[m6-lt1]

I was on track yesterday. I have done a few track days but I am still a novice. I drive in sport 1. Reviewing my sessions when I got home I noticed I didn’t drive my best that day as ptm intervened a bunch around the hairpins. A couple of times I got what I thought was pad fade. I would back off for a lap and then the brakes would feel normal again. I am aware that ptm can use the rear brakes to help you keep the car strait. Could I have been overheating the rear brakes enough to give me what I thought was pad fade? I wasn’t sure if it was pad fade or fluid.

One other thing. For the final session I forgot to enter ptm. I had no brake fade on the final session. This is why I am wondering if it is possible to overheat the rear brakes enough to get a soft pedal a few times but I wasn’t sure if it was pad fade of boiled fluid. I did see the smallest amount of fluid seeping around 2 of my outside bleeders. This was not a situation where I had fluid all over my wheels. Just a tiny bit of seepage. Waited an hour for them to cool a bit and tightened them about 1/16 or 1/32 turn (didn’t want to go full Hercules here because last thing we all want is to strip a bleeder screw). I’m not sure if tightening the 2 screws fixed the brake fade or if not turning ptm on fixed the fade. Since most of the work is done by the front brakes I’m really not sure so was wondering if you guys could figure it out/answer it for me.

Car only has 3k on it, one track day prior to yesterday, endless fluid and stock pad. Also have blackwing deflectors installed.

[DaveC113]

Yeah, if nannies are regularly intervening I'd go to Sport 2 or Race.

[2004YZFR1]

You shouldn’t over heat the brakes or fluid with Endless. The PTM will definitely make the brakes run a bit hotter if you keep getting it to intervene. Did you smell your brake pads much?

[m6-lt1]

Originally Posted by DaveC113

Yeah, if nannies are regularly intervening I'd go to Sport 2 or Race.

Thank you for the suggestion but I don’t think I’m a good enough driver to use sport 2 yet. I would love to though.

Originally Posted by 2004YZFR1

You shouldn’t over heat the brakes or fluid with Endless. The PTM will definitely make the brakes run a bit hotter if you keep getting it to intervene. Did you smell your brake pads much?

I did smell my brakes 1 or 2 times that day. I asked someone this but I didn’t get a clear answer. Would braking longer but less hard create more heat than braking harder but for a shorter time? I definitely need to work on braking but part of it is due to losing confidence when I would get the further traveling pedal. I definitely am a culprit of braking longer and softer versus harder and shorter.

[DaveC113]

Originally Posted by m6-lt1

Thank you for the suggestion but I don’t think I’m a good enough driver to use sport 2 yet. I would love to though.

Sport 2 and Race still has traction control so it'll keep you from spinning due to oversteer on corner exit, which is the largest risk imo. Race allows for more slip angle, sport 2 will intervene earlier. Nothing's going to save you if you don't brake in time!

[m6-lt1]

Originally Posted by DaveC113

Sport 2 and Race still has traction control so it'll keep you from spinning due to oversteer on corner exit, which is the largest risk imo. Race allows for more slip angle, sport 2 will intervene earlier. Nothing's going to save you if you don't brake in time!

Gotcha. So I definitely did not brake too late yesterday as my instructor was trying to get me to brake later and harder.

I’m gonna be honest I actually did spin out into the grass due too oversteer on corner exit. I was stunned because I didn’t feel like I did anything different. This was the 3rd session and there was a large gap between session 2 and 3. Originally I thought it was due to cold tires but the teachers watched my pdr video and said I gave too much gas in the middle of the corner. Personally from what I read on here I thought sport 1 would have saved me as it had been all day.

Do you think sport 1 should have saved me and it could have been due to cold tires/hit something slippery? It was during the 3rd lap. Keep in mind it’s a very short track, approx 1 min with a good driver in our cars so that’s why I thought cold tires as I’ve read on here it takes about 2 laps for supercar 3’s to heat up on a normal length track. I don’t drive that hard during the first lap.

[cdb95z28]

Responses in RED.

Originally Posted by m6-lt1

I was on track yesterday. I have done a few track days but I am still a novice. I drive in sport 1. Reviewing my sessions when I got home I noticed I didn’t drive my best that day as ptm intervened a bunch around the hairpins. A couple of times I got what I thought was pad fade. I would back off for a lap and then the brakes would feel normal again. I am aware that ptm can use the rear brakes to help you keep the car strait. Could I have been overheating the rear brakes enough to give me what I thought was pad fade? I wasn’t sure if it was pad fade or fluid. As mentioned, doubtful you boiled the Endless. From your descriptions, I would say it was pad fade. The friction can return when pads have been cooled back down. You did good by backing off. That was a great learning opportunity. It's worth mentioning that one of the traits of fluid is hot compressibility. The fluid wants to compress when heated to high temps, giving a softer pedal. This is not the same as fluid boiling. If hot compressibility, the original pedal feel will return once the fluid has significantly cooled. With boiled fluid, the original firm pedal never returns. And yes, the rear brakes can be overheated due to the PTM choice.



