-tired Boxster S, however, was clearly turning some faster lap times than me . Better driving, more stick in the corners (race tires) and more power down the straights. Yes, its true...

A few S4's on street tires were also no competition. A full race prepped T1 Z06 more or less smoked everyone, and a Formula car passed most everyone when he wasn't spinning off the track.

Great fun! I think I'll head back on Saturday if our fantastic Colorado weather holds...

gregstevens

Nice! Thanks for the report...looks like the next track day *I* will be having is in the distant future...so it's great to hear someone is able run in winter!

Strike

Greg,

You gotta move to Cali man. I know of track weekends at least twice a month for all of 2001. I'm not sure how many I'm attending yet but I'm happy to know I can go almost anytime I want.

WillErickson

I'll be there saturday too, along with some of my RX7 buddies from the intermountain rx7 club (my last track car was a 3rd gen rx7 r1). I got back from Arkansas today w/ my '00 silver/red.

Will

pfb

[QUOTE]Originally posted by WillErickson:
[B]

DavidM

Hey pbf, can you elaborate more on "...more power down the straights.." comment regarding the BoxterS? I have driven the BoxterS recently and if felt a lot faster than the S2000 ... though, I did not have an S2000 next to me so it's only my impression. Anyway, can you go into a bit more detail here? Was it comfortably faster? Or was it only faster out of slow corners? Or was it the top-end that was making the BoxterS pull away?

Anyway, I'm really interested in this as the my felling coming out of BoxterS was that powerwise, it feels in a different league to S2000. Though, you had one next to you (or in front of you :-) so you'll have better idea about this.

pfb

The Boxster S was driven by a very experienced track driver, and had race rubber on it. It was also aligned for track use, although supposedly no other mods.

He could comfortably carry more speed through the corners, no doubt considerably helped by the alignment and tires. He could also accelerate more quickly out of the hairpin leading into the main straight, and the combo left me many lengths further behind at the end of the straight. At no point did I start to "close" the gap. He was simply faster in the straights.

Now another S driven by a lesser driver was not turning fast lap times at all, and the 2.5 and 2.7 Boxsters as well as all 911's I came across except for a 993 Turbo were as dominated by the S2000 as I felt dominated by the well driven BoxS.

I can also add that I did some hot laps in a friends M-Coupe, completely stock. It was turning lap times similar to the S2000, but had a much different feel. I thought the steering was more vauge, and the torque really helped just muscle the speed up after a slow corner. It felt less "hurried" when driven fast, and much less like a purpose-built race car.

DavidM

Sounds like what I suspect (and what all the numbers tell me). BoxterS has got a fair bit more grunt at the bottom and is fair bit quicker (while moving) at any accelerations that are below about 110Km/h (67m/h). I plotted a power/gear curve for the 2 cars and bellow 110km/h the BoxterS is cleraly superior. After 110km/h S2000 should keep up with the BoxterS (almost) and that sounds like your observations.

On a subject of M Roadster feeling different. I drove the Z3 2.8 and that felt already different .. .different to what I'm used to. Though, I find the S2000 feeling different from anything I've driven as well. It feels nothiing like the Boxter (2.5, 2.7 or S - I drove them all). Though, to me the BoxterS felt a fair bit quicker than S2000 ... though, I only went (seriously) to about 120km/h (75m/h). I went faster but only momentarily 'cos I was on the 'twisties'. I'm still not used to the feel of the S2000 ... Lotus Elise, MR2, Boxter - they all feel more 'natural' to me. Must be the incredibly direct front end of S2000 that seems like it'll never understeer - still not used to it.

etgar

The one account that I read about Neal Sapp in T2 racing against a Boxter S Mr. Sapp finished 4th behind a 3 Camaro/Mustangs. The Boxster S finished no higher than 9th (if in the top ten). This was with the S2000 carrying 75 lbs of extra ballast.

I'm not sure how much of that was due to Mr. Sapps not incomsequential talents (I'm sure a fair bit)!

Etgar