I'm getting the car prepped for spring HPDEs and Track days and came across these. They are about half the price of the Hawk DTC-60s that I was planning on buying, but I have not been able to find many real world reports on them.
I'm getting the car prepped for spring HPDEs and Track days and came across these. They are about half the price of the Hawk DTC-60s that I was planning on buying, but I have not been able to find many real world reports on them.
My friend and my stepson both track Fiesta STs -- they've tried them and ended up switching back to the Hawks. They were mediocre on those cars, which tend to be hard on brakes, and the "savings" was quickly offset by wear. I've got a set on my Miata right now, and they are perfectly cromulent in that capacity. But that car has never been hard on brakes at all.
I've run the "Track Day" pads on my Subaru and the "Track Day Spec" on my BMW track car. The track day pads are similar to a Hawk HP+, they work well from cold and will take some decent heat, I think they are best as an autocross pad that can handle the occasional track day on a lighter car or a track that is easy on brakes. The Track Day Spec needs some heat to work, at an autocross the first hard braking point of a run they aren't going to be working great but the rest of the run they are fine, same on track, get a bit of heat in them and then you are good to go.
If you are looking at the Hawk DTC-60 then the Track Day Spec is the pad you want to go with. For HPDE use I think they are great and are standing up as well as the Hawk's I have ran in the past with better performance (DTC-30), they will last just as long for me at half the cost so an easy choice in my case. I'm running RS-4 tires though, if you are running wide slicks on a race car these might not be enough.
I ran them on the G35 for an event. They were fair. Good braking, but toward the end of the weekend, they had some serious uneven transfer that made the brakes pulse like crazy.
I've since started running EBC Yellows. They are awesome and don't have the transfer problem.
You get what you pay for with pads . . . you didn't mention what the car was or how skilled a driver you are. Those may factor in.
If it was "these Powerstop pads" or "I don't get to go to the track" I'd say do it. If the savings is simply a savings, there may be better options.
Been using front and rear of the track day version for autocross on a 3250lb CAM car. No complaints other than the dust they produce is significant and quickly becomes hard to remove. They're the only pads I've used on this car, but have had HPS and HP+ on other cars that didn't dust this much. Seemed to do fine with ABS or non-ABS once the bias was adjusted properly. Good performance even when cold. Not a ton of initial bite, but felt relatively progressive. With base C6 brakes up front and S197 brakes in the rear, never had pads too hot even when hot lapping.
They were free. I don't plan to buy another set mostly due to the dust, but also just to experiment some.
Sonax wheel cleaner + tire sprayer between autox days worked well to combat the dust.
Use them on my Fiesta ST with ducting and haven't had an issue. The "Track Day Spec" version will last a little longer than the regular Track Day pad. I do have an LSD upgrade so that takes away some of the torque vectoring intrusion which heats the brakes up quite a bit.
For the money they arent terrible.
I'm planning to try a set of these on my 86 for street + autocross + track day mixed use. I've used EBC Yellows for the same duties on my AE92, and I never had any problems with fade on the track and they weren't bad on the street, but they aren't good for autocross because of how sharp and bitey they are (a bigger problem on a car without ABS) and how braking force ramps up rapidly over the course of an autocross run as the brakes warm up. They're also notorious for dust production and eat rotors rapidly, which are common traits of track-capable pads. So I'm trying to approach the street/track compromise from the other direction with these and hopefully get away from those downsides in autocross.
The PSA prefix means "Track Day Spec" and they are great affordable pads. I'm on my second (maybe third) set and they work fine on my 3k lbs E36 for track duty. They have more modulation and bite than Hawk HP+ pads, but I have no other reference. They definitely don't work on first runs at an autox, but they will be fine afterwards.
I don't recommend the PST "Track Day" pads. They have a much lower temp range (900F vs 1200F limit of the PSA pads) and will chunk or wear extremely quickly on track.
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