Roadster at Calabogie Motorsports

Although it's my favourite race track, and the Tesla Roadster was what got me into motorsports, I had never run the Roadster at Calabogie Motorsports Park before. That's because they don't have charging available. Shannonville does but CMP is a much more exciting and beautiful track.

Two things conspired to change that. The first is that my trusty S2000 track car blew its engine on Sunday (those darn ICEs). The second is that one of the other Motorsport Club of Ottawa members got himself a Tesla Model S, and has a summer place a few kilometers from the track. Although he only has 30 amps available, that was enough for a two session evening lapping event! And getting home again afterwards...

CMP is a great facility. It has a 5 km track with 20 turns, many of which are blind. There are all kinds of elevation changes, tight corners, long sweepers, straights, etc. Plus modern facilities and a beautiful forest setting.

Here are a few laps.


Of course the power starts backing down because the motor is getting hot, so the first few laps were the most fun. But the Roadster performed very well. I was surprised at how balanced the car felt, especially since I am used to an S2000 which has superb handling.

Here's the data from my Tesla Graphical Log Parser.



You can see how the motor heats up pretty quickly. I pulled into the pits for a bit to let it cool down, but even with the upgraded fans it cools down more slowly than it heats up. That's the limiting factor for performance on the Roadster.

Similar. I've pushed the Honda harder than I was willing to push the Roadster, yet I easily achived a comparable lap time. My feeling is if I were to push just as hard I would be faster in the Roadster.

He has a Radical. He's not really interested in running anything else at the track - anything else is slow in comparison.

i've had my S out to Shannonville. That was fun, handling is pretty impressive especially for such a large car, but it pulls back on the power much faster than the Roadster does.