Before I get started, I realized I didn't set any expectations for this blog of mine in my first post. My plan is to get these out on a weekly basis, every Tuesday! Also, the first post didn't allow comments. This one should if you are subscribed, and I encourage you to share your thoughts!
Things don't always go according to plan; That's just life. In motor sports, things rarely go according to plan. The past few weeks of March have been beautiful, and sunny. I've been taking frequent walks, and even took the opportunity to eat lunch on my balcony. But of course, the second I add "Spring Maintenance" to my calendar, we get hit with a surprise ice storm and over 30 cm of snow. I had planned on documenting my maintenance, and cracking jokes about exploiting your neighbours' mechanical abilities. Since none of that happened, I think I'll take a moment to reflect on where I came from.
"It all started when I was a child..."
Seriously though, I've liked cars as long as I can remember. But my addiction to track days and grass roots motor sports really started in 2022. So what did I do with my automotive interests leading up to my debut Ontario Time Attack (OTA) season? Well, nothing. My attraction to fast cars and my interest in becoming a mechanic at a young age were quickly shot down by my immediate family as being "hard work." In fact, anything automotive related felt like it was taboo in my household, for reasons I couldn't understand at my age.
Instead I played video games, I played guitar, and I played tennis. I don't want to go in depth in to each of these because I don't think it's really relevant to the subject matter I want to post on here. If you have an interest in it, though, head over the Contact Us page and I might let you buy me a beer.
Fast forward to 2019 (I think) and I finally bought my first performance car. This is the part where I tell you I saved up hundreds of thousands of dollars by grinding and that my first car is a Porsche Carrera Gt4. Well it wasn't. It was a 2014 Ford Focus ST, and it was a piece of s@#$. But I loved it. I used to tell people it had "first car vibes" despite it being my fourth car. But it was the first one that I bought without help, or input from family or friends. I bought it because I wanted it.
I could write an entire post about that car, and what it taught me. Which I might do. But not today. let's skip to the racing part.
I don't need to remind anyone what happened in 2020. All you need to know was that a little known hobby called Sim Racing started to gain a lot of traction. I got in to it, and I got good at it. I wanted more. I knew a guy who was operating his own sim racing peripheral store in Ottawa who was also in to grassroots racing. I reached out and asked him "How does a sim racing enthusiast like me get in to racing for real?" He sent me a link to Ontario Time Attack and said "This is where you start." And start I did.
At the time I didn't know much about motor sports, so I took to my local Focus ST Facebook group to try to make the car more track capable. If there is any one thing I regret in my journey, it was that. It's very easy to get caught up with other people's opinions on your build, especially if you're new. This is something I want to unpack in detail, but also something that deserves its own entry.
Long story short, the car spent about as much time on jack stands as it did on the track. That didn't matter, though, because I was there. I had jumped over the first hurdle of motor sports simply by showing up.
I want to be clear that I don't regret a single track side problem I had with that car. Because if the car had been perfect, I wouldn't have been so exposed to the amazingly supportive community surround Ontario Time Attack. The minute you have some semblance of a problem, people in the community won't even think twice about dropping everything they're doing, and coming over to do whatever they can to get you back on track.
From there, though, I did something that I still regret to this day. I regret ever thinking that the car was the problem. I had done many of the things the forum experts had told me to do, making the car more and more problematic. After running in to an Ontario Time Attack organizer at Shannonville Motorsports Park and talking about OTA rules (a topic so complex I may never write about it.) I came to the conclusion that I should uninstall my COBB access port and off-the-shelf flash tune. A mod coveted by the Focus and Fiesta ST community, surely removal of such a mod would be blasphemy?
Nay
The car was incredible. It not longer wanted to constantly overwhelm it's own driver assists. It no longer weaved like a salmon swimming up stream at wide open throttle. The car was so much more driveable, and it drove beautifully.
Unfortunately though, that was my last track day with my beloved Focus. Not even a week later, at the OTA lapping school (An incredible HPDE event by the way, check out the website or send me an email for more details on that.) The neglect of the previous owner, and myself, caught up with the car, and the head gasket let go.
