Expert tips to make your track car more reliable

J.G.
By J.G. Pasterjak
Jul 27, 2024 | Toyota, Supra, Toyota Supra, Nürburgring, Rent4Ring | Posted in Features | From the Oct. 2023 issue | Never miss an article

Photography Credit: racetracker.de

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Your track car is no fun in the garage. Sure, maybe you give it a celebratory detail job after a weekend of hard lapping, but the place where you want your track car to excel is on track. And it can’t do that if it’s broken, or acting suspicious, or constantly being a hassle.

Dale Lomas knows what it takes to keep cars on track day after day. He’s one of the principals of Rent4Ring, a track car rental shop located at the world famous Nürburgring Nordschleife. “If my track cars aren’t on track,” he tells us, “I don’t pay my mortgage that month.”

Lomas let us poke around his shop and showed us a few tricks his crew uses to make sure their cars stay on track, safely, lap after lap.

1. Pick the right car.

“This is always a tough decision for individuals because people want to drive what they want to drive,” Lomas explains, “but for us, we need to start with cars that are inherently tough enough to build from.” 

For the Rent4Ring crew, they have another built-in easy button in the form of the Lomas’ institutional knowledge. “Having some experience on the car development side of things,” Lomas continues, “I know that there’s some Easter eggs hiding in the spec sheets. Things like bigger brakes for German market models, or larger radiators for units bound for the Middle East desert.” 

And cooling particularly is a huge factor for the rental vehicles because, let’s be honest, customers are not always great on watching gauges. So Rent4Ring picks cars for their rental fleet with standard or available overkill cooling systems so that’s never a worry.

While not many cars sold stateside have secret Autobahn packages, we do have some available hot-weather and extreme-duty packages as well as a robust aftermarket eager to supply heavy-duty cooling components. Some research up front regarding the available heat mitigation if often time well spent.

A factor that significantly contributes to that heat: horsepower. One of the byproducts of big power is big heat, and the more power an engine makes, the more heat you’ll need to manage. 


The battle starts with choosing the right car. Rent4Ring is transitioning to a fleet of Minis and four-cylinder Supras based on research that shows both cars “overcapable” for track use thanks to lots of cooling and brakes plus understressed engines. Photography Credits: J.G. Pasterjak

At some point, you may need to ask yourself what you’re really looking for: Do you want a 250-horsepower car that can run all day or a 450-horsepower car that needs to take a break every few laps? 

Learning what breaks and how to fix it are also key to picking the right car. “Unless there’s an incident, we hardly ever needed to replace hubs on our BMW 1 Series,” Lomas points out. “But we do need to replace driveshaft couplers regularly, but they’re inexpensive and easy to do in a few minutes during regular maintenance.” 

Are you looking at a car that requires a specialized part or service on the reg? Or with a known weak link that’s difficult or expensive to replace? Those costs could easily suck up money you’d rather use for entry fees.

2. Use the right parts.

“Cheap parts are a false economy,” explains Lomas, a firm adherent to the “buy once, cry once” mindset. “We use what are pretty much the most expensive brake pads you can buy, which are Endless MA45Bs at nearly €1000 a set, but we ultimately spend less in the long run because they last so long and perform brilliantly the whole way.” 

The Rent4Ring fleet cars can easily see 1000-plus hard laps a year­—over 13,000 miles—at the hands of drivers of all skill levels, yet each car will typically only need a set of fresh pads every 1000-1500 track miles. 

In addition to the performance aspect of the good pads, there’s the insurance benefits. “Those €1000 pads seem cheap when they keep your car out of the wall where cheaper pads would have failed,” Lomas adds.


Rent4Ring’s Dale Lomas credits Endless pads with much of the durability of his fleet. Despite the steep initial buy-in, the cost is more than offset with longevity and consistent performance. Photography Credits: J.G. Pasterjak

Rent4Ring also equips its cars with top-notch suspension bits, like coil-overs from Öhlins. They’re durable, serviceable and supported by a strong knowledge base. “Cheap stuff breaks, and when it breaks, it’s disposable,” Lomas says. “Our dampers are built for endurance racing, so they take a lot of abuse, but if someone does manage to tweak one in an incident, there’s a whole industry of folks who can fix it.”

