So - assuming road course or a distance sprint through the mountains on public roads - whats the best set up in track mode do all your M3P owners think we should do? What settings should go where? If I have a passenger - how should that adjust?
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Track Mode Set Up
- Thread starter comanchepilot
- Start date
Those are potentially different settings. I haven't tracked my M3P so I can't say firsthand what I'd prefer there.
For twisty mountain roads I like:
- Regen: 100%. This is most efficient, and lets me maintain a quicker pace while still minimizing use of friction brakes. When the twisties are far from superchargers / DCFC, which they often are, conserving charge can be important.
- If you're going to hammer on the power and brakes more like on a racetrack, I'm not sure how much the regen setting really matters.
- Stability Assist: I generally keep this around -3 to -5 for twisty back road driving. TBH I don't think it matters too much for this driving, as long as it's not too high and doesn't interfere. I'm not constantly at 10/10ths on a back road so I don't need -9 or -10, though they would be fine too. Your pace and what you need to avoid interference may vary.
I haven't really messed with the higher levels of Stability Assist much. - Handling Bias: I tend to use 50/50, 45/55, or 40/60 for twisty roads (front/rear). If the road is unfamiliar or especially narrow and treacherous, I'll err towards 50/50. If it's familiar and I know it has some sections with a little room to play, I'll go a bit more rearward, but I still don't want super oversteer-y on such roads. This is really personal preference though!
- 50/50 tends to feel quite a bit like fulltime 50/50 ICE AWD in my experience. There will be a bit of power-on understeer but not too much, it just makes the car very very easy to control when it loses grip. At 40/60 with a bit more than maintenance throttle the car feels very neutral, with all 4 tires crying uncle at the same time generally, or even the back feeling loose first by a tiny margin.. I am on aftermarket suspension now though, with a more neutral steady-state balance than stock suspension. (But I did get some quality miles in with Track Mode while still stock.)
For having fun on empty ramps I like:
- Regen: 100% (honestly I'd drive around with regen this strong all the time if I could!)
- Stability Assist: Lower is better. I've not felt so much as a whisper of snap-oversteer or anything like that from this car. It's well-balanced and easy to control (aside from being way underdampened stock). Just don't do stupid things.
- Handling Bias: Well what exactly do you want to do around the empty ramp? Somewhere from 40/60 to 25/75 is generally good for me if this is just for fun and I want a bit of playfulness from the back. But I'll also use 50/50 or 45/55 too sometimes to make sure I'm still calibrated on how the car responds in those settings, since I use it in the twisties. Might as well explore the front-biased settings too sometime, if time allows.
Sprint on public roads: Track mode OFF, until you are aware it's holding you back.
Seriously, track mode adds no horsepower. It doesn't do any magic handling tricks. It just allows you to turn down stability control and turn up regen, and it recovers from traction control backoff a bit faster.
People think the handling balance adjustment would do something great. It doesn't- it only applies when the wheel is turned, and it reduces overall power in a turn. You only use it once you identify reliable understeer or oversteer under power in a turn.
Until you are in a car, with your foot to the floor going "where the hell did the power go!!????" then track mode will do nothing for you except increase your chances of spinning off the road. Once you actually are fast enough and control enough of the car that you know exactly when the car will hold you back, then you go into track mode because you can actually take advantage of the reduced nannies and go quicker without. I've ridden with people before with track mode and SC set at -5 and they're all like "Track mode is awesome!" and I'm sitting there going "you're not even going fast enough for it to care!".
And then they ham fist it and spin the car.
I say this as someone that uses track mode all the time. I'll take twisty roads home from the track. I never run track mode on those twisties, despite running track mode at -10 stability control all day and often setting fastest time of the day.
On a road course? Well, that depends on the course, the tires, the temperature, your shock settings, and your driving style. On a track you can adjust this as you drive. But the default settings are pretty good and the right place to start unless you already have a ton of track experience.
Seriously, track mode adds no horsepower. It doesn't do any magic handling tricks. It just allows you to turn down stability control and turn up regen, and it recovers from traction control backoff a bit faster.
People think the handling balance adjustment would do something great. It doesn't- it only applies when the wheel is turned, and it reduces overall power in a turn. You only use it once you identify reliable understeer or oversteer under power in a turn.
