Yes, You Can Take a Tesla Model 3 to a Track Day
What do you do when you have some track time scheduled and your Porsche Cayman GT4 is in the shop? You take out the electric commuter car, apparently.
YouTube user Matt Crowley recently posted a video of him lapping California’s Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in his Tesla Model 3 during a track day event. Crowley had intended to take his Cayman GT4 to the event, but it got an inopportune check engine light, so he pulled out the EV and decided to see how it would fare on the crests and dips of one of America’s most challenging and well-known racetracks.
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The Model 3 appears to have handled the track time pretty well. He was able to run nearly 10 laps of the 2.23-mile circuit without experiencing any issues with the battery or electric motor. The owner posted a video examining the brake pads after this abusive treatment, though, and they were almost completely shot. But that’s to be expected for almost all road car brake pads after track use, and is a problem that could be solved by opting for performance pads.
Crowley’s lap times hovered around the 1:57 to 2:00 range, which is very respectable for a commuter car. You can check out his onboard video from the track day embedded above. This is where we’d normally tell you to turn your speakers up and listen to the soundtrack of the engine, but you know..
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Sam McEachern holds a diploma in journalism from St. Clair College in Windsor, Ontario, and has been covering the automotive industry for over 5 years. He conducts reviews and writes AutoGuide's news content. He's a die-hard motorsports fan with a passion for performance cars of all sorts.
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there is no way around it... that was grotesquely slow