For non-performance parts that might be subject to wear or breakage, Lomas has a simple answer: “OEM, always. And ‘OEM’ means ‘OEM,’ not ‘OEM equivalent’ parts house stuff. 

“Especially for soft bits like mounts and bushings,” he continues, “the OEM stuff is usually worlds better than the aftermarket stuff. And it hurts to walk into that dealership sometimes, but one trip there is better than multiple trips to the aftermarket parts house.”

The “right” parts can also mean track-focused parts that may wear prematurely on the street but thrive under harsh track conditions. For example, most of Rent4Ring’s fleet is equipped with 180-treadwear semi-slick tires designed for track use. They thrive under the constant abuse and repeated heat cycling and, like the brake pads, can last for thousands of miles of lapping. 

3. Maintain obsessively with the highest-quality fluids.

The entire Rent4Ring fleet is on a 5000km fluid change schedule, which for some of their popular cars could mean as much as twice a month. This also means that nearly every day a car is on their lift receiving a fresh supply of Motul oil, transmission fluid, rear end lube and all associated filters. 


Motul fluids are pumped in liberally and regularly. For even more heat resistance, Rent4Ring is transitioning from Motul’s RBF 660 brake fluid to its RBF 700. Motul 5W-40 and 15W-50 engine oils are ordered by the barrel to keep fluid maintenance religiously up to date. Photography Credits: J.G. Pasterjak

“It’s the most basic maintenance but also the most important,” Lomas stresses. “Once you let something go too long one time, there’s just no coming back when cars are in service constantly like ours. So it’s best and safest to just always stay ahead of the curve and never have to worry.” 

While this may sound like an accelerated schedule with overkill consumables–Rent4Ring is now phasing in Motul’s RBF 700 brake fluid, which is almost suitable for use on Venus yet absolutely fine here on earth, even under the heaviest of feet–as with the brake pads, the additional costs of the luxury maintenance are more than offset by the savings of having a car out of service or, worse, damaged due to failure. 

4. Inspect regularly.

“After every track session, each car gets an inspection in the [parking] lot,” Lomas says. This includes visual inspections of tires, wheel bearings, fluids and a general lookover of the car. 


No keys get tossed to a customer without a thorough car inspection. This includes a visual and mileage/time log after each track session, with a comprehensive nut-and-bolt inspection completed every couple weeks. Photography Credit: J.G. Pasterjak

Any telltale signs of extremely hard use or misuse–tires rolled way over, rocker panels full of gravel or dirt, an unusual amount of brake dust, etc.–sends a car to the lift for an additional inspection. Lift inspections and full nut-and-bolts are also performed at every fluid service, and while that may seem like not very often, remember it’s about every two or three weeks for these rentals. 

“The thing with inspections,” Lomas says “is that you really don’t want to find anything, and then when you don’t find anything, you feel a bit like you wasted your time with the inspection, so you’re not always motivated to do it. But finding nothing amiss is really the ultimate goal, right?” We can’t argue with that. 

All of the Rent4Ring cars are logged on whiteboards with their current maintenance status, along with relevant notes from their recent inspection. This lets different techs know the whole story if direct interaction doesn’t occur, but for a sole maintainer, it also takes the burden off your brain for having to remember everything. Whiteboards are inexpensive and having one next to your car is one of the best real-time logs of what’s been done, what needs to be done, and what the current status is of everything.

Hit The Track in Peace

So despite 1400-plus words, there’s no amazing revelations here: Frequent maintenance with proper parts is the best recipe for on-track longevity. Wow, what a shocker.

But likely the big revelation here is just how much of a difference going that extra mile (or kilometer in this case) with maintenance can make. The Rent4Ring fleet is used hard. The Suzuki Swifts and BMW 1 Series coupes that have made up the bulk of the fleet for the past decade-plus have been exclusively used on track, and not just any track but one of the most punishing ones in the world, by everyone from raw novices to expert drivers to raw novices who thought they were expert track drivers. Lomas reports that nearly every bit of unscheduled downtime for any of their cars can be traced to driver error, not general wear and tear. 

And the general takeaway message here is that money and effort spent staying on track may feel punitive while you’re doing it, but it’s never going to be as much as money and effort spent returning to the track after a lack-of-maintenance-based failure.

