First off, I'm not very experienced with HPDEs. over the past 6 years I've done 9 weekends for 16 days. Those 9 events were at 8 different tracks and in three different cars. I've moved around (5 different houses/apartments in those same 6 years) an I've been more interested in experiencing new tracks than honing my skills on a particular track. It's been very fun.
So the F80 now ... after reading reports from people who have far more experience than I, the modifications to my car were pretty standard: square apex ec-7 18"x10" et33 wheels with 10mm spacer in front and wrapped in 275/35/18 Nitto NT01 tires coupled with ATE DOT4 fluid and a set of Pagid RS29 pads and off I went. It was a 5 hr drive so i put the apex/nitto in the car and drove the MPSS and stock 19s to the track to avoid ruining my weekend by getting a flat in the NT01s ... also i wanted to have the MPSS in case of rain.
Everything i've heard so far about the car seems very true.
Settings:
:: SPORT PLUS for everything
:: MDM for the first two sessions since my instructor encouraged it and it was my first time at the track so i like to see if there are areas it's saving me so I can make sure i watch throttle in those areas... the rest of the weekend everything was off and felt far better ... and i think the brakes were getting hotter with the MDM on.
:: started tires at 31PSI and ended around 38-39 which felt good to me, if anything the rear could've even used more.. only a couple oversteer times where the rear end started coming out from under me, each time it was predictable and no bad outcomes
Brakes:
I noticed after the second session that i had a little brake fluid coming out from around the bleed valves/nipples and trickling down the calipers. It seemed to me that the brake travel increased some after the first session and i'm wondering if this had something to do with it ... the brakes did what they were supposed to do but i think my technique lended to a little more fade than necessary as well (longer, less severe braking zones .. i probably should've compressed my braking zones a bit more). only rarely did i actually try to manage my brakes to try and improve the travel/fade but i was very happy with the brakes and i was going hard 99% of the time.
Power:
More than adequate. Some of the passing zones were rather short but the power in this thing made zipping past some slower cars a breeze. my run group mostly consisted of people in older Boxsters/Carreras on one end of the spectrum, and GT3s/Turbo/TurboS on the other end of the spectrum. I had a pretty good run with a 997 Turbo for a while but he did end up pulling away from me. The TurboS is the only car that really would smoke me in a power perspective ... he also had carbon ceramics..
DCT:
No malfunctions the entire time ... i didn't like one or two of the shifts it was making so i ended up shifting myself and keeping it in the hardest shift setting which led to a little tire chirp a couple times coming out of turns hard.
Steering:
It felt perfect to me. It barely entered my mind because it was doing exactly what i wanted and never was there something i wish it was doing/had done.
Overall impression:
Loved it! I didn't get any warnings/malfunctions except TPMS which I didn't have installed and a chassis malfunction when i had the car jacked up and on to bleed the brakes. Couldn't ask for much more to be honest.
Not a lot really to say that hasn't been said before/better by other people, so i'll just toss in some photos and a video!
^^ highway/track
^^ my car hates me to some degree, car had just been jacked up for old-fashioned brake bleeding. turned the car off and back on and cleared and never came back.
^^ 1/4 tank per session
in the videos i had the flaps full-open (unplugged the cords) and had the microphone hanging from the tow strap on the rear bumper. the mic was definitely hot by the end of a session so this probably will have a deleterious effect on it long term... moving the mic to the license plate is something that may help with that.