slow car fast

One of the more important things when heading for the track is the “track box”. It serves two main purposes…

As part of the preperations to go out on the track, all the loose stuff inside the car needs to be removed. At some tracks, you’re lucky and there are covered garages with work tables, so you can just stash stuff in a relatively safe, dry place. Other tracks aren’t so well equipped and you’re basically hanging out in a gravel parking lot. And, it usually rains at some point. So, a container of some sort that is big enough to hold all the stuff you take out of the car, and keep that stuff dry, becomes pretty important.

Since you’re going to need a box to put stuff in anyway, why not get one that’s a little bigger, and use it to carry other supplies as well? That’s use number two. Here’s what I have in my track box:

• Tire pressure gauge - get a pretty nice one that has a relief valve for lowering pressure easily
• Notebook and pen - useful for writing down stuff like tire pressures, contact information for people you meet, etc
• Scotch tape - some clubs will give you nice vinyl numbers to put on the car, others will give you a piece of paper with a number printed on it and say “tape this to your window”. Without tape, that’s pretty hard.
• Painter’s tape - some clubs will make you tape up and glass on the front of your car such as headlights. Painter’s tape can also be used if you have to supply your own numbers on your car, but it’s a pain to do it that way
• Glass cleaner - windows get dirty, so bring something to clean them with
• Paper towels - goes with the glass cleaner, but get used for lots of other things too
• hand cleaning wipes - hands get dirty
• brake fluid - at some point, you’ll need to bleed your brakes, so have more fluid handy
• a quart of oil - my car doesn’t burn oil, so I’m not really sure why I carry this around, but it feels like the right thing to do
• tire tread depth gauge - so you can keep track of just how worn those tires are getting. Comes in handy when you want to rotate the tires to even out the wear on them
• brake pads - at some point, you’ll use up the brake pads that are on the car, so carry along the next set so you don’t have to go home early
• sunscreen - if it’s not raining, you’ll be getting sunburned
• Tarps - for covering the box and other stuff when it rains
• clean t-shirt for the drive home - it’s either going to rain, and your shirt will get wet, or it will be hot and your shirt will get all sweaty. And either way, it will end up dirty. A clean, dry shirt can make the drive home a bit more pleasant.

Also put in the car an umbrella and a folding chair.

Water is another important thing to have on hand. Get an insulated container that can hold a fairly large amount of it. You don’t want to have to pay the track for overpriced bottled water.

I carry along my full (but small) toolbox. Minimally, you want to bring the tools you’d need to rotate / change tires and bleed brakes. So, the right size sockets for those two tasks, a breaker bar, a torque wrench, socket wrench, and a plastic hose and bottle for bleeding brakes.

I wish I had the following:

• aluminum racing jack
• mechanic’s gloves
• easy-up tent like shelter
• air tank or compressor