Learning about our GR Yaris on track

On Monday we took our Toyota GR Yaris to Silverstone for Tom from our Sales and Service Department to have some Driver training, and at the same time we could we could test some of the new upgrades. It proved a very productive day!

Tom is often the point of contact for our GR Yaris customers either by phone or email. This was only Tom’s second track day and it was a great opportunity to get some coaching, combined with learning more about both the Toyota GR Yaris and the Nitron suspension we have installed.

To provide the driver training we had our friend Jake Hill, who as well as being a British Touring Car ace is also a huge car enthusiast, and was particularly keen to sample our Yaris for the first time.

Tom has driven our Yaris extensively on the road both before and after we installed our suspension kit.   Taking it to Silverstone we left the setup in the more compliant ‘road’ setting and during the day began to adjust the handling balance with Jake, and Curtis from Nitron.

With over 26 clicks of adjustment on our Nitron dampers we were able to create a much stiffer chassis setup for a smooth fast circuit like Silverstone.  Jake provided some great feedback and it’s clear that our suspension kit which was designed predominately for the road also allows significant improvements on a smooth track.

Tom learnt an incredible amount thanks to Jake and has a much better understanding and appreciation of the incredible GR Yaris.

The track time was also a great opportunity to test our Syvecs ECU calibration along with their 4wd controller, before we start adding engine upgrade parts.  We made small changes throughout the day to the 4WD control unit which changed the torque split in Sport mode and helped reduce its natural understeer tendencies.  At the same time we were also able to data log the 4WD clutch temperature, seeing Jake get to 100 degrees C quickly and Tom consistently around 96-98 degrees C.  The standard Toyota controller will cut out when it gets around 100 degrees and instantly drops the car back into FWD mode which can unsettle the chassis if it happens mid bend. On the Syvecs controller we have the limit set at the same point but now it blends the torque back to the front progressively as the temperature increases which stabilises the heat and stops the sudden change in torque transfer.

The Syvec engine calibration we have been working on performed superbly on track and we’ll be making further changes to the throttle setup based on the driver feedback which should make it even more progressive when pressing on. The other huge advantage of the Syvecs engine ECU is the built-in datalogging, and here we could see the engine oil temperature was rapidly getting to 130 degrees and on occasions hitting our pre-set limiter which reduces power.  We already had cooling packages underway in our fabrication department but an engine oil cooler has just jumped to the top of the list! The 25 degree air temperature also meant the charge air temps were consistently over 50degrees as the standard intercooler struggled to remove the heat.

We’ll be going through the data in the coming days and are excited to test out our improvements at the next event.