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TL;DR - Model 3 with Track Mode is a fantastic track car, if you upgrade the brakes and can keep it charged

Took the 3 out to the track yesterday, had a blast! We were at While Horse Pass east track. The car ran great, got lots of positive comments. I think it surprised the hell out of a lot of people, myself included. I was passing probably 1-2 cars per lap, and only got passed by 2 or 3 cars throughout all 4 sessions. One of those was the instructions race-prepped NSX, and the other two were on the last session when I was under 10% battery and the brakes were about done, so I was taking it easy. By the halfway point I'd get behind someone and almost immediately get a point-by...the car cornered very well, and acceleration is awesome at higher states of charge, and still in line if not marginally better than most of the other cars out there at moderate SOC.

The logistics of charging between sessions kept me really busy....I was expecting and prepared for using 25-30% battery per session, but ended up using between 40%, 40%, 48%, and 44% in my 4 sessions. Eek! The onsite 240v RV receptacles only charge the car at about 10% per hour. I had to make a 40 mile round trip run during the 2.5 hour lunch gap to a supercharger in order to make all 4 sessions work.

Started at 97%
Ended first session at 57%
Charged to 70%
Ended second session at 30%
Ran to supercharger, arrive at 20%
Supercharged for a little over an hour, left with 97%
Arrived back at track at 88%
Third session ended at 40%
Charged to 50%
Last session ended at 6%
Had to charge for another 40 or 45 minutes after last session to make it home

I ran into the weakness of this car very early....brakes. The performance model comes with 4 piston Brembo front calipers and single piston rears. I swapped the factory rubber brake lines for SS braided and replaced the stock DOT3 fluid with Castrol SRF racing fluid before going to the track and thought I'd be good....nope. Pedal was nice and firm for the first half of the first session, then got really soft really fast. The brakes worked, but were not confidence inspiring and I tried to take it a bit easy on them the rest of the day. There were a few corners that I had the pedal on the floor. Pulled the pads this morning....holy crap. Not pretty. Pics below. I've since been told the this track is hell on brakes, and if I can get a setup that will handle this track, I won't have any problems at any of the other tracks around AZ.

I also corded two of the Micheline Pilot Sport 4S tires that only had 2000 miles on them...dropped the driver's side off track twice and I think that's all it took. Despite all this, I had a great time, and hopefully turned a few people on to the merits of EVs in the racing world. Better charging infrastructure would make life a lot easier, but I proved to myself that it can be done, and it's a ton of fun.

Here's a couple videos my wife took. I somehow managed to get no in-car video.

These two are from my first session...this was my first time at this track, first time with the 3, and first time in HPDE3 group...got signed off to move from 2 to 3 last year and hadn't been back out since. First two sessions were rough...I felt like I was all over the place. (Can't figure out the embedding, so here's some links)

https://youtu.be/9-XVmu-pjas

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https://youtu.be/tbdw8o04hMs

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This one was from the 3rd session. 3rd and 4th sessions were a lot more comfortable, track felt more familiar at that point and I was getting the hang of getting the car to rotate a little bit.

https://youtu.be/IIoLuqdV19U

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Stock pads are pretty well done. Tons of tapered wear, and glazed over. Passenger side: Driver side:

Tires...oops my bad
So...2 new tires coming next weekend. XT910 brake pads and 2 piece upgraded rotors on order. I'm going to get a set of dedicated track tires and wheels before fall too, don't want to tear up my street tires again. Man, this weekend was tons of fun, and really expensive!

From the looks of those tires and pads it looks like you had an awesome time! Cool to see a tesla out on the track let alone on the track being competitive. Sounds like you are doing all the right things /w pad and rotor upgrades. Bet the track will be even more fun when you are confident you can stop lol.

How did the Michelins do? My BMW has Sport 2s on it right now, I was debating going to the 4s next, heard good things, but curious how they did until you took them off road lol.

T5billion that's awesome. Can't wait till January. A boat ride and a Track day
Yea I think your brakes got hot. I would get those calipers replaced under warranty. The pistons must be sticking.
Man that looked awesome. Great vid.

