Southrnfresh Mazda Protege 5 Track car project: Road Atlanta Track Day
Since the last update , not much was done to the P5 except install the Mazdaspeed Protege Racing Beat rear sway bar, and the reinforced end links that came with the BC Racing DS Series coilovers. It was not because of a need , but just an experiment to see how the car would behave.
Road Atlanta was a huge goal for the car, and the build in general. So naturally I was excited to finally be able to drive the car on the track. All the advice and things that people ever told me about Road Atlanta came to be true, but overall the legendary Road Atlanta was not as big and bad as it appears.
My instructor Gino , was very familiar with FWD cars so he was able to offer a lot of helpful tips on the track. Turn 1 – 4 is by far my favorite part, because it enables the car to keep so much speed . Up until 5 when I have to down shift and turn up hill.
The least enjoyable part was the back straight, which I spent most of that time doing point bys and letting the faster cars go by me. But it would always give me a chance to check gauges and reset myself for the last half of the track.
Coming down 10 and down shifting to 3rd gear, and hitting full throttle through 10 and 11, was a reward for the back straight struggle. In the early laps, we would stay in 3rd gear out of 11 and down through turn 12. But it would have the car at redline down the turn 12 hill, which would have been death to my motor by the end of the day. So Gino advised to shift to 4th, at the top of 12 under the bridge. That subtle change made a huge difference when we came out of 12 to the finish line.
Overall no complaints about how the car performed as it creeps up to the 300k mile mark. It continues to impress me and do everything I tell it to. Once again I tell anyone reading this, that it does not take much to get on the track at least once! Next stop we are going to be at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Huge thanks to Jzilla Track days and Atlanta Speed Company
Check out a lap in the video below.