One other thing. For the final session I forgot to enter ptm. I had no brake fade on the final session. This is why I am wondering if it is possible to overheat the rear brakes enough to get a soft pedal a few times but I wasn’t sure if it was pad fade of boiled fluid. I did see the smallest amount of fluid seeping around 2 of my outside bleeders. This was not a situation where I had fluid all over my wheels. Just a tiny bit of seepage. Waited an hour for them to cool a bit and tightened them about 1/16 or 1/32 turn (didn’t want to go full Hercules here because last thing we all want is to strip a bleeder screw). I’m not sure if tightening the 2 screws fixed the brake fade or if not turning ptm on fixed the fade. Since most of the work is done by the front brakes I’m really not sure so was wondering if you guys could figure it out/answer it for me. The fluid seepage is most likely due to residual fluid that is left within the vertical bleeder after bleeding. Since a closed bleeder seals at its bottom taper not the threads, once closed, the bleeder will be filled with fluid. If it is not removed the heat from track use will start to push the fluid out thru the threads and even thru the bleeder's top hole (if not capped with the OE black rubber caps). I use small round pieces of wood from firearm cleaning cotton swabs to push the fluid out of the bleeder. Some use a small blast of BraKleen but wrap a rag around the bleeder when doing that so you don't get the back spray over everything. Torque the bleeder to factory specs, 13-15 ft-lbs.

Car only has 3k on it, one track day prior to yesterday, endless fluid and stock pad. Also have blackwing deflectors installed.

Originally Posted by m6-lt1

Thank you for the suggestion but I don’t think I’m a good enough driver to use sport 2 yet. I would love to though.



I did smell my brakes 1 or 2 times that day. I asked someone this but I didn’t get a clear answer. Would braking longer but less hard create more heat than braking harder but for a shorter time? Yes. When we brake longer, that gives more time for the heat to travel deeper into the braking components. Pad/rotor>pistons>caliper>fluid. Novices tend to overbrake. While shorter, harder braking technique will have a quicker ramp up in heat production, the total time on brakes is less and this allows the cooling to work longer. The better cooling opportunity keeps pad temps down which helps keep you out of pad fade. I definitely need to work on braking but part of it is due to losing confidence when I would get the further traveling pedal. I definitely am a culprit of braking longer and softer versus harder and shorter.

[m6-lt1]

Originally Posted by cdb95z28

Responses in RED.

Thank you for the answers! I feel a lot better about it being pad fade versus boiling fluid. I did not know that if I boil the fluid I would never get a firm pedal back. I did stick a toothpick in the bleeders to get some residual fluid out but I must not have waited long enough for it to come out.

[DaveC113]

Originally Posted by m6-lt1

Gotcha. So I definitely did not brake too late yesterday as my instructor was trying to get me to brake later and harder.

I’m gonna be honest I actually did spin out into the grass due too oversteer on corner exit. I was stunned because I didn’t feel like I did anything different. This was the 3rd session and there was a large gap between session 2 and 3. Originally I thought it was due to cold tires but the teachers watched my pdr video and said I gave too much gas in the middle of the corner. Personally from what I read on here I thought sport 1 would have saved me as it had been all day.

Do you think sport 1 should have saved me and it could have been due to cold tires/hit something slippery? It was during the 3rd lap. Keep in mind it’s a very short track, approx 1 min with a good driver in our cars so that’s why I thought cold tires as I’ve read on here it takes about 2 laps for supercar 3’s to heat up on a normal length track. I don’t drive that hard during the first lap.

Post the video, if you enter the corner too fast nothing can save you. Any PTM mode should limit power to prevent power oversteer, but there's limits to what it can do.

[m6-lt1]

Originally Posted by DaveC113

Post the video, if you enter the corner too fast nothing can save you. Any PTM mode should limit power to prevent power oversteer, but there's limits to what it can do.

Here it is. I don't believe I entered the corner too fast but let me know if I am wrong.

https://youtu.be/MIh3YZW0db4

Appreciate any advice I get from everyone.

[Christian1LE]

Originally Posted by m6-lt1

Here it is. I don't believe I entered the corner too fast but let me know if I am wrong.

https://youtu.be/MIh3YZW0db4

Appreciate any advice I get from everyone.

Looks to me like your typical lap 1 spin when tires are not up to temperature yet. Either way I think your mistake was just not correcting fast enough. Definitely too much throttle for what the tires could do for you. With PTM off I would stay on throttle in a situation like this and just counter steer out of it. With PTM on the car will cut throttle and try to help you.

