O.K. here's the good, the bad, and the ugly (not too much ugly!).
Aired the tires to 38 square before I left the house. 40 minute drive to the track. Car sat for at least an hour and a half before my first runs. (There were three groups with probably more than 15 but less than 20 in each group.)
Before I left the house I finally located a piece of chalk to mark the tires at the track, but (here's the ugly, if you can call it that) when I was cleaning up the car a little bit the day before I, for the first time since I bought the car, sprayed a little tire shine on the tires. Of course, when I tried to put the chalk on at the track I got nothing. But I DID notice that the tire shine went above the sidewall on to the curve of the tread, So I figured I would just use that as a guide. And it worked! (More on that below)
First run in Sport mode: 43+ seconds
Second run in Performance mode: 43+ seconds
Third Run in Performance mode with Traction Control OFF: 40.8 seconds
A friend of mine was there running his 2016 Ford Focus RS. He was in the first group and I was in the second. So while the third group was running I offered to take some video of him doing his runs if he would shoot me doing mine and he agreed. So I showed him how to use the camera (Canon SX280 with a huge zoom). It was while I was talking to him I remembered that I hadn't checked the tires. So I went over and looked and the fronts looked perfect! The tire shine was gone right to the edge of the tread to the top of the sidewall. The rears, on the other hand, still had shine on the tread above the sidewall. So I told my friend I was going to let some air out of the rears and then go to my vantage point to shoot his video. Well, I drank some iced tea I'd brought and... completely forgot to air down the rears. Then after shooting the video and they called for group two, I got in line. I was there I realized what I'd done (or NOT done) so I jump out of the car while in line, opened up the emergency key on the fob and let out some air with no gauge or anything. Then I made my runs.
Run One - Perf, TC OFF: 42+ Right from the start I felt like I was sliding all over the place. (It's the first run in the video) When I got back in line I was angry at myself for forgetting to check the tires, what after all my questions on here and everything.
Run Two - Perf, TC OFF: 40.4 So I "chalked up" the first run to the tires being cold... (2nd in vid)
Run Three - Perf, TC OFF: 40.7 (3rd in vid)
When I got back to the pit I put a gauge on the rears to see where they were and the were at 42 pounds (hot).
Then I did my last three runs.
Run One - Perf, TC OFF - 40.3 Best run (for me) of the day. Can't explain doing on "colder" tires as in the first run of the second round except that maybe it wasn't the tires at all and I was just smoother.
Run Two - Perf, TC OFF - 40.8
Run Three - Track Mode, TC and Stability Control OFF and all else for that mode: 44.2
I think with some practice I could get used to Track mode but it IS a different handling beast in that mode. Also, during the event, I "thought" the nannies were kicking in on the big sweeper from right to left on the video, but thinking about it on the way home I started to think that maybe, because I was putting it in second gear (6M) when I got to the first cone after leaving the starting line and just leaving it there, maybe I was hitting the rev limiter! I wish I could go back and try it one more time...
BTW, this was a "low key" event where it is pretty much you against yourself. They don't announce times or anything. But from what I could gather the best times by the REALLY "set-up" cars were in the 35 second range. My friend in the Focus RS finally pulled a high 38 second run on sticky tires. So, all-in-all, I was pretty please with the performance of the SS in stock form on all-season tires. AND I got to drive home in comfort! :grin
Here's a video if you are interested. I think my friend tried to zoom in too much, but he wasn't used to that camera.
