Hey ppl,

I took my Abarth on our local racetrack yesterday (Killarney), and thought I would post a couple of thoughts I had about the car...

Firstly, a map and also some details about the track:


Track length: 3,267Km (2,03mi)
The track has 5 corners, which in order are: Conti, Engen, Shell, Sabat and Vodacom.

The last corner before the main staight (Vodacom) is banked at quite an angle, so even though it is the sharpest corner, it's by no means the slowest.

It was an open day at the track, which means you pay R80.00 (£7) and you get to go out on the track as many times as you like.
The way it worked was that there were only 6 cars on the track at any given time. You start out of the pits in 15 second intervals and then get 5 laps of fun After doing 5 laps you go around the track and enter the pits and fall in the queue of cars waiting to go out again.

Now about the car...

I found that the car handled great for the first 3 laps, then it started to understeer more and more. The warmer the tyres got, the less grip I had... what made it worse was that because the car has ESP, it "helps" you through the corners by individually applying brakes on the 4 wheels... this causes the brakes to overheat and start fading when you really need them.
The brakes got so hot, that halfway through the 5th lap, they would start smoking and hitting the brakes didn't really slow the car down all that much. The vibration was also very bad.

But in saying that, the car is really not so bad around the track. I managed a top speed of 200Km/H (125mpH) down the back straight, and 180Km/H (112mpH) down the main straight.
I went through most corners at over 100Km/H (60mpH), and I found I could keep my foot flat right through the corners. (If I even thought of lifting off the car would oversteer because of the ESP)
I overtook a couple of Golf GTi's (Golf mk3 and mk4), and even thought I could keep up with a BMW M5 (with supercharger) around some of the corners (until the guy had enough of me and put his foot down). I tried to keep up with a Noble m400 coming out of the last corner, but by the time I reached the start/finish line, he was already exiting turn 2
(Man that 3.0 V6 is fast!!!!!)

The most amusing thing about the day was my fuel consumption:
25l/100km or 9.5 mpg

I covered a total of 74Km (46mi) and used 3/4 tank of fuel. I now need new brakes and new tyres... keep in mind my car has only done 14,700Km (9,135mi) ....

But it was worth it and I would go do it again

Here is a photo of the track with Cape Town and table mountain in the background:

You're a brave lad - don't think I'd risk my Abarth like that. Sounds like a lot of fun though if you have a spare Stilo! Shame that you didn't get anyone to video your outing - now that would have been veryinteresting.

It's a very safe track with lots of space to go off if you do make a mistake... and the people that were there yesterday all had one thing in common... they were driving their day to day cars. So nobody tried anything stupid, and everybody followed the rules...
It was a spur of the moment decision to go through to the track... so I didn't really have time to ask anybody to come with and take a vid... will do it next time
One of the other chaps there had a nice idea... he mounted a video camera inside the car and recorded himself that way.

Here is one of the groups of cars I went onto the track with... needless to say the BMWs and the Noble ate me for breakfast!

From front to back:
My Stilo, Noble M400, BMW M3, City Golf (with 2.0L engine), Toyota Corolla RSI, BMW M5 (with supercharger), Honda S2000.

SLOVAC said:

Here is one of the groups of cars I went onto the track with... needless to say the BMWs and the Noble ate me for breakfast!

From front to back:
My Stilo, Noble M400, BMW M3, City Golf (with 2.0L engine), Toyota Corolla RSI, BMW M5 (with supercharger), Honda S2000.

Click to expand...

Looks great Slovac. I think you might find it beneficial to have your Stilo lowered. Looking forward to seeing your next outing.

Looks fun! Nice1

sweet ! makes me want to go on a trackday badly.
tough i thought that the abarth has a bit better brake pads. too bad you cant turn off the esp somehow.

i bet you had loads of fun. you would never see £7 entry over here!!!

Johny said:

sweet ! makes me want to go on a trackday badly.
tough i thought that the abarth has a bit better brake pads. too bad you cant turn off the esp somehow.

Click to expand...

If you guys are going to that sort of thing regularly then you will need to uprate your pads and discs accordingly as well as the suspension.

And get some cooling for the brakes!

Nice circuit and lot's of fun I'm sure!

Cool, i wanna do it! Cheapest ive ever seen a track day here is £99.

You mean to say your Abarth isnt as quick as a Noble?????? I also notice quite a trend for silver cars in that line up

James Abarth said:

Looks great Slovac. I think you might find it beneficial to have your Stilo lowered. Looking forward to seeing your next outing.

Click to expand...

I've considered lowering the car, but I have one problem... I live on a smallholding (small farm) and I have to drive on gravel roads to get to my place.

The road is very bad after heavy rains with huge potholes... so it won't be a good idea to lower my car. I already struggle to get into my driveway after they have scraped the roads

activematt said:

I also notice quite a trend for silver cars in that line up

Click to expand...

Yeah... all the nice cars are silver

SLOVAC said:

I've considered lowering the car, but I have one problem... I live on a smallholding (small farm) and I have to drive on gravel roads to get to my place.

The road is very bad after heavy rains with huge potholes... so it won't be a good idea to lower my car. I already struggle to get into my driveway after they have scraped the roads

Click to expand...

Get our your shovel and rake and get them roads flattened - Or move house.. That one just outside the circuit should do

Not seen track days for much less than quoted above. Maybe people would be less likely to speed if there was an affordable option for track days?

Hellcat said:

Get out your shovel and rake and get them roads flattened - Or move house.. That one just outside the circuit should do

Click to expand...

Are you volunteering to come and help out? I could use an extra pair of hands... wrt moving house: wouldn't give up the country life for anything!

Hellcat said:

Not seen track days for much less than quoted above. Maybe people would be less likely to speed if there was an affordable option for track days?

Click to expand...

That is exactly why they started the track days over here. There used to be lots of illegal street drags and street racing before. It seems to have decreased dramatically since they started having track days.

So does anybody know how one could turn th esp off??? Maybe there's a fuse just for ESP?? maybe a switch can be fitted somewhere???

SLOVAC said:

I've considered lowering the car, but I have one problem... I live on a smallholding (small farm) and I have to drive on gravel roads to get to my place.

The road is very bad after heavy rains with huge potholes... so it won't be a good idea to lower my car. I already struggle to get into my driveway after they have scraped the roads

Click to expand...

Get hydrolics or air bag suspension then mate, then you can raise it up over the bumpy stuff, and slam it down all the other times!

@Slovac - Echoing my friend Ben R - "Get a Strutbrace" that will work wonders with your steering and helps the handling too - even if you can't lower the car. In your case for track use you might well benefit from a rear Strutbrace too. The front one over here is just £60.98 for the Abarth - very simple to fit too.

Hey Slovac, sounds like loads of fun!!!

Do you know if they do anything like that up here at Kyalami/Zwartkops? I have been around Kyalami and Zwartkops for a couple of launches (Golf 5, Punto, BMW 1) so I would love to go around in the Stilo for comparison!

When I went on the skidpan with the Audi A4 1.8T, there was a button for disabling ESP, but they just used to pull out of a fuse for disabling ABS. I am sure the same could be done in the Stilo for ESP... although it might disable ABS too...