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- Gator
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- Apr 10, 2025
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- Bend Oregon
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- 2025 Maverick Lobo, 2020 Edge ST
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- 2.0L EcoBoost
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The intent of this thread is to document my track and autox days in the 2025 Lobo.
I took my Ford Maverick Lobo to Oregon Raceway Park (ORP) for it's first track day. The truck is 99% as delivered OEM. The only mod is a Ford Performance cat back exhaust. Even the suspension settings are as delivered. Now I have a baseline to measure future mods against.
ORP is a 2.3 mile track with 16 turns and lots of elevation changes. On Camber, Off Camber, Short Straights makes for lots of cornering conditions. Two linked turns called the Half Pipe are notorious for making driving instructors riding with students motion sick! On top of that it is designed to be run both CW and CCW which makes it really 2 different tracks. I’ve been wheel to wheel racing there many times, am a member of the ORP Club, and an ORP instructor.
It was damp or raining the first three sessions. That was fine with me. I like racing in the rain, most of my most memorable races across the Pacific NW have occurred in the rain. It made for good conditions to learn the handling of the truck and the various drive modes. I used Sport mode and Lobo mode, automatic shifting and paddle shifting.
Here’s one lap in the afternoon after it dried off:
Edit 9/26/25 adding data:
Max G Cornering: 0.96
Max G Braking: -0.95
Max Speed: 98.2mph
Fastest Lap 2:16
The G Forces were surprisingly higher than I expected.
This data came off my Garmin Catalyst.
Thoughts:
It was a fun day! After reading other posts in this forum, I knew what to expect and my day went as anticipated.
Driving: Not surprising that the best mode was Lobo mode with ESC off, (thanks DMS). I’m used to racing an AWD front heavy car, a Subaru STI. Like the Lobo, the STI is way too front heavy/rear light. The best lap times in the STI come with late apexing. Like the STI if you try to max your speed through the apex you will almost certainly understeer terribly to the track out. But unlike the STI the Lobo has the Electronic Dual Clutch Rear Diff. That took some getting used to! I found that post apex, as the understeer set in with light throttle, I had to make a leap of faith and give it more throttle. Slower into the apex, then faster out. My mind was telling me I was going to power understeer right off the track. You can feel/see the understeer coming out of the apex and are sure you are going off. But once I got the power up the torque would apply to the outside rear tire and the front would magically stop understeering and turn the truck. I equate it to the first time I drove a very high downforce race car, you have to believe that going faster will make more downforce which will give you the grip to stay on the track.
I practiced this rear torque steer on the sharpest three 90-degree corners where even if it didn’t work I’d probably leave the track at 35-45 mph.
Tires: As reported by others, on the one hand they are awful. Particularly under threshold braking, grip was quite low. On the other hand, they had so little grip that I never did get my brakes to go soft. They will be fine for another fall season session, but next spring I will be upgrading.
Brakes: The OEM pads did better than I expected. They never went soft on me because the tires couldn’t generate enough grip to overheat them. At least not on a cool wet day.
I put caliper temp sensor stickers on a week before and did some spirited mountain road driving. The temp sensors never registered enough heat to change color:
At the end of the track day here’s what they read, a max high of between 275 F and 300 F. When considering these temps remember this is on the outside of the caliper between the two pistons. The brake fluid inside the pistons will be much hotter. But it’s good to have the baseline for future brake comparisons.
Transmission: I found the paddle shifters to be direct and easy to operate. They shift far more directly than the paddle shifters in our Edge ST. Both up and downshifts worked fine.
Seats: I used the seatbelt inertia lock and power seat adjuster to get nice and tight. I reversed the headrest to give me more helmet room; that’s a good tip! For now, I’ll live with the seats and seat belt. It’s too bad Ford doesn’t put the same belt retractor on the driver’s side as the passenger side so we can lock ourselves in more tightly. Corvettes have had that feature for 20+ years. I wonder if it’s possible to put a passenger side retractor on the driver side?
Driving with the window down: Some HPDE events require the driver’s window to be down for giving a point-by. That created a LOT of wind buffeting at 65+ mph. I found that if I opened the rear window slider it almost entirely mitigated the buffeting.
No overheating issues. When the track day was over everything still worked, an unusual occurrence in my track day experiences!
Conclusion: A fun day at the track. I’m looking forward to 200TW tires, EBC Bluestuff pads, and probably front camber bolts. Those will have to wait till next spring though. I live in the mountains and winter is coming soon. ORP only has one track days weekend left this year. But maybe I'll do wheels/tires for that last session!