Couple of things to fix it would be to open up the steering faster as you apply throttle. Car can only do so many things at once. If you want to be aggressive on the throttle you need to decrease steering angle. Otherwise be smoother on the throttle.

[cdrptrks]

Originally Posted by m6-lt1

Here it is. I don't believe I entered the corner too fast but let me know if I am wrong.

https://youtu.be/MIh3YZW0db4

Appreciate any advice I get from everyone.

Stock tires probably should not have been cold enough to be the main culprit in your case. Looks like you did not countersteer quickly enough and/or with enough steering angle when the oversteer started and once you abruptly lifted off of the throttle you transferred weight away from the rear that was already sliding making the oversteer worse. Sometimes it is better to let it spin into a safe area like you did than to try to catch it, like if there's a barrier on the other side of the track you could hit if you overcorrect. If you're going to spin off track and can't catch the slide you generally want to brake hard before you leave the pavement (and clutch in if it is a manual transmission so you don't stall it) since pavement has much better grip than grass so the sooner you start braking the less distance you'll go off into the grass. Continue braking hard in the grass until you're in control of the car but the deceleration g force will be much less than on pavement (more so if the grass is wet and/or muddy). If the grass is wet/muddy try to keep rolling and give it some gas after you pick the correct gear and are pointing in the same direction as the cars still on track so you don't get stuck and have to get towed out.

If you had kept throttle steady or reduced it slightly (by maybe 10-20%) you probably could have caught the slide instead of spinning but it takes work and practice to train yourself not to lift off of the gas pedal when you feel the back sliding. Also you should keep looking where you want to go during the slide which would be out the passenger side window in this case.

EDIT: I wrote this before Christian1LE replied then dug up this video before posting. Here is a big slide I had on cold Supercar 3 tires in the second corner of my home track with traction and stability control fully disabled (no PTM). I had to apply 305° of countersteering in about 1 second to catch it. I lifted and braked during the slide otherwise it should have required less countersteer but I did that on purpose knowing there were tire walls on both sides of the track ahead and slowing down before I left the pavement improved my odds of not hitting them if I went off into the grass. I have previously seen someone hit one of those tire walls during an event I attended and I was passenger with an advanced driver who had oversteer in the same spot in his C7 Corvette but he overcorrected and we went backwards through the grass stopping just short of the tire wall.

[m6-lt1]

Originally Posted by Christian1LE

Looks to me like your typical lap 1 spin when tires are not up to temperature yet. Either way I think your mistake was just not correcting fast enough. Definitely too much throttle for what the tires could do for you. With PTM off I would stay on throttle in a situation like this and just counter steer out of it. With PTM on the car will cut throttle and try to help you.

Couple of things to fix it would be to open up the steering faster as you apply throttle. Car can only do so many things at once. If you want to be aggressive on the throttle you need to decrease steering angle. Otherwise be smoother on the throttle.

Originally Posted by cdrptrks

Stock tires probably should not have been cold enough to be the main culprit in your case. Looks like you did not countersteer quickly enough and/or with enough steering angle when the oversteer started and once you abruptly lifted off of the throttle you transferred weight away from the rear that was already sliding making the oversteer worse. Sometimes it is better to let it spin into a safe area like you did than to try to catch it, like if there's a barrier on the other side of the track you could hit if you overcorrect. If you're going to spin off track and can't catch the slide you generally want to brake hard before you leave the pavement (and clutch in if it is a manual transmission so you don't stall it) since pavement has much better grip than grass so the sooner you start braking the less distance you'll go off into the grass. Continue braking hard in the grass until you're in control of the car but the deceleration g force will be much less than on pavement (more so if the grass is wet and/or muddy). If the grass is wet/muddy try to keep rolling and give it some gas after you pick the correct gear and are pointing in the same direction as the cars still on track so you don't get stuck and have to get towed out.

If you had kept throttle steady or reduced it slightly (by maybe 10-20%) you probably could have caught the slide instead of spinning but it takes work and practice to train yourself not to lift off of the gas pedal when you feel the back sliding. Also you should keep looking where you want to go during the slide which would be out the passenger side window in this case.

EDIT: I wrote this before Christian1LE replied then dug up this video before posting. Here is a big slide I had on cold Supercar 3 tires in the second corner of my home track with traction and stability control fully disabled (no PTM). I had to apply 305° of countersteering in about 1 second to catch it. I lifted and braked during the slide otherwise it should have required less countersteer but I did that on purpose knowing there were tire walls on both sides of the track ahead and slowing down before I left the pavement improved my odds of not hitting them if I went off into the grass. I have previously seen someone hit one of those tire walls during an event I attended and I was passenger with an advanced driver who had oversteer in the same spot in his C7 Corvette but he overcorrected and we went backwards through the grass stopping just short of the tire wall.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Believe it or not when the spin started in my head I immediately thought about either trying to catch it the way you both described or just letting it spin. I processed in my head where I was on the track and decided to do nothing but slow down the car once I get in the grass as I knew there were no walls to hit.

