Finally got the car back into shape and hit up 2 track days almost consecutively. Buttonwillow CW13 and Autoclub Speedway Roval for mazfest. My times improved drastically with the new tires, and a little bit of more driving experience i’d like to think, i managed to knock down 9 seconds from my previous best laps on both of the tracks. Landing me a 2:17 on buttonwillow and a 2:09 on autoclub speedway (yes i know i can still use more work). The RS3s were great, intially they felt a little bit sloppy because of the softer sidewalls, but as they heated they gripped exceptionally. Also raising the car a little bit from its previous height helped the bumpstops to engage less often and made the car more predicatable going from neutral to slight oversteer at track out.

The radiator broke, probably due to tracking the car at high ambient temps, and also the high mileage of the car (over 100k miles, bye bye warranties). The plan is to replace it with a mazdaspeed competition radiator and replace all the stock rubber hoses with SAMCO silicon pieces. Also a new set of brake rotors and brake pads are in the near future.

some random photos