First track day, eh? VERY cool! Yes, there are a few things to do to the car before going out, but it's not all that intensive in terms of hardware...
1) General PM: Oil change before the event to make sure the engine is fresh. Check your coolant levels and condition for both the main cooling loop and the intercooler. Trans and diff levels less critical, but worth checking just to make sure. Give the car a solid once-over to make sure everything is tight and solid, then just leave it alone. Oh, and before you go, take EVERYTHING out of the car that doesn't need to be there. Floor mats, radar detector, golf clubs, etc. If it's not nailed down, and you don't need it that weekend, leave it at home.
2) BRAKES. At an absolute minimum, make sure you have a fresh set of stock pads, and FLUSH the fluid completely with new DOT 3. If you think you're going to be hooked on this road course thing, then get a full set of rotors and some track pads (PBR calipers up front: Hawk HT-10 front and HP+ rear, Brembos: HT-10 all around), and flush with a good racing fluid like Motul RBF600 or ATE. Don't worry about braided lines right now. They won't hurt, but use the money instead for more events!
3) Tires. Since you need new rubber anyway, I would take a hard look at Dunlop Direzza Star Specs, in 275/35-18, which will work with the 18x9 wheels. Great dry grip, decent treadlife, predictable, and fantastic in the wet. For pressures, think in terms of 35-38PSI cold to start.
DRIVER MODS: Pre-event, start studying the track layout, memorizing as much as you can, with a bare minimum of knowing the corner numbers and which way they go. Study youtube videos and pay particular attention to where on the track they're driving. It really doesn't matter if it's from a Miata or a Corvette, in gross terms the line is the same. Start looking for landmarks (not cones!) to identify where they initiated turn-in, where they got to the inside edge of the corner, and where they wound up coming out of the corner. This will define "The Line." If you walk in with a rough idea of what "The Line" is, you will be light-years ahead of the other newbies!
THIS ONE is a good example of what a more experienced driver can do with a bone-stock NA Mustang...
DRIVER MOD: At the track. First, leave your ego in he hotel room. Seriously. Your instructor will want to work with you on your line, tweaking it in for your particular chassis setup, and focus on hitting it consistently. EVERYTHING ELSE builds off that! Focus on this as a goal first, and the speed will come as a result, so just back off a touch early on your first day. It's much easier to learn the line correctly when you're driving at 80% of your ability rather than a variable 95%-105%. Once you learn the line, you WILL start going faster, even if you don't change your driving style! PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR INSTRUCTOR! He (or she) knows what they're talking about, and if you want to go fast, do what they tell you to do, even if it seems counter-intuitive at first. The best students start slow, hit their marks consistently, and then start building speed, and building, and building, and building... The "fast guys" at the beginning of the day suddenly start getting passed by the "slow guys" as a result. FOCUS ON SMOOTH CONTROL INPUTS. There is no place on a road course where you need to "snap" the wheel over, "mash" the gas, or "slam" on the brakes. Yes, you will wind up doing those things
rapidly, but you will NOT want to do them
abruptly. Take steering as an example... Assuming you need to turn the wheel 90* (like you will for T7), you can either snap the thing over abruptly, or turn it over smoothly and evenly over a roughly 1/4-1/3 second period of time. If you yank the wheel over, you can induce understeer (tires don't take a set, and the car doesn't turn) which will cause you to miss apex AND scrub off a bunch of speed, AND chew up the outside edges of the front tires. If you feed it in smoothly, the car just turns... Same thing with the gas pedal and the brake pedal. Smooth on AND off will have the car behaving nicely; abrupt inputs will have the car dancing like a tutu-wearing hippo. This truly is a case of "slow down to go fast." Oh, and the last thing to focus on is "in slow, out fast." It's a lot of fun screaming into the braking zone, hitting the hooks at the last instant, waiting for the car to settle through the corner, and then pounding out with the tires screaming and the rear end stepping out. It's just not fast, though. If you slow down a little more at entry, it will let you get on the gas sooner, and your exit speed will be higher. If you watch (or can get a ride with) the advanced drivers, you'll see that each corner is a "no drama" event, and they're a LOT faster than the hoons putting up a smoke show in every corner.
In the end, though, go out there, listen to your instructor (have I mentioned that one?), and just have fun. That is, after all, what it's all about.
