At the end of the 2018 track season, I finished Mid-Ohio with a 1:44.6 lap time. Just a year prior of the 2017 season, I finished with a 1:52.3. With more seat time, I was becoming comfortable with the car (base 2013 Porsche 991.1), and raising my ability to operate closer at the limit. To achieve the 1:44 in my last track event of 2018, I made several improvements to the car over the course of the track season. I lowered the car’s stance with H&R sport springs. I replaced the stock plenum with the aluminum IPD plenum (thanks Fabspeed). I replaced the stock air filters with BMC air filters. I picked up and applied a stage 1 Cobb tune. To make sure I could keep all of that safely under control, I upgraded the front pads to PFC. Watching and observing those ahead of me in the run groups, still left me with speed envy. They were quicker around the track than I was.

Coming into the 2019 track season, I set out to improve my lap times by another 4 seconds. My goal was to be at 1:40 flat. My second goal was to try a couple of new tracks. First things first, I had to improve some of the hardware on the car. On my list of improvements for 2019:

• the third radiator kit (sourced from SunCoast). In my some of my mid-summer seasons, I was seeing water temps in the 240’s and my oil temps peaked in one session at 269 degrees. I was cooking oil and not in a good way. I’ll provide details on my install in a follow up post.
• Girodisc rotors (sourced from FabSpeed with a coupon)
• Pagid rs29 brake pads (again from SunCoast)
• braided brake lines (BBi Autosport)
• Cobb PDK tune (Cobb Tuning)
• 19″ Avante Garde Ruger Mesh wheels – (Radius Speed Wheels)
• Grippy tires – Toyo Proxes R888R (Jegs)
• More aggressive camber (local Grismer tire shop)

The picture is just before the first event of the season with AutoInterests in May of 2019. In parallel, my dad started a project track car too. He started with a 2012 BMW 335is that had been imported by a serviceman stationed in Germany. He was particularly excited since the N54 engine block is a forged block that can easily withstand 800 bhp with some modest tuning. I’ll detail his build in a follow up post as well and I’ll cover our head-to-head match up from September of this year. Until the next time, god speed.