First track day in my car coming up

Any TT AUDI guys out there?

I got my first hpde coming up .

very excited.

just wondering if anyone has any advice for tracking one of these things?

225 tt mk1

lots of mods. 280bhp. Street tires.

Street tires wear rapidly, especially on camber limited nose heavy cars, when pushed for a long time.  Watch your outer tread blocks after your first session and be prepared to rotate your tires around to put the least damaged tires on the most damaged corners.

I saw a late 80s GTI destroy a left front tire in one session at Nelson Ledges, which I joke only has a couple left corners so they could add more high speed right corners to it.  The outer tread blocks looked like they had been boiled.  Quite possibly a worst case example, as the track in that kind of car is more or less WOT (maintenance throttle at 80-90mph!) at high cornering loads for about a minute and a half per lap.

First HPDE in general, or first HPDE?

Either way, keep an eye on wear items like the tires (as Pete mentioned), oil level and oil and coolant temps.

Oh, and take a torque wrench and check the wheel nuts between sessions.

At the recent TNIA they had a handout from TireRack about how high to inflate tires for track days. I'd look it up

Take your time in the first session; run the car 75% and then check everything over.

If the brakes and tires seem good run it up to 90% in the next session.

After that have fun.

As someone else asked, first event ever? If so I have maybe one other relevant tip if your goal is to get good and drive with good form:
Don't run it as hard as you can, don't try to "win." Try to stay beneath your car's limit and work on finding the line and then getting better and then add speed. That whole "smooth is fast" bit that I'm awful at. A prob of mine is I get out so infrequently that I'm hungry to just drive my car at the limit so I GO GO GO. It's its own kind of fun, but it's not leading to improvements. 

In reply to P3PPY :

I suspect your 2nd and 3rd laps of your first session are the fastest..........drive them all that way.

You bring up a good point; it's easy to overdrive the car and think you are just nailing it, when in fact you are simply hammering around needlessly.

Monitor your tire pressures and adjust as needed. A bit of white shoe polish on the edge at a few spots will show you how far they are rolling under. Temps and pressures will increase during a session. Your instructor should be able to help guide you on what to do (add or remove air).

We instructors don't care about your mod list or how many laps you've done on the track in i-Racing. We do care about how much you pay attention to what we are telling you. "You won't impress me but you will probably scare me". Be that attentive student I brag to the other instructors about.

It's a real rush being on a race track the first time. It can be intimidating. But it's the safest environment to do what you will be doing. You WILL have fun. And you WILL be exhausted by the end of the day, in a good way.

put in some racing brake fluid.  Motul RBF 600 has always treated me well.

Stay chill.  Remember that you are not competing against others.  You are not commuting to work.  Keep your eyeballs out as far as you can get them at all times.  Use your mirrors.  Did I mention to stay chill?  Have fun.  Red mist is not having fun.

Oh, and riding with an instructor for a few laps or a session can be quite helpful.  I did this on my first track day (Shelby club), and I definitely learned.  The guy pulled a spinner off the (turn 5?) hill at Thunderhill after grabbing a second gear downshift, effectively demonstrating/teaching how you should not do that . . .

Tadope said:

I got my first hpde coming up ....very excited.....lots of mods. 280bhp. Street tires.

Turn the boost down. 

Keep your visor down. 

And when you understeer, and you will, give less input to correct it, instead of more. 

If you have an instructor, listen to your instructor.

Don't overthink anything about your car.  Your street tires and stock brakes will be fine for your first event.

Turn the boost down or short shift.  You don't need power at this point.

The #1 issue we see in first timers is overdriving. Slow in, fast out. Slow in, fast out.  Eyes up, brake straight, turn in late.

Have fun! And listen to your instructor.

Okay!  That's all great advice. 

I'll set the boost to some more manageable levels.  

This is my 2nd event ever.  And my first event in this car, and on this track.

Should be great fun.

My goals are to work towards getting faster and I'll come back for more track days and eventually work towards finding fastest time.

Just completed the track event.

it was so amazing.

met so many cool people, and the experience was awesome.

