My first track day

Last week had the coop serviced, new whiteline rear arb, Nigel front brace, New grooved discs all round, pagid yellows on the front, yellowstuff on the rear. Coupled with Eibachs and suspension refresh a couple of months earlier I thought time to venture onto the track.

So yesterday attended an MSV track session at Brands and after the noise test (no problems) and the briefing out onto the track for a couple of laps behind the instructor, all good and have a rough idea of the lines now.

Instuctor peels off and the pace starts to increase, coop feels good plenty of grip, brakes excellent. Good speed along the straight brake at the "BRAKE NOW" marker board and end up far too slow for the corner, so lap after lap I increase the distance until I find a good spot to brake and get a good corner speed.

This is starting to feel good and the car feels fantastic. I could now do with getting past the 944 in front and the Elise in front of him.

Put on a little pressure and they yield after a couple of blue flags and up my pace even more, this is great! time to start reeling in the TVR griffith, half a lap and the job is done time to start catching the pack 200m in front, car and brakes feel great going into clearways and accelerate along the straight touching over 120mph and leave the braking late into paddock, touch the brakes NOTHING!! foot straight to the floor pump again NOTHING!!

O.K now do I try to turn in and potetially understeer into the kerbs and barrel roll through the gravel or drive into the gravel and smash headlong into the tyres???

I think I chose a combination of the 2 and managed to get through the gravel (partly driving and partly flying) and return shaken (and stirred) to the track and take the slow drive of shame brakeless and spreading gravel back to the pit lane.

30 minutes later and the pedal had returned enabling me to drive sheepishly home.

And the moral of the story is DECENT BRAKE FLUID!!!

However has it put me off?? Has it hell! I'm totally hooked and the coop (apart from the minor indescretion) was terrific to drive.

Castrol SRF - better than Motul RBF600/660 of which I've used all on track.

Bit more expensive, but it doesn't fade at all, even after 20 minutes when the Motul does...

And get yourself to Donington on the 26th April, will be a couple of us there

a top brand dot5.1 is the standard needed, i believe

good write up, look forwards to many more

Theres no feeling on earth quite like it,thumbs up mate now its in your blood.

As for brake fluid get the castrol stuff.You will melt the caliper before you boil that.
I had to do Donington with next to no brakes running over 400bhp.Not ideal.

Is that normal though?

"Brakes OK, brakes warm now brakes great, brakes great, no #$**ing brakes!!"

I'd expected to have at least seen some form of deterioration ie. a long pedal or some fade??

I had brakes go on the road on my old 16vt. It wasnt particularly hard to get the fluid to boil, and when it does go, you know nothing about it. You just put your foot on the brake and nothing happens.

(you then start pumping the brakes furiously, downshifting, and initiating a rapid removal of excretion from your bowels)

You need to use more than mineral oil for your brake fluid Truff! Cheapskate!!

Castrol SRF is pricier, but boy, does it work, and continue to do so. Although if anyone can boil a caliper on track. it'd be JBT

You won't know when it's boiled, as it will boil when under heavy load, then just won't do anything next time you touch the pedal. Been there on track, no brakes, a few seconds to decide where to crash the car, say your hail marys, downshift and hold on for dear life. If you react quick enough, otherwise the gravel/grass/tyres/wall(!) will greet you

this i doubt if donington is anything to go by - he had no brakes to use

....because his GOOD ones were on my Scottie . Flea's wheels were seriously smoking though !!

.... once the gravel was removed ....

Lets just say your brakes are substantially better than mine Tim.


As for above,no theres no warning,and the pedal usually drops straight to the floor as if you had pressed the clutch pedal.
Sods law states this has to happen when your behind the most expensive motor on the track.
I nearly took out an M3 Csl and Skyline GTR at Snetterton and then recently i nearly took out Jonny at Donington when my brakes failed.


Despite this,these are so addictive,and the more friends you know that get involved the better the experience.

Quite normal with old fluid, it happened to my Coupe the very first time out on track (not with me driving), only lasted a couple of laps before the old fluid boiled!

Sounds a bit worrying, glad you got away with it. Be interesting to know how long your session was before you got sudden brake fade.

I'm presuming from your story ("lap after lap" etc) that you did 20+ minutes of hard laps - if so, isn't the moral of the story at least partly "do shorter stints on trackdays to avoid brake fade"? It comes without much warning, and pretty much any set-up will suffer fade (especially on a car as hard on brakes as a coupe is) if you use them hard enough for long enough. Not to mention you should give your front tyres a break too.

My 306 suffered the same thing (end of the main straight at Bedford, with my mate driving) and the reason was definitely that we'd pushed too hard without giving the car enough of a break between sessions.

Something very similar happened to me on my first track day at Castle Coombe . Obviously I wasn't going fast enough though as I managed to stay on the track. Old brake fluid boils at low temp, and the pedal just goes completely. If the pads overheat & fade, it's more gradual & the pedal is still there, just not much retardation.

this is good to know as me and my brother are building a track day car a celica gt4 st185 ... brakes are not a problem with the car (st205 fitted) but fluid has not been thought about.... looking at the gt4 forum ..... its full of ... well ...this is my secret so i am not telling you.... here awsome even if its not used on a coupe... thanks

4-5 laps at a time on a track day is plenty for a coupe. Its also good practice to use the last lap of each session as a cool down lap.
As soon as i leave the track i put the heater full on to help with the water cooling.
As others have said use high temp brake fluid and use Nigels disc pad bedding in advice here. http://www.fiatcoupeclub.org/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=631100#Post631100