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Comments
Colin Wood
Colin Wood Associate Editor
8/7/23 9:39 a.m.

I never thought I'd want the four-cylinder Supra as much as the six-cylinder, but this article has me questioning that.

Matt B (fs)
Matt B (fs) UltraDork
8/7/23 9:54 a.m.

In reply to Colin Wood :

Same. I've lost out of enough track time due to reliability issues that outright power is much further down the list than ever.

Tom1200
Tom1200 PowerDork
8/7/23 10:52 a.m.

I once had a very fast but somewhat unreliable car (most of it was teething problems) and vowed never to do that again.

One thing that did make me laugh was the brake fluid and pads, not because they are wrong, on the Datsun I use cheap off the shelf street pads and fluid. The brakes are off much heavier Datsuns so the system is really under stressed.

I'd carry this over to race cars as well; I'm of the opinion that working on your car trackside should be a very rare occurrence.

I build the Datsun motors to about 75% of full racing engines; past that is the point were they start to become less and less reliable, driving around the track having to keep constantly an eye on everything sucks the fun out of being on track.

 

frenchyd
frenchyd MegaDork
8/7/23 12:07 p.m.

As a young man I went to the track with more spare and tools in weight than the race car.  I had spare engines, transmissions suspension, body parts, etc.  

     As The car  ran races I started leaving a lot of the spares at home and the tools went from a big roll around chest filled with everything to a little 3 drawer  tool box.  
     I did carry at least one spare tire, fluids and  a few small band aides. Like wires, Holley fuel pump, hoses, etc. 

 

gschwarzer
gschwarzer New Reader
7/29/24 3:55 p.m.

In reply to Colin Wood :

As a six-cylinder Supra owner, I don't know that I'd say it is less reliable and that would drive me to the 4.  The motor and tranny are historically pretty bomb proof and tested.  Personally I think that the issue is that the 6 platform is the target of lots of 3rd party modding potential and therein lies the tie to unreliability, lots of CELs, heat issues, etc.

I've left mine bone stock on the drivetrain side and find it super reliable so far (it is a 2021).  Stays super cool on hot Colorado track days and at our altitude - this Sunday was 95 degrees and I stayed well within comfort zone.  It has plenty of power to keep up with the Joneses. 

The power and the amazing 8 spd double clutch auto to me are well worth it on the 6, especially in the altitude and the hilly nature of my home track, High Plains Raceway, with a few uphills after slow tight turns.  Just food for thought.

BTW, on both models gauging is a little lacking for a true sports/track car IMO, so the addition of a P3 or Wagner Tuning add-on is well worth the price so you can monitor stuff like oil temp, oil pressure at a more granular level than dummy lights.

JG Pasterjak
JG Pasterjak Production/Art Director
7/29/24 8:02 p.m.
gschwarzer said:

In reply to Colin Wood :

As a six-cylinder Supra owner, I don't know that I'd say it is less reliable and that would drive me to the 4.  The motor and tranny are historically pretty bomb proof and tested.  Personally I think that the issue is that the 6 platform is the target of lots of 3rd party modding potential and therein lies the tie to unreliability, lots of CELs, heat issues, etc.

I've left mine bone stock on the drivetrain side and find it super reliable so far (it is a 2021).  Stays super cool on hot Colorado track days and at our altitude - this Sunday was 95 degrees and I stayed well within comfort zone.  It has plenty of power to keep up with the Joneses. 

The power and the amazing 8 spd double clutch auto to me are well worth it on the 6, especially in the altitude and the hilly nature of my home track, High Plains Raceway, with a few uphills after slow tight turns.  Just food for thought.

BTW, on both models gauging is a little lacking for a true sports/track car IMO, so the addition of a P3 or Wagner Tuning add-on is well worth the price so you can monitor stuff like oil temp, oil pressure at a more granular level than dummy lights.

The "more reliable" designation wasn't really meant as an absolute, but more as a qualified conditiona descriptor meaning that in that particular situation—with hundreds of drivers of varysing skill and experience cycling through—the more understressed four-cylinder variant is probably going to be easier on consumables and general wear and tear than a more powerful option.

And, yeah, Supras in general are amazing track toys, and I'm glad to hear yours is treating you well. It's just uch a capable platform.

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