I took my Ford Maverick Lobo to Oregon Raceway Park (ORP) for it's first track day. The truck is 99% as delivered OEM. The only mod is a Ford Performance cat back exhaust. Even the suspension settings are as delivered. Now I have a baseline to measure future mods against.
ORP is a 2.3 mile track with 16 turns and lots of elevation changes. On Camber, Off Camber, Short Straights makes for lots of cornering conditions. Two linked turns called the Half Pipe are notorious for making driving instructors riding with students motion sick! On top of that it is designed to be run both CW and CCW which makes it really 2 different tracks. I’ve been wheel to wheel racing there many times, am a member of the ORP Club, and an ORP instructor.
It was damp or raining the first three sessions. That was fine with me. I like racing in the rain, most of my most memorable races across the Pacific NW have occurred in the rain. It made for good conditions to learn the handling of the truck and the various drive modes. I used Sport mode and Lobo mode, automatic shifting and paddle shifting.
Here’s one lap in the afternoon after it dried off:
Edit 9/26/25 adding data:
Max G Cornering: 0.96
Max G Braking: -0.95
Max Speed: 98.2mph
Fastest Lap 2:16
The G Forces were surprisingly higher than I expected.
This data came off my Garmin Catalyst.
Thoughts:
It was a fun day! After reading other posts in this forum, I knew what to expect and my day went as anticipated.
Driving: Not surprising that the best mode was Lobo mode with ESC off, (thanks DMS). I’m used to racing an AWD front heavy car, a Subaru STI. Like the Lobo, the STI is way too front heavy/rear light. The best lap times in the STI come with late apexing. Like the STI if you try to max your speed through the apex you will almost certainly understeer terribly to the track out. But unlike the STI the Lobo has the Electronic Dual Clutch Rear Diff. That took some getting used to! I found that post apex, as the understeer set in with light throttle, I had to make a leap of faith and give it more throttle. Slower into the apex, then faster out. My mind was telling me I was going to power understeer right off the track. You can feel/see the understeer coming out of the apex and are sure you are going off. But once I got the power up the torque would apply to the outside rear tire and the front would magically stop understeering and turn the truck. I equate it to the first time I drove a very high downforce race car, you have to believe that going faster will make more downforce which will give you the grip to stay on the track.
I practiced this rear torque steer on the sharpest three 90-degree corners where even if it didn’t work I’d probably leave the track at 35-45 mph.
Tires: As reported by others, on the one hand they are awful. Particularly under threshold braking, grip was quite low. On the other hand, they had so little grip that I never did get my brakes to go soft. They will be fine for another fall season session, but next spring I will be upgrading.
Brakes: The OEM pads did better than I expected. They never went soft on me because the tires couldn’t generate enough grip to overheat them. At least not on a cool wet day.
I put caliper temp sensor stickers on a week before and did some spirited mountain road driving. The temp sensors never registered enough heat to change color:
At the end of the track day here’s what they read, a max high of between 275 F and 300 F. When considering these temps remember this is on the outside of the caliper between the two pistons. The brake fluid inside the pistons will be much hotter. But it’s good to have the baseline for future brake comparisons.
Transmission: I found the paddle shifters to be direct and easy to operate. They shift far more directly than the paddle shifters in our Edge ST. Both up and downshifts worked fine.
Seats: I used the seatbelt inertia lock and power seat adjuster to get nice and tight. I reversed the headrest to give me more helmet room; that’s a good tip! For now, I’ll live with the seats and seat belt. It’s too bad Ford doesn’t put the same belt retractor on the driver’s side as the passenger side so we can lock ourselves in more tightly. Corvettes have had that feature for 20+ years. I wonder if it’s possible to put a passenger side retractor on the driver side?
Driving with the window down: Some HPDE events require the driver’s window to be down for giving a point-by. That created a LOT of wind buffeting at 65+ mph. I found that if I opened the rear window slider it almost entirely mitigated the buffeting.
No overheating issues. When the track day was over everything still worked, an unusual occurrence in my track day experiences!
Conclusion: A fun day at the track. I’m looking forward to 200TW tires, EBC Bluestuff pads, and probably front camber bolts. Those will have to wait till next spring though. I live in the mountains and winter is coming soon. ORP only has one track days weekend left this year. But maybe I'll do wheels/tires for that last session!
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