Fiesta ST First Track Report

I just got back from a weekend with the BMW CCA at Summit Point Raceway in West Virginia. As always it was a great event with awesome folks and some great driving.

This was my first weekend with my FiST after a season of events in my E46 M3. I float between the intermediate and advanced group depending on the number of people, this weekend I was in intermediate and it was an interesting mix of cars. Mostly BMW's but also an F430 Scud and a 996 GT3 (more on those in a moment).

My FiST is slightly modified. I have a Cobb Stage 1 tune (93 octane), Poterfield R4 pads, SS lines, and Motul 600 fluid. I also had OZ Ultraleggera 15" wheels w/ 205 Nitto NT01's. I ran the car in sport mode saturday and full traction control off sunday.

So first the good...
The car was a hoot for the sole reason of here's this little 1.6L Ford running down a fair few number of cars out on the track. I passed the GT3 a few times and held off the F430 Scud for about 6 laps. Summit is a pretty technical course that rewards drivers over horsepower which is the only reason I stood a chance.

The torque was great out of corners and I really was about to pull away.

Body roll wasn't bad. I was expecting it to be much worse but it corners pretty flat. The seats were awesome. The steering feel was pretty good. And the grip was pretty good thanks to the tires.

Now the not-so-good...
The car is pretty unstable under high-speed braking and also does some odd things at turn-in (namely fighting and wanting to dart away from the direction of turning). Coming down the main straight from about 115mph the car twitches...a lot. And then (for those that know Summit or pull a map) between turns 2 and 3 it twitches so much that on one lap I dropped 2 wheels off and then went 4 off. No biggie, just cut some grass, but still not a great tendency.

Part of it is me trying to correct it (the squirm) and also the short wheel base, but I had 1 instructor and 1 racer drive it and both thought it was fun but not a good track car. For the reasons noted.

Generally the brakes aren't 100% up to task. I boiled the Motul on one session to the point where there was fluid in the engine bay and the brakes were smoking. It was when I was using the sport mode so I suspect the traction control was working the calipers without my input because once I turned the traction control off I didn't experience any more boil-offs like that. I also melted a brake piston seal and the calipers look pretty smoked.

Maybe someone can chime in here and tell me they've had this issue, and even better they know a fix. It's almost like the car moves the bias to the rear for a moment then sends it forward. Or maybe it's a combo of the Nittos and the race brakes up front.

A lot of this is just me debriefing and I tend to pick on the cons more than the pros. For what the car is and what it cost and what it "should" be able to do it really made a good showing and I got a lot of props.

So hopefully people get something from this. And hopefully someone can comment on the squirm and how they may have resolved it.