First Track Day in My Lotus Exige S220 | In-Depth RaceBox Review

So today I get to do something I've been wanting to do for quite some time now. I'm gonna finally take my Lotus Exige out for its first ever track day. It's exciting because that's really what this car is meant for. I just wish I got a chance to do it sooner. It'll also be the perfect opportunity to test this cool new race box.

I.

Almost a year ago I reviewed this car for the channel and fell in.

Love with it immediately.

I've been searching for a hardcore track toy and there's really nothing better than a 2000 pound mid engine, rear wheel drive, completely manual sports car to get the blood going. So let's see if it can live up to our expectations. Today I'm at my local track, the old Bridge Township Raceway park road course. I already know I'm in for a world of hurt here with the car because the suspension's so unforgiving. Let's get started.

Alrighty. So time to see what this thing can do. Might as well get my helmet on. My little Chibi helmet lap timer. So I think it detects that this is the same track because the first time we came to English Town we had to, we had to set the splits manually in, in Lucas Brz. But I think now it just automatically recognizes it because I don't know, maybe it's smart. But yeah, I didn't have to do anything.

It just says, you know, go custom track.

So obviously we're going to take it.

Semi easy on this first lap out because you know, we want to warm up these tire. It's a cold day, it's like 45, 50 degrees maybe.

Here we go, Third gear the whole way. Warm up the tires. Oh boy, it's, it's rough in here. I don't know if you guys hear that but the horn goes off sometimes because the, it's right on the steering wheel here. So the way I hold it, if I turn too hard it'll, it'll turn the horn on so it feels like I'm beeping at people on the track here. We'll see what happens. I love the downshift on this. Three, four. It's amazing. The beautiful thing about this car is the brakes are phenomenal. Jesus Christ. But the steering, it's a little bit. All right. So right in here. Oh God, this car. Amazing brakes. Oh my God, these brakes. Let's not even turn it up. Oh God, it is. This is a car, my friends, this is a car. But I gotta say, the suspension really rears its head Here because it's just too stiff. Even like this is not the track suspension, it's still super, super rigid and it just unsettles the car over anything and I just have to power my way.

Obviously, I'm having some difficulty conveying thoughts while driving at the same time, so I'll just voice over the rest here. English Town definitely isn't the right track for the Lotus. The imperfections are already pretty bad for a normal sports car, but in this thing, it's really not enjoyable. The rough pavement is not only translated through the suspension, but also to the manual steering, where every little bump requires you to manhandle that wheel. The level of mechanical grip, even in stock form, is impressive, though I don't think the traction control ever kicked in. Or maybe it just doesn't work anymore. At no point in time did I experience the infamous snap oversteer. But then again, I was only going about 8, 10. The horn being on the sides of the steering wheel is a big design fail, so the first mod I'm doing is definitely replacing that. I already talked about how great the brakes are. Strong bite, no fade. They're simply wonderful. The turn in on the car is extremely responsive. And because of the short wheelbase, these technical corners can really be a breeze. If it wasn't for the fact that it felt like I was off roading the whole time, in terms of power, there's a healthy amount. I never felt underpowered coming out of corners, but I wouldn't mind having another 30 or 40 on top for the back straight. The relatively short gearing for this track was fine, but if I were at njmp, I could see it being a problem because shifting into fifth is a bit annoying. Since this gearbox isn't exactly the best at what I would consider 8/10 of the limit. The car put in a few 126 laps, and I believe with a few more sessions in warmer weather, 122 is definitely possible. Either way, I think I'm ready for some mods.

Wow, that was strange. Car turned off on me.

Exciting. So it turns out that the excessive bumps on the track actually knocked the battery terminal loose, which caused the entire car to shut off. No biggie, but I think it's time we move on.

Okay, so now let's talk about the Racebox. It's a performance data logger that uses GPS to measure metrics such as acceleration, deceleration, lap timing, and other fun stuff. Quick disclaimer. Racebox did send this product to me, but I am not obligated to say nice things about it, and my opinions will be completely my own and unbiased. So it's the same concept as say a VBOX or AIM solo at a much more affordable price. But it also takes elements from something like drag in the sense that it can put data onto your phone to further analyze instead of having to delve into software on a computer, which could be a little complicated for some folks who are just more casual about racing or just not as tech savvy. Anyway. Let's take a look. The unit itself is really rather attractive. It's got a satin black finish with red trim around the front, a nice little easy to read display with four buttons on the back. It gives you input for an external antenna, a GoPro style mount receiver, and then a USB C charging port to charge the internal battery. Overall, the Racebox is designed well and put together quite nicely. The first thing you'll notice when you pick it up though is that it's pretty light and that's a good thing sometimes, but not in this case because it makes the whole product feel cheap and like it's gonna be crushed if you put it down the wrong way. The plastic doesn't feel premium or robust. Ultimately, I'm not confident it's gonna be able to stand up to any sort of heavy abuse. It doesn't feel like there's any sort of shock absorption on the inside, so.

I always gotta baby it anyway.

