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I know the C450 is plenty fast and capable car on the street, but I was wondering if it could be taken to the track. I did some research and yeah, some people took their C43s there and it seemed fine, but I ultimately there wasn't a lot of info.
The track that I took my car to was VIMC, short for Vancouver Island Motorsports Circuit (https://islandmotorsportcircuit.com/). It's a short, technical, track with 19 turns and a quite a bit of elevation changes; so I don't think it's the most ideal track for the car.
VIMC Track Map
I wanted to know if the car would overheat on track (like some other Turbo cars, such as the older Civic Type-Rs (FK8)). If it could handle the heat, perhaps I would spend some money to mod it (ie. tires, wheels & camber kit, along with a more track oriented alignment, to start). The car is completely stock right now, I had been looking for use stickier tires/wheels on FB Marketplace & CL, but nothing came up, so I drove the car on stock runflats.
So, what's the conclusion? It ended up being a cool day, so temperature was a non-factor. Yes, the tires really sucked. The biggest problem though, was the intrusive Traction Control, even though it was switched "off", it wasn't fully off. There was one particular increasing radius, sharp, uphill corner where it was particularly bad. The first few laps, I thought it was the gearing, so I decided to shift up a little earlier, but nope, same thing. The car would rev up, no go anywhere, then suddenly it would drop into gear.
I decided to experiment, I put the car into Dyno mode and drove the course again. Boom, no more, TC kicking in; however Dynomode also meant no ABS and I'm probably not smooth enough of a driver and so I don't want to lose that feature. With the ABS off, I couldn't trail brake properly, the car wanted to oversteer all the time! So Dynomode may be good for drifting, but not so much for track driving. I believe the newer C43s have a Track mode, unfortunately my car does not. My conclusion is that I won't spend too much money on this car, at some point I will likely look for another sedan to take to the track, but for now I will just enjoy it as a daily cruiser and maybe take it out on some backroad runs; but I won't bring it back to the track.
The best thing about taking this car to the track though, the pictures!
08-08-2023, 03:40 AM
The biggest problem though, was the intrusive Traction Control, even though it was switched "off", it wasn't fully off. There was one particular increasing radius, sharp, uphill corner where it was particularly bad. The first few laps, I thought it was the gearing, so I decided to shift up a little earlier, but nope, same thing. The car would rev up, no go anywhere, then suddenly it would drop into gear.
With the ABS off, I couldn't trail brake properly, the car wanted to oversteer all the time! So Dynomode may be good for drifting, but not so much for track driving. I believe the newer C43s have a Track mode, unfortunately my car does not. My conclusion is that I won't spend too much money on this car, at some point I will likely look for another sedan to take to the track, but for now I will just enjoy it as a daily cruiser and maybe take it out on some backroad runs; but I won't bring it back to the track.
