Anyone had their Model S on track at Mosport or Calabogie?

I'm an avid track enthusiast, and I knew when buying my Model S that I wouldn't be able to do lapping days with it due to the heat generation in the batteries from constant high output. I'm just wondering if any of you have had your cars out on track for one or two laps to see what they were capable of? I'll be racing at both of these tracks this summer, but was hoping to maybe put the P85D to the test during open lapping before race activities begin to see what kind of lap times I could lay down in short order.

My second question would be about charging at Calabogie, the track operators are very nice and would probably be ok with allowing one to re-charge, but has anyone plugged in to re-charge around the track, if so what kind of connection were you able to use? (I'm less concerned about Mosport since it's not so far from the Lawrence SC if I can't find any power better than 120V at the track).

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As soon as I posted, I saw several similar posts recommended. I'll do my reading now, sorry if this was already answered, my searching has failed me.

Doug - thanks for the links, since posting I had found the bottom 2 but not the Ottawa Area thread, all good reading.

I see both of you mentioned ChumpCar in the Ottawa Area Motorsports thread. I'm an active participant in Chumpcar, I run with the Mopar 4 Life Neon (flat black). Which Neon were you guys running in? Unfortunately the September Calabogie event was our first DNF in over a year, pressure plate cracked and we did want to risk continuing since if it exploded it could have caused some serious injury.

Here's a short video from the first restart of the race, about 30mins in IIRC, I was just catching up to the back of the field when it went full course yellow:

We'll be out at Mosport for the first event of 2015 on April 18-19.

I'll be up for some TMP evening lapping and perhaps a pull down the drag strip this summer.

mnx said:

Awesome. We havent campaigned our neon in chumpcar yet. Our plan was Sept, then April at CTMP and now were just waiting for the right time. My wife and I just had twins and my co-driver is between careers. However we are planning to watch the race on April 18th.

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Awesome, drop by our pits and say hi at CTMP! If you volunteer at the event, you can earn Chump Change which can help offset future entry fees!

Doug if you have any questions about how we've prepared the Neon we're pretty open book with the other Neon teams. As an aside we consider the front wheel bearings to be wear items and replace them after about 28hrs of race time (every couple of race weekends). We've shortened our stock springs so we ensure anytime the car has been jacked up, that the springs are properly seated before lowering the car. Sound like maybe the we've gone through the same growing pains?

The biggest tip I can give is to spend the money to freshen up old tired parts like bushings, bearings, etc now and spend more time on track later. You're probably burning as much entry fee sitting in the paddock fixing the car vs spending a bit more and doing it right but at least you get your full money's worth on your entry fee.

Also for the engine, the 2.4L from the PT, Stratus and others has been good to us.

Doug_G said:

Yeah we already bought a bunch of extra bearings. Good tip on the springs - gotta keep an eye on them.

The previous owners kept having the engine blow up on them, so our main goal was to make sure the engine was reliable. That part worked... and the car taught us the problems with the springs and bearings. As you say, same car, same growing pains. Anything else you want to warn us about? :biggrin:

We have a spare 2.0L, but are talking about maybe going to a 2.4L. We have lots of points to spare - I was joking that they should give us bonus laps instead of penalty laps. We'll probably run the current engine for a bit. I do think it would be rather more fun if the car was reasonably competitive.

When I'm not chumping, I run a 2005 Corvette C6. It's just a wee bit faster than the chumpcar. Ironically it was the Roadster that got me hooked on motorsports.

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Steve on our team can talk for hours about the Neons, he's really the best resource to talk to and when I was talking with him yesterday he said he had spoken with you guys at Bogie after the spring incident. I know one of our team members who is a master mechanic at a Dodge Dealership is a real believer in OEM quality parts. So you won't ever see a cheap chinese bushing, bearing or other part on our Neon.

My background is Mazda's, before I ran with Mopar 4 Life for the last 2 seasons, I was part of another team and we built a probe (same chassis as a MX-6). If anyone's looking to get in to ChumpCar, the Probe is available for sale, my original team just got to different places in life and couldn't keep racing with kids and such.

Hugh Mannity said:

Nice vid! That neon hauls ass, nice man!

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Thanks, it's a ton of fun. Biggest modification = weight removal! We figure it's down to 1700-1800lbs.

We run the cryo rotors and they last over a year (doing at least 5 weekends per year), so a bit more up front cost but in the long run saves us money!

mnx said:

Good luck tomorrow! Hopefully see you in the pits. What's your name btw? Or should I just ask for the guy who has a Tesla?

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Thanks for dropping by and saying hi, it was good to meet a fellow Tesla owner! I'm Brian as you probably figured out, but I'm horrible with names (what was yours again?), especially for very brief introductions. The whole weekend was a bit of a whirlwind and bitter sweet. Sorry if I was distracted, definitely had a lot going on.

This was our first weekend as a 2 car team, and it was bitter sweet. Our #4 Neon was dead-beat reliable like normal, we ended up in second place overall both days, and won our class both days. Our second car, which saw its debut was the #24 PT Cruiser Pickup. It started out strong, we were running in 3rd place overall after 5 hrs, when rod #4 let go in specatular fashion racing up the back straight.

We'll be back out next month at Watkins Glen with the PT Cruiser rebuilt and ready to go!

Photo Credit to Dave St. Louis and RaceCanada.ca

Mosport is a fantastic facility (lots of improvements over the last 3 or so years), and it's great having the fastest track in NA (based on avg speed) in our backyard.

On Saturday, the Green V6 swapped MR2 that is in the last picture I posted beat us by 2.142s after 7hrs. On Sunday, a 240sx with a Lexus V8 swap took 1st.

Definitely a lot of learning over time has helped teams get to where they are now. The Neon definitely has a lot of battle scars from the years, we just keep covering them up with flat black paint!

Ouch... not sure your mileage but good thing these things have good drive train warranties!

Thanks for your efforts on the Calabogie front!