It's been holding up pretty well for the past few months, but I would be more worried about longevity beyond a few years. My biggest worry is this plastic GoPro receiver on the back. This is a high stress point because this is where it gets mounted and I would like to see it be metal at least some sort of sturdier plastic because if this breaks, it's not replaceable since it's one piece of the unit. Well, actually, let me just say right now that the original suction cup that came with the Racebox already broke on me. Luckily, because it's a universal style mount, I'm still able to use it with anything that's compatible with a GoPro. Regardless, I still think that it's probably one of the most attractive looking daily loggers on the market. It just looks sleek when you mount it on a car, obtrusive or out of place. There's no cables to plug in, no ugly antenna. It's all just one nice self contained unit. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted one in the beginning because it just looks cool enough to showcase during our acceleration test. You know, when you put a camera on it, okay, so it looks great, feels cheap, but how does it perform? Because it could be made out of diamonds and feel like a pelican case, but if it doesn't do its job, then I'm not using it well. Racebox comes with a 10Hz antenna built in, which is pretty much standard these days with most data loggers. But if you want more accuracy, it does also come with an external antenna that you can plug in. But for me, the point of this is to have one self contained unit that doesn't have messy cables. So we'll test it how it comes out of the box. Let's take a look at some of the straight line stuff first. We'll use Sha Patel's C601 for some rolling tests at race motive, as well as our own X6 M50 at the drag strip for these results. So from a roll, the race box is usually within 500ths of a second to other data logs that we had running. There's no way to test against physical time because the analysis software is just not that comprehensive. So the only way to go was against other units. Now, that's an acceptable margin, but it also reads slightly on the slower side sometimes when you compare it to the others. Now for the drag strip results. On the left you'll see the physical times from the strip, and on the right is the race box. These are done with the one foot rollout enabled to account for compatibility with drag strip times. I would say that it reads the ET consistently faster, but is a little bit all over the place in terms of trap speed. If anyone wants to have a more detailed look at the times, I'll post a link to a spreadsheet when I'm done with the testing. In the meantime, I'll let you guys draw your own conclusions on those numbers. But for me, this level of accuracy is simply not enough for our half mile acceleration tests. Effectively, that means that it'll serve as a backup unit for our straight line stuff. But what about around a track? Because that's really why you buy this thing over a draggy, right? Well, let's take a look at what we got with two separate track days for my buddy Lucas Brz and our runs today with the Lotus. If it's your first time on an unrecognized track, you'll need to set the start finish line manually. That's a little annoying. But after that, it recognizes the track automatically. When you're nearby, You can see that the race box was again Slightly off by almost a tenth of a second in some cases. This is simply unacceptable for road racing because a tenth of a second is often the difference between winning and losing in competition. So let's take another look with the Lotus. This time around, it was a little bit better. The middle laps were perfectly accurate. The only one that acted funny was that exit lap where I lost power to the car. Regardless, it has a tendency to read slightly slower if the time is off. Cool. So, good enough for the weekend warrior, and frankly, I think I can accept it for our performance handling tests. Usually when we get on track, we run enough laps to where we can throw one or two flukes out the window. But now let's take a look at.

How to operate it.

Use the button on the bottom right here to power the unit on. You've got four selections. After lap, timer, drag meter, history and settings, use the left up and down buttons to toggle through the options. Bottom right button to select, top right button to go back. And when you're done, go back to this main screen here and hold that top right button to turn the unit off. I think it's pretty easy to go through the menu system and anybody should be able to learn it now. Using it as a drag meter gives you three speed, distance, and custom. The problem with this is that there's only four metrics getting tested with whichever option you select. That means that it won't show any other tests besides the ones you set, which can be a little annoying if you like to do more than four metrics at a time like we do. Hopefully this is something that they can rectify in an app or, you know, in a future update. Lap timing is a little bit better. You can use the app to scrub through and see your corner, entry speeds, exit speeds, lateral GS, cornering GS and so on. It's a pretty quick way to analyze your laps without having to break out a laptop. My only gripe would be to be able to move the start stop line somehow. The lovely thing about the racebox is that the storage is built in, so you don't need to worry about an additional SD card or anything like that when you go out and race. I don't know the exact amount of memory, but they claim that it can store up to about 400 sessions. I think I maybe use about 10% of that overall. I would also say the battery life is pretty stellar for something that's built in and I've yet to exhaust it. But then again, I only do maybe about three to four, maybe five 20 minute sessions per track day. And I also think that the auto shutoff function is pretty nifty and that probably helps keep it alive for longer. Now the software is app based so there's probably a lot of room for growth with updates, so I would expect to see more cool features implemented and like I said, maybe have the ability to further, I don't know, analyze data. It transfers and syncs over wi fi and it's been pretty easy to do so far. However, I did get a glitch one time and it didn't transfer a specific round over to my phone, but it was still in the Racebox itself. I don't know how that happened, but I'm glad I saw it anyway. At the end of the day, the Racebox is a good tool at a good price. Right now it's 299 bucks on Amazon, which is twice the price of Dragy, but less than half the price of a VBOX or AIM Solo. It's kind of like if VBOX and Dragy had a child together and this child didn't quite get the best of both worlds. But you know it still. Went off to college, got a good job, got married, had two and a half kids, yada yada yada. Anyway, if you like to do straight line stuff, get a Draggy, but if you need a lap timer and you don't want to shell out for a V box, I honestly think that the Racebox is probably the next best thing.

But let's take a moment to go over all the pros and cons. It's definitely priced right, has good enough accuracy if you're a casual user, plus it's a really slick looking product that blends into the interior of any car. On top of that, it's completely battery powered so no messy cables. On the other hand, it's not consistent enough for professional use, nor does it feel like it'll last more than a few years. A big downside is the acceleration testing is locked into the four metrics predetermined by the mode you select, and I.

Really wish they would give you the ability to further analyze data in the app.

Otherwise it just feels very one noted when you compare it to the competition.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this video or at least found it informative. And if you're looking to purchase one of these Race boxes, don't forget to check out the Amazon link in the description below below. Buying it with my link is no extra cost to you, but it does give me a little bit of kickback to help keep this channel going. And as always, thanks for watching.

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