Until you are in a car, with your foot to the floor going "where the hell did the power go!!????" then track mode will do nothing for you except increase your chances of spinning off the road. Once you actually are fast enough and control enough of the car that you know exactly when the car will hold you back, then you go into track mode because you can actually take advantage of the reduced nannies and go quicker without. I've ridden with people before with track mode and SC set at -5 and they're all like "Track mode is awesome!" and I'm sitting there going "you're not even going fast enough for it to care!".
And then they ham fist it and spin the car.
I say this as someone that uses track mode all the time. I'll take twisty roads home from the track. I never run track mode on those twisties, despite running track mode at -10 stability control all day and often setting fastest time of the day.
On a road course? Well, that depends on the course, the tires, the temperature, your shock settings, and your driving style. On a track you can adjust this as you drive. But the default settings are pretty good and the right place to start unless you already have a ton of track experience.
I recommend you experiment with the default track mode setting as a baseline and take it from there. But from my experience here's what I run:
Street: no track mode
Autox: track mode (balance 55 rear 45 front, full regen)
HPDE/Track: track mode (balance 55-60 rear, 45-40 front, no regen)
Street: no track mode
Autox: track mode (balance 55 rear 45 front, full regen)
HPDE/Track: track mode (balance 55-60 rear, 45-40 front, no regen)
TacoSteve
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@gearchruncher said it best. Until you are pushing to the limits of traction, track mode is not going to do much for you other than being able to turn up regen. After that, it's all personal preference anyway.
Unless you leave the car in track mode for half an hour before driving it, it's not pre-conditioning the battery.
Per the manual:
It just runs the A/C more. It definitely doesn't heat anything up with the heat pump. When Tesla preconditions a battery they *heat* it up since batteries are more efficient and can deliver more current at higher temps. Yet in track mode it cools it.
I found alot of benefit running track mode about 15-20min before each session. Call it pre-cooling or conditioning the battery/drivetrain it definitely helps... otherwise I get alot of orange and red on the screen during the session.
I can see that it would help- just need to call out that running it manually is what you do, since that's not a documented use of Track mode, and you kind of have to do it carefully since the car loves to drop out of track mode when you get out of the car. Just using track mode in the way that the manual tells you to won't give you this pre-cooling benefit.
What gearchruncher has said here is 100% spot on. Track mode doesn’t do what most people think it does. It isn’t there to make you faster. It is there to protect the car from overheating certain components at the expense of straight line acceleration.
The ability for Track Mode to cool the battery is quite impressive. However, that battery cooling comes with some GIGANTIC drawbacks.
Track Mode can consume up to 11 KW while you are in park just sitting there. Then on top of that it can easily halve the battery temperature.
If you monitor battery temperatures vs. straight line acceleration you will see that a cold battery can be as much as 100 HP difference in max discharge value if it gets the battery cold enough.
Here is an example. The first picture is with a fully preconditioned hot battery with 98% SOC. The second picture is with 80% SOC and a cold battery because it sat in Track Mode for 15 minutes before the run. This was the same lane of the same track on a 90+ degree F day.
This difference in acceleration is very significant. Now, I know some people are going to say “but the SOC was so different”. Yes, that is true but you have to remember that Track Mode pulls so much power for so long you are going to deplete your battery before you even get started.
Track Mode should be used if you are afraid of breaking your car not because you think you will be faster.
That being said I have to acknowledge that heat in your battery only starts to affect straight line performance above 40 mph. If you are staying under 40 mph the whole time then SOC and battery temperature won’t matter as much.
In that case it may be worth doing Track Mode to protect your car’s components from overheating.
The other use of Track Mode is if you want to do donuts. If that is your goal then by all means go right ahead and use it.
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On the street you’ll benefit more from alignment settings and a proper wheel tire combo than track mode.
Heck, that translates to the track as well. The stock/recommended alignment settings are junk for anything outside of commuting and even then, leave much to be desired.
Heck, that translates to the track as well. The stock/recommended alignment settings are junk for anything outside of commuting and even then, leave much to be desired.
Track Mode is not just for cooling the battery. The reduction in traction control and stability control intervention is a key feature as well, and the one that's most relevant to fun driving in this car.
My M3P doesn't let me properly power out of a corner when it's not in Track Mode. It also has a tendency to grab bits of brake mid-corner. Obviously this stuff doesn't matter driving around town. YMMV. Maybe some Model 3's allow for more outside of Track Mode?
