Help! I'm getting 6.1 mpg in my G sedan !

I had a track weekend scheduled at Thunderhill Raceway in Willows, CA, but my track car had completely inappropriate tires for the expected weather, so I took my trusty old 2003 G sedan. It's bone stock, running on some crappy 300 treadwear Yokohama S.Drive tires, the only upgrade I made was to put in some race brake pads (Ferodo DS2500) which I had lying around for just such an opportunity, and I was already running DBA-4000 rotors. The Ferodo brake pads will work even when the rotor is glowing red hot, and it's a good thing I brought them

The G sedan was completely outclassed on the track by the other cars - lots of Porsche Caymans, 911's, a GT-3, BMW M3's, etc. However, I did manage to put down similar lap times to a few spec Miatas, spec RX-7 and a race prepped Mustang, though I suspect all those guys must have had tires inappropriate for those conditions.

Here's a video of a couple of my better laps from when the track dried out a little bit:
As you may notice, the tires are squealing like pigs in every turn, I was using all the traction available and I had to catch minor slides in most turns. I had to leave the VDC on, since I don't have the LSD in my early 2003, so I needed it to prevent the inner wheel from spinning. The VDC must have some sort of track mode, since it does allow me to get the tail out a fair bit sideways before it intervenes, so in that video, the VDC never tried to stop a slide, but it did throttle me back when the inside wheel was spinning, which is annoying, since it would have been faster full throttle is it just applied the brake to the spinning wheel. My best laps were 2:23 in the dry (for comparison, my best laps in an Elise on R-comps are 2:08), so the family car did amazingly well on a race track! The rest of the weekend was pouring rain, and I did manage to pass some fancy cars, but they were on slicks and I had street tires, so I actually had an advantage over them.

Mechanically, I had no issues. The engine ran great and the temperature gauge never level the middle despite being near redline for 25 minutes at a time. The pedal placement is a little wide, but heel-toe is no problem. The only real damage is that I got my rotors glowing hot so their surfaces are covered with a spiderweb of cracks. If these are surface cracks, they should wear away in a few thousand miles, but if not, I'll need new rotors.

Here's what rotor looks like after 8 track sessions. It's hard to see, but there are three strips of paint on the outside of the rotor which change color once the rotor reaches a given temperature. I burned off the 630˚C (1166˚F) marker, so the rotors got freaking hot. At that temperature, the rotors were glowing for sure.


And here's the old car which did great at a racetrack:

 

Looks like a really fun time!! Glad the old girl held up and did it fairly well!

 

Nice, what is your track car?

 

^Lotus elise

 

The track car is a Lotus Elise. It's not super powerful, but it's light and corners like nothing else that's street legal. I hit maybe 115mph in the Elise by the end of the main straight using its whopping 218HP versus a max of 108 in the G so far (according to GPS). Something powerful like a Z06 will easily get into the 140's before it has to brake for the next turn.

Here's the same track in the dry in an Elise: (The two cars I pass in the video are a modded STi and a Z06 'vette, yay for light weight!)

 

Man that looks like a blast. I've gotta get some track time in on my girl.

 

very nice. and they say our cars cant handle stock lol cant wait to run mine

 

WTB Lotus Exige 2zz Supercharged!