NautiGirl wrote: Sun May 19, 2019 8:39 pm From the looks of those tires and pads it looks like you had an awesome time! Cool to see a tesla out on the track let alone on the track being competitive. Sounds like you are doing all the right things /w pad and rotor upgrades. Bet the track will be even more fun when you are confident you can stop lol.

How did the Michelins do? My BMW has Sport 2s on it right now, I was debating going to the 4s next, heard good things, but curious how they did until you took them off road lol.

The XT910 is advertised as a street pad, but of the small handful of other Model 3 track guys over on TMC, it seems to be popular as a "casual" track pad as well. So hopefully that will work out ok. The rotors are pretty...supposedly they cool a lot better than the factory ones. I've also bee told that I can remove the backing plate and get a decent reduction in brake temps, so between both of those hopefully I won't have any more problems.

My stock front setup: Backing plate that can be removed: Upgraded RB Performance rotors (borrowed from TMC - not my pic):





The PS4S tires were awesome, even on the fairly narrow 235 width. I don't think I'm good enough to need dedicated track tires on this car, but the inconvenience of having to replace street tires in a short timeframe makes it worth the swap IMO. I reserve the right to my tune later this year when I see the price tag of race compound tires

Big Block Power wrote: Sun May 19, 2019 8:51 pm T5billion that's awesome. Can't wait till January. A boat ride and a Track day
Yea I think your brakes got hot. I would get those calipers replaced under warranty. The pistons must be sticking.
Man that looked awesome. Great vid.

I'm planning to hit more of these track days when I can swing it, so if schedule aligns with you being here you are welcome to come!

Some tapered wear on the leading edge of the pad is pretty common on brakes like these from what I understand....I'm chalking the extremeness of this one up to really soft stock brake pads. If it does it again with the better compound pads I may reconsider.

I need to get in-car video next time, forgot to get my go-pro knockoff camera situated ahead of time, and didn't have time to stick my phone to the windshield on the Ram mount. Kicking myself for that...would have loved to had some in-car vid to share.

It's still cool. Where is that track located. Is it close to your house. The rocks look familiar. Lol

Thanks for sharing some video. Your acceleration on that back straight looked fast.
Yes, we need in car video.
Looking at your brakes and tires I'd say you had some fun.

Great share t550!
Reposted your YouTube vids. All you need to do is copy that digit/letter combo from the end of your YouTube link and insert that between the brackets that pop up when you click on this sites YouTube radio button.

Keep ‘em coming!

Fun read and video! I’m liking your charging log as that “real worlds” it. So does taping up your headlights and rockers. Nicely done!

I had the Pilot super sports on my '14 mustang GT. I loved them. If you continue to do track days I would highly recommend those over going to a race tire.

What pressure did you have your tires set to? Looks like you had them too low and were rolling the sidewalls. Next time put chalk lines on the side walls and see how much gets scrubbed off. I usually bump pressure up about 10 lbs and see where that put me, then get a laser thermometer and check tire temps across the tread right after you pull of the track to dial the pressure in. If you go with track pads/tires I'd start with some Dunlop Dirizza Star Specs, and Hawk HP+ pads. great HPDE setup that performs great cold and doesn't overheat in a typical 20 minute session. If you're pedal was that soft with the racing fluid, it's cooked, flush it and put some DOT4 in there. Looks like you had a great time, but man the charging seems like a PITA compared to just bringing a few 5 gallon cans with on the trailer, or bringing an extra hundo if you're driving there and back.

Headline: Tesla Model 3, low miles, only driven on Sundays....reasonably priced.

It does get off the corner quick in the back straight.

Just put the Pilot 4S's on my S4. For the first 100 miles I really didn't like them as they were hard and loud. I am really starting to like them now especially after driving in heavy rain yesterday on our So. Cal. freeways on the way to a graduation.

I'm really hoping I get more miles than out of the last set of Dunlop's that only lasted 18k.

The Michelins are good looking tires too!

Great looking Model 3!

The UTQG rating on the Pilot 4s is 300AAA all season, hardly a performance tire. The Dunlop Direzza Z3 is a 200AA Ultra high perfromance summer tire, which makes it a perfect summer/track day tires.