So the other day we had a BEAUTIFUL 77 degree spring day here in Western Washington and I headed down to Pacific Raceways in Kent for an all day lapping event on their new outdoor "go-kart" track.

This was not their full size course but their outdoor go-kart track which was basically a really big auto-x without cones. The fastest I was able to go was a little past 80mph in 3rd gear on the straights. The rest of the course focused on driving ability and nimbleness.

The 3600 pound C55 actually did very, very well on the track. Even with all the torque I'm making it did not spin out once, even with the traction control off. It exhibited a good amount of understeer which was easily corrected into oversteer by just feathering the throttle into the turns. Once I got the nose pointed to where I wanted to go I just let off the gas a bit and the car straigthened out immediately. I'm very happy about the car's neutralness and predictability when it comes to under and oversteering. Also, my brakes did not fade at all during the 15 minute long sessions. As for the transmission, I first ran it in full manual mode and then realized that in the tight turns, I was still too high in 1st gear and had too much torque. So I ran the rest of the day in S mode in 2nd gear since it had plenty of torque (enough for me to drift) around the slow turns and I only hit 3rd gear on the straights.

Things I noticed about my car while at the track.
1. BETTER SPORT SEATS! The seats are comfortable for driving around and twisty roads but for the track my back ended being sore from anticipating turns and using my body to counter the g-forces. I'm 5'8" and about 160 so I'm dying for some thicker side bolsters.
2. Bigger brakes. The stock AMG brakes held up fine, but I could have been a lot faster if I could have braked later into the turns.
3. Understeer. I need to get rid of it!
4. My tires held up pretty well but once they were hot, they became a little greasy at the end of each 15 minute session. There as about an hour inbetween each session and it helped a bit cooling it down but I noticed with a 1 1/2 hour break inbetween runs they gripped a lot better. I'm running 235/40/18F, 275/35/18R in Hankook Ventus evo 12s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REuaQ1zhdP4
(recorded with a 720p camera but it couldn't focus at all...but you can definitely hear my car even across the course when I'm stomping on the gas)

 

Car sound great, always funny to see a 4-door sedan with all those little pocket ricers


side note... that music is annoying as hell!

 

nice too see people using these cars on track, 2 thumps up.

 

great vid. I heard similar feedback on the hankook evo's. Maybe look into some good year F1's, i know tire rack was have a close out on them.

 

Good post-as for bigger brakes...you dont need bigger brakes-you need better/fresh fluid, better pads, and if you havent already SS lines (the AMG rotors are HUGE already!)-
sways for the understeer did wonders for me-I did front and rear-
look into a corbeau 3pt harness-they can be made detachable from your current mounts, and snug up nicely when you're at the track (http://www.corbeau.com/products/harn...harness_belts/)
If you're having a hard time with tires in 15 min-def look at your set up (correct camber/toe) and change to an R comp if needed-I made it 45 min at a highspeed track here in MN-before the brakes went first-
last nit-and its not ment to offend-I've driven alot in HPDE events-take a course-it will help you so much in braking, turning, ect-

 

Yeah the music was annoying...but most of the cars actually were pretty nice. We had a turboed porsche cayman, c6 z06, 2 NSX's, Lotus Exige, 2 e46 m3's, 2 e92 335i's, a 650hp wrx wagon, etc, etc.