Nashua_Night_Hawk

Anyone attended a High Performance Driving Courses in his CLS!

What was your experience discovering the limits of the CLS?

Where and When such events happens?

autoxCLS

Well, at autocrosses, they sometimes have "practice" days where you can get a senior "instructor" ride with you and critique your driving.

I remember at an autocross about 8 months ago, I had a guy come up to me at the end of my run and say that he loved seeing someone push a CL-S though its paces, and would I let him know when I ran again so he could get it on video.

cl-driver

I believe Jsuppi ran his CLS on Texas Motorspeedway. He had pics in the gallery.

Water Rabbit

I took my CL-S to a 3-day High Perfomance Driving Class at Bondurant before doing any modifications. I did some laps on a tight little autocross course and took it to their main track on the last day for about an hour.

These kind of driving schools are incredibly fun and useful, but they are really, really hard on cars. Part of what you're paying for is the pleasure of abusing someone else's car as much as possible while testing the limits. For that reason I spent most of the course in one of Bondurant's Mustangs with only a couple track sessions in mine.

That said, I didn't try to baby my car for the periods it was on the track. I had in mind prior to going that I intended to do brake and tire modifications, among other things, so I wasn't too surprised or pissed off when I totally smoked and warped the brakes on the autocross. The tires were very shrieky and Toyos or 730s would have been more fun but they gripped fairly progresively and I didn't manage to wear them down much at all.

Considering my (and others) experience I'd have to say that the car is underbraked for any sustained high performance driving. So unless you want them to go out in a blaze of glory too, you might want to do your brake mods prior to going to the track.

Otherwise, I thought the car did well against Bondurant's race prepared Mustangs, but Sport Shift is a distinct disadvantage on a track, as you may have guessed.

Only one other guy brought his personal ride on the course during my class - he had a stock Honda S2000 which performed really well I thought.

technoid

Verry informative and well-written. Thanks for the REALITY check. You street racers should realize that a stock CL-S is definitely not "track compliant" -- especially with its hokey Honda rotors!!

gmilian

when i get my cl-s i am going to sears point on a track day.

Rescuer

has anybody ever gone to thunderhill? in CA?

Dan

The Alfa Owners Club hosts schools at Willow Springs Raceway in Roseamond, CA. for those that might be interested. Long sleeve shirt, gloves and a helmet and its "run what you brong"! To enter you have to go through a basic tech inspection sometime before the event. There are garages in the So cal area that do it for the club. A really great organization and they welcome ALL makes to their events. (I was really, really good; not one Alfa joke.)

JSuppi

That's correct I ran my Type S at a John Eagle sponsored event at Texas motor speedway in College Station last winter. It was a great experience, and I even pushed the car so hard on those crappy ass MXV4's that we have on the car I spun out (scariest thing in the world, luckily it was on a safe road course, I would have sh$@ if I had did that on the street). Trying to shrink down the pics and will repost them to another site (rather than my local machine using dyndns) and will post some pics later (Damn I hate Code Red).

-Johnny

PS If you ever get the opportunity to do it, it is worth every single penny and a majority of the time you will have an instructor as enthusiatic about riding with you and will try to help you along the way. I had an instructor that was just kick ass, after I drove in my group he took us out in his NSX Type S (Comptech loaded and supercharged all the way).

twhitted

I ran at Sears Point with a group called Synergy Motorsports. They also run at Thunderhill and ocasionally at Laguna Seca. I haven't run either of those two yet. They go out about once every month or two and you pay $250 to $300 for a full day's worth of track time. They split it into three 20 minute groups per hour, so basically you get 20 minutes per hour all day long.

I LOVED Sear's Point and plan on going to their next event, whenever they announce it. I had new wheels and tires so I didn't have to worry about the stock rubber not holding up. I do agree that the brakes are the weak link.

If anybody is interested in going to one of the events, let me know and I can get a $25 discount off my next track event for referring people.