I must admit that it was much easier than I was expecting.
I got in a minor fender bender the week of, so I had to skip prepping the car for the track and just fix the body damage.
so my alignment was crappy, and my rear was way too low (scrapping tires the whole time). Also didn't get a lot of the performance parts onto the car that I wanted. Plus I had junk unknown chinese brand used tires from 2014 on the car. 

Despite all that it performed admirably!!

This was Sanoma raceway (infineon/searspoint). And I managed a 2:12.  which is pretty slow, but considering my lack of experience, i'm not embarrassed about it

The thing I notice most of all, is how TERRIFYING it is going around high speed corners at the limit. My car is as fast as the 2:00 lap cars in the straights, so those high speed corners really get me going. :-O  
So mainly building confidence I think is my main issue.

Also got to figure out how to add stiffness, without diminishing overall grip.

In reply to Tadope :

Confidence - not overconfidence - is the main cause of good lap times. Car is probably a distant second.

That's great you had fun! Welcome to the slippery slope of going faster. If this is your daily driver try not to lean too far into "racecar" mods and just enjoy how well your car performs. Go ahead and maybe upgrade the brakes and suspension, just be reasonable. If you can set up a good harness system that will help a lot when on track. Once the initial jitters wear off you can begin to learn the limits of your skills and the car's abilities. if you are a good learner, your do this without running into something :). It is pretty amazing how fast you can get some cars through a corner. It also tests your faith in your equipment sometimes. Was this event an HPDE or did you try some sort of competition? My car went from a fairly nice street car to full on racecar in just a few seasons. I miss being able to drive  it on the street anymore, but I also feel much safer on the track pushing it as hard as I do because the car has a cage, race seat, harnesses, etc.  Hope you keep on having fun and trying out different tracks.

In reply to Tadope :

Terrifying is good; it means your less likely to do something stupid and cognizant that bad things can happen.

It's only your second ever so just take your time. 

As for the car get it sorted and set it up to be predictable and easy to drive. I routinely make the comment that "loose is fast" but an edgy set up is NOT for new drivers as it much more difficult to learn in. So again get a super friendly set up in the car.

Finally.........keep having fun.

Right on thnx for the input. 

Next mods I'm looking at are adjustable suspension bits. So I can dial in camber and caster.

Also your harness recommendation is spot on. 

One big thing also is the helmet. 

How do you guys deal with the big ass helmet running into the headrest?  It was super weird having my head pushed forward.

Tadope said:

Right on thnx for the input. 

Next mods I'm looking at are adjustable suspension bits. So I can dial in camber and caster.

Also your harness recommendation is spot on. 

One big thing also is the helmet. 

How do you guys deal with the big ass helmet running into the headrest?  It was super weird having my head pushed forward.

I don't know if it's the same for Audis but on my GTI the headrest can be removed and installed backwards. You can also just lean the seat back a bit more than usual. 

CAinCA said:

Tadope said:

Right on thnx for the input. 

Next mods I'm looking at are adjustable suspension bits. So I can dial in camber and caster.

Also your harness recommendation is spot on. 

One big thing also is the helmet. 

How do you guys deal with the big ass helmet running into the headrest?  It was super weird having my head pushed forward.

I don't know if it's the same for Audis but on my GTI the headrest can be removed and installed backwards. You can also just lean the seat back a bit more than usual. 

oh, I have fiberglass pole position non reclining buckets

In reply to Tadope :

In my Datsun the HANS Device kind of does this. I drive with my head down anyway so after two corners I no longer notice.

What helmet do you have?

Keep in mind several sanctioning body's require a hans device and a proper race seat once a harness is used. 

In addition to the safety equipment cooling is important on track.  Keeping oil, water, differentials etc... temperatures in a safe operating range becomes important.  Legit oil and water temperature gauges are a good 1st step.

Congrats on having fun--Sonoma is a great track.  What's funny is that so many guys/girls who regularly do all of the NorCal tracks usually hold Sonoma as the favorite, not Laguna Seca; I definitely concur.  Anyhoo . . .

The idea of adding stiffness rather than grip is weird.  This is something that autocross could effectively demonstrate the opposite of, as some of the best handling cars (watch a new Corvette autocross) in the world offer great articulation and a bit of roll, but tons of grip.  It took me about 30 years to appreciate this, but it's definitely a thing.  One can have a nice ride and amazing abilities.  Even pro drifters want grip.