I have been active in the BMW Car Club of America’s driving school program since early 2000. My first driving school as a student was at the world famous Sears Point Raceway (now known as Infineon), and the combination of a great track, top notch instruction, camaraderie of the fellow drivers, and the general adrenalin addiction of driving on a racetrack got me instantly hooked on the go-fast crack pipe.

A scant three years later (which is almost 5 years ago now! sheesh, I’m getting old) I had the opportunity to step up as a steward within the program — basically making me responsible for coordinating with the track and corner workers, managing the on-track schedule, and ensuring the safe running of the event. After mentoring under a stalwart of the club, Steve “Mr. Black Flag” Johnson, for a couple of years, I took over as Chief Steward upon Steve’s relocation from the Bay Area to San Diego. I love this position, as it lets me give something back to a club that has given me many years of enjoyment and support…

…and it also gives me free track time 4 times a year.

This weekend I found myself once again at our annual spring driving school at the track formerly known as Sears Point. Sears is my home track, but I love it for more than it’s amazingly close proximity to my house. The track is 2.5 miles of constant corners and elevation changes. There is almost no time to catch your breath on the track, as even the “main straight” is really a series of long high speed corners that climb a steep hillside! What I love about this track is how technical it is, how hard it is to turn a really perfect lap, and how there is still real danger and real consequences for dumb mistakes. Sears Point, even after the “safety changes” that removed the hillsides alongside the esses, still does not suffer a fool. With all of these characteristics, there’s no better place to test the handling performance of a car. Hope you like K-wall.

The school ran off pretty much flawlessly. Most of our students were centered down in the novice D group, a great crop of eager car enthusiasts that hopefully will stick with the program (or at least driving events) long term. In addition to the sea of BMW M cars, there was another Evo (who made the long drive down from Seattle), a Parnelli Jones-edition Mustang, a few Z06 Corvettes, a gaggle of Porsche 911s, a few other Japanese cars, and even a Ferrari 612 Scaglietti! Other than a handful of spins, the only real incident was a novice driver pitching their 350Z to the inside of turn 3a after dropping 2 wheels on the outside, which resulted in some minor cosmetic body damage to the unfortunate Nissan. Worst part? It was a rental! Yikes.

But back to that free track time…

My Fancy New Shoes — Toyo’s Proxes R888

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve made the switch from the venerable Toyo Proxes RA-1 in 255/40-17 on 17×9 Team Dynamics wheels to the new Toyo Proxes R888 in 245/40-18 on 8.5″ wide Volk Racing TE-37’s. I’ve been very interested in seeing what these new tires can do ever since hearing about the performance of it’s Nitto-branded sister tire. Well, the new tire is simply fantastic! It builds on the great performance and durability of the RA-1 with even more available grip and more consistency. I ran the tires at full tread (which is how they would be run at Targa).

In comparison to similar full-tread RA-1s:

• The R888 has much more maximum grip. In general, the understeer I’m used to fighting with was drastically reduced. Like almost-Hoosier-slick-tire better. The car would turn in much more crisply than before, and would enter a nice, controlled, driveable drift on the exit of the corner as I rolled on the power.
• The new tire is more reliable over a long, hot session. The RA-1 would get greasy after being driven hard for an extended period of time. This was most evident if you started to push the car, or get aggressive and start pitching the car around. Once the RA-1 went away, it took a while to come back from that overheated condition. This fade characteristic isn’t as bad as a Kumho or Hoosier race tire, but was pretty bad. Surprisingly, the R888 took more aggressive driving (alright, downright abuse) to get to that point, and when it did it came back much more quickly (like in a couple of cooler laps).
• The new tire is easier to drive. The RA-1 is already a pretty easy tire to drive compared to the aforementioned Hoosier or Kumho. Works well when cold, doesn’t fall off a cliff when too hot, moderately acceptable of a range of tire pressures, etc. That said, the R888 is even better. I started off with tire pressures that would work best when the tire was cold (I did this to maximize my first couple of laps out — basically to let me use the most open running of a session before coming up on slower student traffic). Despite this, even after the tires got hot and pressures climbed out of the sweet spot for the old RA-1, the R888 was much more predictable at the limit than the old rubber.

Overall, the tire is a huge leap forward in my mind. If I have once complaint it is in driver feedback at the utmost limit. The RA-1 would squeal like a street tire and start to “chatter” a bit when you got too close to the breakaway point. The R888 does not give anywhere near that same level of feedback at the limit. I think this is a characteristic of the lack of defined square tread blocks (pure speculation, but based on my experience with other “smooth surface” race tires), and you quickly learn to adapt, but this might make the RA-1 still a better choice for an inexperienced driver on a track.

But What About those Shiny New Brembos?

The other significant change we made before this track day was switch over to real race pads on our very red Brembo GT brakes The result? Confidence inspiring.

We all know that, despite the Brembo logo on the calipers, Mitsubishi cut some corners on the Evo’s stock brakes. The pads are absolute junk, there is little to no brake cooling and so the rotors are quickly overwhelmed in hard driving, and the feel is a little soft for a car that is marketed as a race car for the street. The switch we made to a set of “big red” Brembo GT brakes on the front and rear of our Evo was an attempt to address the heat soak, pedal feel, and overall durability of the brake system on this very, very heavy beast of a car. Well, it worked.

With Raybestos ST race pads, the Brembos hauled our overweight Evo down without fade or issue from triple digit speeds. Lighter braking zones and mid-corner left foot braking was much easier due to the lighter pedal effort required to whoa the car down. Even the balance was better — using the brakes to rotate the car on corner entry (for example, while trailbraking into turn 4) was much more effective due to the much larger rear brake set-up.

I recommend this upgrade for anyone running a real Evo track or race car. The factory parts can be made to work, but why suffer through it?

Overall, it was a great weekend at the track. The lap times showed that I’m a little rusty after basically taking 6 months off of driving in the Evo, but I’m ready to start getting serious again. More to come as I do various autocross events, track days, and time attacks in the Evo throughout 2008.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 10:47 am and is filed under Notes, Testing & Tuning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.