Track days

[manojkoushik]

Hey all, wondering if anyone has taken their taycan to the track yet.
How was your experience?
Who did you go through for the track day?
Which track?

I am hoping I get some recommendations so I can sign up. LaganaSeca would be awesome.

I have a 4s and am itching to test it out

Cheers,
Manoj

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[Kingske]

Hey all, wondering if anyone has taken their taycan to the track yet.
How was your experience?
Who did you go through for the track day?
Which track?

I am hoping I get some recommendations so I can sign up. LaganaSeca would be awesome.

I have a 4s and am itching to test it out

Cheers,
Manoj

If you search this forum you will find @daveo4EV ’s excellent description of his track experience at Laguna Seca.

 

[manojkoushik]

If you search this forum you will find @daveo4EV ’s excellent description of his track experience at Laguna Seca.

this one, right?
https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/t...d-on-driving-lap-data-impressions-added.2923/

 

[Kingske]

this one, right?
https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/t...d-on-driving-lap-data-impressions-added.2923/

Yep

 

[daveo4EV]

thunderhill would be a better gig - better fast charging closer to the track than laguna - it’s hard to track an EV given consumption and lack of fast charging at the track - Taycan does well for a 5,100 lbs 4 door sedan - but it also overheats the battery after about 5 to 7 full pace laps and then you’re down on power until you come in and let the battery cool.

all in all the car’s dyanmics are great - acceleration, braking, handling, cornering - but like all EVs I’ve tested on track it lacks the stamina to run a full 25 minute track day session - and the tracks lack the necessary infrastructure to let you run the car all day - consumption is in excess of 50% battery for like 15 min of full pace lapping…

you can PM me if you’d like to talk further - I’ve been tracking for 10 years - and tracked: Model S, Model 3 performance, Chevy Bolt, GT3’s, CupCars, Lotus, Mustanges, Corvettes, Ferrari’s - super fun and it’s a hoot

but your average track day has 5 20 minute sessions and you’ll be lucky to participate for more than 15 minutes in 3 of the 5 sessions given consumption and lack of near by fast charging.

i.e. it possible, but a lot of work and you really really got wanna do it.

 

[manojkoushik]

Thanks Dave! I have been going through that other thread and is very informative and detailed!! Tank refill dynamics and thermal dynamics seem to be the limiting factors.


I will pm you.

 

[JacobDK]

Here (Denmark) we have just had confirmation that a 400 kW charger is being setup at one of our (few) racetracks. I guess it’s coming to all tracks at some time soon.

 

[NC_Taycan]

I just found out that electric vehicles are not permitted at track days at Charlotte Motor Speedway. WTF - get with the modern era folks. I'd get it - I wouldn't want to be in a GT3 stuck behind a Leaf, but a Taycan, Model 3 Performance, any other track-capable EV should be fine. If the worry is fire, I'd look at the stats of modern EVs catching fire vs. ICE vehicles... Just require a tow hook installed to easily remove a vehicle that craps out (this should be a requirement on ICE cars as well).

 

[daveo4EV]

yeah this is a thing for track safety organizations - the issue appears to be that it’s not the frequency with which EV’s catch fire - it is that _IF_ they catch fire (which they can do when wrecked) the track side safety crews are not trained nor do they have the equipment to deal with battery fires whice are notoriously tricky beasts even for properly trained fire crews with the right equipment…

EV’s do not catch fire as often as ICE’s that’s a fact, but it’s also a fact that once they do catch fire they are very very very difficult to deal with and take a very very long time to be put out - and can remain unsafe for days and it’s difficult to assess when the vehicle is safe and will not catch fire again

some tracks have actually had injuries to safety crew dealing with EV fires after the fire crews said the vehicle was “safe” - they mistakenly thought they had put out the fire - the thing is at a track day you want to clear the track put out the fire and get the track back to usable and do that all in a timely fashion

quite simply you can’t as a track have a car on your track that when it wrecks and catches fire that it could be 1 or 2 days before you can safely remove the vehicle from the track…or even have the track out of comission for 1/2 a day.

