Bullwings

Why do you always have to make everything so complicated??? LOL!

Clearly, money is a factor here. Whether in this thread or the other one, it was stated that blowing a motor and having to spend $10k to replace it would likely cause the car to sit for a good long while. That means a sequential for $9k isn't in the budget. It also reduces reliability and increases required maintenance intervals, all reasons for sticking with the s2k in the first place.
This also isn't "racing," it's HPDE - the only trophy is the smile on your face.

And when you're heel toe shifting, you're doing more braking and less application of the gas. I see left-foot braking as more of a means to settle the car while maintaining throttle application. When you're braking into heel-toe down shifting, you're not maintaining throttle application, you're blipping it. The goal is slowing the car down, and not changing balance, so you need the revs to come down to actually down shift and not blow your motor...

Also, these guys have no problem doing both left-foot braking with heel-toe shifting.

DavidNJ

Thanks for the videos...they made my point. The drivers preferred left foot braking, but weren't able to do it when they had to downshift.

The thread started about putting a turbo on an old motor or changing the car. I suggested that changing the gearbox was an alternative and would produce its own benefits in a different and IMHO superior driving experience. It was just an option, similar in cost to a turbo, but without extra strain on the engine. They are popular on S2000s with at least 2 manufactures selling bellhousing and output shafts as catalog items. It should have a good resale.

BMWs are also popular track days and NASA cars and several models came with a DCT or sequential box from the factory.

Bullwings

HawkeyeGeoff

This might be an unpopular opinion, and it may be totally out of your wheel house, but go drive a C6 Z06 and a 6th gen Camaro 1LE. Besides tires both are pretty damn cheap to track (though not really as cheap as a S2K after all the upgrades are done). But both have small blocks with favor going to the LT1 as the more bulletproof option. Both are very streetable cars and pretty much ready to go from factory.

Just a thought.

roddyc

987.2's are great for track duty right out of the box; the DI engines are considerably improved and don't suffer from the oil starvation/blowby or PS issues of the previous gen. Some of the Caymans I run with are still on 300tw tires and do just fine with pads only.

Personally though, from a value perspective, if I'm going to have a dedicated track car, I would (and did) opt for the S2000. A decent 09+ Cayman S will run you close to $40K since they are so rare relative to the 06-08. A well prepped S2000 will be half that and will probably put down better lap times. Both should prove to be fairly reliable, but the Porsche tax on parts and labor is very real. The S2000 is obviously going to be easier to wrench on, but the Cayman isn't bad for routine things. As mentioned previously though, a low probability catastrophic event (engine failure, stuffing it into a wall) will hurt the wallet exponentially more with the Porsche.

As a dual duty street/track car, the Cayman is definitely more livable and is surprisingly practical with the cargo space in the frunk and back; the interior to me was underwhelming though.

turbo8765

SlowTeg

As a fellow HPDE champion, I completely agree that the S really blows on the street (especially as a "track prepped" car). Generally speaking though good track cars make poor street cars. Looking at the other options the financial step up to a Porsche or Corvette just isn't worth it to me for all the different reasons stated. I vote for keeping the S and just getting another faster street car.

Apex1.0

Nate Tempest

One other thing worth considering if you're looking at manuals is that the Porsche DME tracks every overrev, and many/most buyers will care about those numbers. So if you ever miss a shift on track, even if the engine is totally fine - even if it's verifiably tested as fine - many people won't even consider the car. S2000 on the other hand - AP2 miss a single gear and you're fine. AP1 maybe you need to change your valve retainers, but once that's done you're fine. A single missed shift isn't going to depreciate your car by thousands of dollars.

Of course, maybe this is moot because the same buyers who wouldn't consider a car with overrevs also won't consider a past "track car", even if it was kept mostly stock. But there are definitely more buyers in that category for Caymans than for S2000s.

Apex1.0