I downloaded the cosworth tool just now and looked at the data. The lap I spun which was lap 3 on a short track tire temps were between 99-104.

I will try to be smoother from now on on really thought turns. Either less angle and a little more throttle or more steering angle and less throttle. I’ll keep all those things in mind when sliding (hopefully doesn’t happen again) about braking on pavement and looking where I want to go.

I’ll also admit and I’m not ashamed to say this, it was kinda scary having it happen to me the first time in my life in real life. I drive on my racing sim/assetto corsa a lot and practice causing oversteer for fun/training and I am decent at catching it in that sim but if I mess up in the sim nothing bad happens whereas I was worried about possibly doing a 180 and facing oncoming traffic when it occurred in real life. Of course if there were walls I would have counter steered and hopefully remembered to apply throttle to save it.

[m6-lt1]

Originally Posted by Christian1LE

Looks to me like your typical lap 1 spin when tires are not up to temperature yet. Either way I think your mistake was just not correcting fast enough. Definitely too much throttle for what the tires could do for you. With PTM off I would stay on throttle in a situation like this and just counter steer out of it. With PTM on the car will cut throttle and try to help you.

Couple of things to fix it would be to open up the steering faster as you apply throttle. Car can only do so many things at once. If you want to be aggressive on the throttle you need to decrease steering angle. Otherwise be smoother on the throttle.

Originally Posted by cdrptrks

Stock tires probably should not have been cold enough to be the main culprit in your case. Looks like you did not countersteer quickly enough and/or with enough steering angle when the oversteer started and once you abruptly lifted off of the throttle you transferred weight away from the rear that was already sliding making the oversteer worse. Sometimes it is better to let it spin into a safe area like you did than to try to catch it, like if there's a barrier on the other side of the track you could hit if you overcorrect. If you're going to spin off track and can't catch the slide you generally want to brake hard before you leave the pavement (and clutch in if it is a manual transmission so you don't stall it) since pavement has much better grip than grass so the sooner you start braking the less distance you'll go off into the grass. Continue braking hard in the grass until you're in control of the car but the deceleration g force will be much less than on pavement (more so if the grass is wet and/or muddy). If the grass is wet/muddy try to keep rolling and give it some gas after you pick the correct gear and are pointing in the same direction as the cars still on track so you don't get stuck and have to get towed out.

If you had kept throttle steady or reduced it slightly (by maybe 10-20%) you probably could have caught the slide instead of spinning but it takes work and practice to train yourself not to lift off of the gas pedal when you feel the back sliding. Also you should keep looking where you want to go during the slide which would be out the passenger side window in this case.

EDIT: I wrote this before Christian1LE replied then dug up this video before posting. Here is a big slide I had on cold Supercar 3 tires in the second corner of my home track with traction and stability control fully disabled (no PTM). I had to apply 305° of countersteering in about 1 second to catch it. I lifted and braked during the slide otherwise it should have required less countersteer but I did that on purpose knowing there were tire walls on both sides of the track ahead and slowing down before I left the pavement improved my odds of not hitting them if I went off into the grass. I have previously seen someone hit one of those tire walls during an event I attended and I was passenger with an advanced driver who had oversteer in the same spot in his C7 Corvette but he overcorrected and we went backwards through the grass stopping just short of the tire wall.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Believe it or not when the spin started in my head I immediately thought about either trying to catch it the way you both described or just letting it spin. I processed in my head where I was on the track and decided to do nothing but slow down the car once I get in the grass as I knew there were no walls to hit.

I downloaded the cosworth tool just now and looked at the data. The lap I spun which was lap 3 on a short track tire temps were between 99-104.

I will try to be smoother from now on really tight turns. Either less angle and a little more throttle or more steering angle and less throttle. I’ll keep all those things in mind when sliding (hopefully doesn’t happen again) about braking on pavement and looking where I want to go.

I’ll also admit and I’m not ashamed to say this, it was kinda scary having it happen to me the first time in my life in real life. I drive on my racing sim/assetto corsa a lot and practice causing oversteer for fun/training and I am decent at catching it in that sim but if I mess up in the sim nothing bad happens whereas I was worried about possibly doing a 180 and facing oncoming traffic when it occurred in real life. Of course if there were walls I would have counter steered and hopefully remembered to apply throttle to save it.

After the spin of course I went into the pits for them to look at my car and talk to me. When I got back on track I put it in ptm dry. Holy crap does it intervene. At one point my instructor said I can probably put it back in sport 1. I still was a bit scarred so I didn’t do it right away but I did wind up putting it in sport 1 the last couple laps and was just really careful around the turn I spun at.