BEV’s are tricky to deal with once they’ve caught fire, and it can take several hours to properly deal with them - losing an entire day while the track is shutdown waiting for the battery electric vehicle to burn itself out…

BEV’s represent a real and legit risk to tracks and are somewhat intractible once they’ve caught fire - ICE’s catch fire more easily, but are also dealt with more quicklly and with simpler tools and easier fire management techinques - I’ve seen a car wreck, catch fire, and have the track open again less than 30 minutes later - that is _NOT_ the case for BEV’s if they’ve caught fire.

I don’t think EV’s are good track vehicles and I don’t think we should be trying to track them - they are good at what they do (daily drivers and occassional road trips) - but there are a LOT of downsides to them in a track situation

I don’t fully support what this track is doing, but they have a point and BEV’s are NOT ready to be track cars - they have legitimate safety concerns about when a BEV does catch fire - and it’s not really practical to track an EV anyways....BEV’s can exist just fine without this particular application

it’s shame, but not entirely unfounded.

 

[daveo4EV]

the EV fire concern with track is _NOT_ the frequency/risk of fire with BEV’s - which is statistically lower than ICE vehicles - is however what the impact is to the track when there _IS_ a BEV fire, and once a BEV has caught fire it’s a royal pain and very time consuming to deal with…

yeah they catch fire less - but when they do catch fire it gonna take a long time to clean up.

 

[daveo4EV]

I would imamge this particular track has had some BEV fires and learned first hand how long a delay a BEV fire can cause and that leads to irrate customers and potential lost revenue to the track if it takes too long to safely clear a BEV vehicle on fire.

not to mention that BEV’s also have a number of particular toxic risks when the LiON cells are pop’ing off - it’s a whole new thing with a whole bunch of new procedures and it is in some ways worse than an ICE fire - it’s certainly more of a time sink than and ICE fire - and LiON batteries that have been breached and are on fire present a particularly nasty set of toxicity problems for safe handling…

 

[daveo4EV]

BEV fires are far less frequent but also far greater impact and the collateral damage is high and the time to deal with them is far greater…and time is money = more time = more money to deal with a BEV fire…

I for one would be quite pissed as an EV owner if I lost an entire afternoon cause a TEsla Model 3 hit a wall and caught fire - so one Tesla Model 3 catching fire can cause the other 119 vehicles at the track day to lose the entire day - and the safety and fire crews are at increased risk to deal with this paritcular type of fire...

it’s like the calculas for Nuclear power plants - very low risk statistically for an incident if they are designed and managed correctly - but very very high impact _IF_ there is an incident…one may decide that even though the frequency is low, the impact is high, too high, so let’s not do that at all.

not all risk management is based on frequency of the “event” - it also has to consider the cost/complexity of a low frequncy event that can still happen.

and BEV’s are low frequency but very high impact for a fire - I’m going to suggest the track has decided the impact cost is sufficiently large that they want the frequency to be zero probably - which if you ban BEV’s you will never have to deal with an on track fire for a wrecked BEV - frequency be dammed

Also BEV’s are only lower frequency for fire stats for non-accident based fires (most ICE fires are NOT accident related, they are age/maintenance/part-failure related) -BEV fires are about the same or slightly higher for actual physical accidents for which BEV’s are involved - physical injury/death is less for BEV fires cause they are a slow burn and easy to escape from - and the only type of incident at a track _IS_ a physical damage incident - so the fire frequency for a BEV is actually equal or higher in that context, and we’ve already established that the impact of a BEV vehicle fire is much high and much more time costly…

I’d love to dig into some actual statistics - and given that I’ve never been to a track event in 10 year that didn’t have at least 1 car go home on a flatbed - it may be a reasonable policy and other tracks may follow suit - this will place pressure on the BEV industry to address this short coming of BEV’s - gas car fires also used to be higher impact, but over the years gas cars have safety changes made to them to make fires less devistating and lower frequency (gas flow cut off are now standard where they used to not be)

If we want BEV’s to reach parity with gasoline vehicles we have to make them better to deal with when they are in pieces as well as when they are fully assembled - it will take time for all of this to happen…in the mean time some tracks may decide they are not willing to deal with ANY BEV fires because they are such a pain in the ass - just like most tracks do not allow ICE vehicles on track that don’t have fuel safety systems…and it used to be the case that not all gas cars had fuel safety systems.

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