You say that as if companies weren't pushing over the air firmware updates these days

But how can I complain about corporate greed then?

Ah but that one isn't your own it's shared

Looks like something straight out of a fallout game

And then there's the argentinian ants just chilling

Hey that's awesome! Hope he finds his way into a racing team and fulfills his dreams!

And yeah I suggested you test the Miata first because I'd believe there's a big difference going from a Vette to a Miata in terms of power haha

I live in Argentina so you probably won't know the car or the track but the car is a 2008 Gol Power 1.6(current picture the car rides 4cm higher in stock form) and the track is the N°6 circuit with the slide of the Gálvez speedway in Buenos Aires

The car is basically the south American version of the golf 3 but with a very old inline 4 1.6L 8V engine that they tuned up from the factory over the years and the different redesigns to have multi point injection and 97 HP (but it's all on the top end since it's an 8 valve engine).

The car was bone stock (I still have to go again but I've been upgrading the suspension and rigidity of the car while keeping it as a daily) with cheap oil shocks and tired springs so it was a wild ride around the corners, I would literally fall off my seat on the tighter ones if I tried to do anything but hold the wheel and drive with one foot. I was not fast at all (although I almost beat some cars with double the HP because it was an amateur event) and because of that it was very difficult to set a good lap time since I think I only got two or three laps in the entire event where I didn't have to slow down to let someone pass me. Still managed to do a 2:40:539:

The fun part was a lot of people would approach me in the boxes and congratulate me for having the balls to go so hard at it with a bone stock econo hatchback from south America, it was really touching I had so much fun that day.

The go pro memory's card was on the fritz so I don't have the video of my personal best but here's the one lap that it did record entirely

As you might notice I never quite nailed the braking distances (I usually just engine break everywhere and only use the brakes the last few meters so I really didn't have a feel of how hard I could brake and how much distance I needed for it) and there's no heel and toe at all because the car has a weird pedal layout (because of the position of the steering components the pedals and steering wheel are actually slightly towards the center console rather than straight in front of you) and the only way to heel and toe it is to use the sides of your feet which I found out it's actually rather difficult, specially if you didn't set the pedal height to accommodate for it.

Either way I'm sure a good/pro driver could get 10 or even 15 seconds out of that lap time even with the car in that condition

I've driven the top trim Audi A5 Sportback with the big engine at full throttle trough a reduced version of the track when I did a driving course and let me tell you I actually had way more fun on my crappy car than I did on the Audi, it might sound stupid but having no traction control, no ABS, a mechanical throttle, poor sound proofing and a very light car makes for a way more raw and thrilling track experience even if you're going way slower

Anyways, I assume you've been all over forums looking up what upgrades to make to the car but cheap and easy for helping with the brakes is changing all the brake fluid (as in making sure to drain all the old liquid out of the lines) for new competition liquid and for a car like yours buying race pads and putting them on only for the trackday and putting the street ones back on when you're done. That way you can have really aggressive pads on the track that require a lot of heat to work and then just daily the car with the regular ones afterwards, changing pads isn't that hard you can do it in the boxes before the event starts if you want.

Also really sticky tires make a ton of difference but I'm assuming you already know that

I do think having a dedicated track car is the way to go if you actually want to compete (I just wanted to have the experience of going full send in a cheap car, grew up watching MCM on YouTube) but as you've said racing ain't cheap so it's up to you to do the math. Reality is if you can tow a trailer you can do things to a track car that simply won't fly for a street a car that probably make a huge difference but that's way out of my knowledge lol

I trained a ton in asseto Corsa before my first track day and while I had to adjust to my own car in the track (since it doesn't exist even as a mod for the game) I found that it was a lot easier to nail the corners in real life because you can feel the g forces and get a better feeling of where the car is going. Did you feel the same?

My car is fairly slow and we'd only do 3-4 hot laps tops each session and it's also a very light car so I didn't have to deal with brake fade (frankly I struggled to brake hard enough since I'm so used to being smooth when driving as well)

And of course I also had the same thought you did about there being no way I could go as hard as I did throughout the day without going into the grass if I hadn't trained in the sim (and gone into the grass multiple times in there)

Yes, to be fair they did the same with the new years party, they'd do a collection between the employees to hire a place

Mind you there were around 300 employees in the company this is not a mom and pop shop we're talking about

Except when corrupt officials just pocket the money and invest nothing into infrastructure

Monopolys aren't good either but living in a third world country I can tell you you can find worse problems with state controlled systems than with private companies that at least have to keep you as a client somehow

Easy to say living in a first world country

You need some sort of stool to step into with the leg you're trying to wash, makes a huge difference