The situation presented me with what turned out to be a turning point in my life. I knew I had a taste for motorsports and time attack, and I knew I wanted to keep doing it. I decided I needed a sports car, and since the OTA was right around the corner, I needed one now. This created a false sense of urgency, and caused me to make a financial mistake that still hampers my ability to compete in OTA.
That only matters if you're not measuring your car experiences in smiles per gallon. My bright yellow Subaru BRZ is best car I've ever owned. No mods, no forums, just track time and performance. My second year at OTA was amazing. I did every event, and the car ran from registration to track closure and didn't complain once. I still didn't win anything, and that still didn't matter.
In 2024, I decided to take the year off from competing. The car needed to be built in to something competitive. I needed track time with it, so I could decide what it needed, and what I needed from it. And, of course, I needed to save money. Motorsports is expensive, and looking around at the track, I see a lot of mechanics and technicians who can fund their expensive hobbies by doing all their own work, and work for others to fund their racing addiction.
But what could I do? The best I can do is an oil change, maybe a brake job. Sharing knowledge I've worked hard to gain has always been a passion of mine. I used to lead a community of Elite Dangerous players solely because I took the time to help them learn. So what about instructing? So I pursued the Motorsports Safety Foundation (MSF) certification course for High Performance Driving instruction.
The MSF course might be one of the hardest things I did in my journey to date. On the first day, they went around the zoom call and had everyone introduce themselves, and give an overview of their driving background.
The people I shared that room with had thousands of hours of cumulative track time. Two of which were pro drivers. Then the instructor came to me.
"My name is Dale, and I, uh... I have a lot of sim racing hours!"
I thought to myself "I wonder if it's too late to drop out, clearly I'm not ready for this..."
That weekend, I turned up to the practical test in my BRZ because I'm stubborn and I don't know how to quit. I passed that evaluation with flying colours (mostly yellow) and became a certified coach at Calabogie Motorsports Park having never been to the track before. Calabogie very quickly became my favourite track in Ontario. It's also the closest to me, which helps.
2024 was going great. I had gotten my coaching certification, I was picking up regular students at Calabogie Motorsports Park, and even branching out to other clubs. A lot of clubs won't pay their instructors, but they do offer a free day of lapping if you take a student. It's a great way to get seat time if you're broke like me.
Speaking of broke, 2024 was going great, until very suddenly it wasn't. I did something in the ball park of 10 track days that summer, many of them free or discounted. This was great because I was trying to save money. I am here to tell you that maintenance is not an area to save money. If you know anything about the BRZ platform, then you know where this is going.
At my final track day of the season, at Canadian Tire Motorsports park on the Driver Development Track, the fast banked right hander claimed one of my rod bearings. If you don't know what this means, simply put, the engine was dead. I was devastated. It's important to understand that in motorsports, cars break. It's even more important to understand that there are things we can do to help them break a little less. Please learn from my mistakes!
If you read my last post, then you know that the car is back up and running. The engine was lovingly rebuilt by XIII Motorsports in Brampton. Absolutely amazing experience with their shop. If you're in the area, make sure to pay them a visit. They got me back up and running in a few weeks and the car is even better than it was before. I cannot wait to get back on track.
If you've made it this far down, then clearly I have piqued your interest. If I have, there are three things that I want you to take away from my story so far.
#1 Show up. If you're interested in motor sport, figure out what events are happening in your area and go to them. Even if you're not driving. Get in to the space, talk to the drivers, learn, make friends.
#2 Your car is perfect the way it is. It doesn't need a check list of bolt on mods to be "good" at the track. There are some quality of life mods you should do for track days, which I can get in to in detail in another post. Whatever you drive, take it to the track.
#3 Buy a BRZ. But only if you can afford it.
While writing this post, there were a ton of things that I skimmed over because I didn't want this post to be a novel. If there is something that you want to know more about, let me know in the comments. This will help give me ideas on what to write about during reflection weeks. Thank you for reading!