I certainly don't need the extra cooling for any of my street driving, and I would disable that part if I could. It does make the car feel slower in a straight line after running Track Mode for a while. I care more about being able to push the cars hard through the turns though so that's a tradeoff I accept. 0-60 isn't really my thing anyways. For sure if acceleration is your top concern, Track Mode isn't useful.
My M3P doesn't let me properly power out of a corner when it's not in Track Mode. It also has a tendency to grab bits of brake mid-corner. Obviously this stuff doesn't matter driving around town. YMMV. Maybe some Model 3's allow for more outside of Track Mode?
I certainly don't need the extra cooling for any of my street driving, and I would disable that part if I could. It does make the car feel slower in a straight line after running Track Mode for a while. I care more about being able to push the cars hard through the turns though so that's a tradeoff I accept. 0-60 isn't really my thing anyways. For sure if acceleration is your top concern, Track Mode isn't useful.
11kW statement is simply not true. you're saying the car consumes 13% of charge sitting there for 15min? I've never seen that.
If you're on the dragstrip you actually want to heat up the battery (if it's cold) to get the best runs for sure but you don't engage track mode for that. Instead you use the Navi to point to a local supercharger (for a model 3) so that it preheats the battery.
My reference is to going on the track, not the drag strip and frankly losing 2 tenths at the quarter mile isn't going to do anything for lap times. What matters is keeping that battery cool as much as possible so that you can run a 20min session at the track going 10/10ths.
When track mode is engaged, the system drops the temperature of the battery pack and motors to create a significant amount of chilled thermal mass. Once track driving begins and heat is generated, shared coolant loops between the battery and motors keep the entire system cooler for longer.
Oof. 11kW and 11kWh are not the same thing. Just like charging at 11kW for 15 minutes doesn't give you 13% charge, discharging at 11kW doesn't take away 13% charge.
11kW for 0.25 hours is 2.75kWh, or about 3% of the 82kWh battery.
Now I admit that I doubt the heat pump can pull 11kW- so this does seem unlikely, but it's really important to not conflate kW and kWh. And I fully agree the primary benefit of track mode is not the cooling. It deeply changes the stability and traction control algorithms.
About to go to the track in an hour- if I remember I'll datalog the power draw on the car just in idle in track mode.
Totally agree with this. The model 3 stability control is very aggressive and will cut power at any time it thinks it the car will break loose.
Track mode also gives the car torque vectoring capabilities that definitely help with getting the car to rotate. It adjusts torque split across the rear wheels, independently, which applies a torque bias to rotate the car through turns; this increases turn-in response, improves on-center steering feel, and delivers even greater yaw control throughout a corner.
If you're used to driving a rear wheel drive car (with lots of power) with the ability to turn off driving aids.. you definitely appreciate this
Obviously for a new driver that doesn't have much car control or track experience I would recommend to not touch track mode on the street at all until they
have a chance to try it in a safer controlled environment (autox, track).
oops my bad.. yes you're right I read too fast. but as you said.. the power draw is negligible. thanks,
Like I told the OP- until they are feeling what you are feeling, track mode does nothing. But at the same time, if you're feeling that on a public road, you're absolutely hauling, and you're on the edge of one section of loose gravel tossing you off the road.
The car has one motor on each axle. It has completely open differentials. The only way for it to do any kind of torque vectoring would be to drag a brake on one side- and then increase motor output to compensate. I've never seen any data that this occurs, and I've sure never felt it.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What's your source that the Model 3 torque vectors across an axle?
I've not felt any clear limited slip effect on this car either, but I think some amount of brake-based limited slip function is pretty standard these days, aimed much more at assisting in slippery conditions than performance driving on pavement. Whether this car has that or not, it's definitely not as effective as a good LSD. I've felt some one wheel spin when doing stuff like powering out of dirt-strewn corners, where my last sporty AWD car with 3x limited slip diffs would've just gripped.
A MYP owner playing around with MYP's new Track Mode in the snow felt that there is some brake-based limited slip. They felt that Stability Assist -10 removed it, so they actually preferred -9 on snow. See "EDL" paragraph in Optimizing track mode for snow driving . Possibly there is some brake-based limited slip functionality, but it's not aggressive enough to be noticeable on pavement.
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That's because grabbing a brake to straighten the car is how stability control works, on Tesla's and all other cars. Grabbing a brake to initiate or reduce a turn to make the car follow the steering wheel isn't Torque vectoring.
Which of course is what it goes away when you fully disable stability control.
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