... already shopping for a ducted hood haha.
I know it is hard to resist buying shiny bits to put on our cars but the NSX will handle the heat just fine in stock form for your first year while you develope your skills. You will most likely only manage to use 70-75% of the cars ability unless your just a natural. Keep your spends to the important things for a beginner, maintain the car with fresh fluids, new Max Performance STREET tires (NT-05, DirezzaII, you may need a second set of wheels to make these tires fit), upgrade brake pads, and brake cooling ducts (buy them or make them they are cheap). That is all you need to do to the car. The amount you are thinking about spending on a hood will get you more seat time and a day with a Pro coach, the hood will not have any effect on your lap times and at the level you will be pushing the car may only get you 5 degrees cooler than without a vented hood. If you must buy parts for the car you can spend whatever you want on safety items, and NO a turbo or supercharger is not a safety item.
I know this is hard to do as you want to make improvements to your car as you improve but the car needs to come later, if you change the car and the driver you have no way of knowing if you have improved or if it was just the car. The goal is to improve the driver then the car. Done this way you will be a much better driver in the end, and will be able to take full advantage of every performance mod you add to the car later.
Later down the road, one other little trick, as you progress and feel like you can not make any more improvments in your driving ability get out of the NSX and track any other car if only for a weekend you will learn another complete skill set as soon as you change what you are comfortable with.
I hate to be the party pooper, but I have been tracking for over 15 years in some form or another and in a NSX from almost the begining and what I did was the wrong aproach for me and most drivers. It was the most expensive way to reach the level I am at now, and left me with a lot of bad habits that I am still learning to undo. I started in autocross (bad habits will be learned here), moved to HPDE's with a stock NSX for two years made very few changes over those two years but I should have changed nothing and just learned to drive. Next and here is where I really screwed up, I sold my mostly stock NSX and bought a fully track prepped NSX. It had everything, headers, blower, BBK, Aero, Harnesses, Non-compliant stuff, Coil over shocks, adjustable track rate sway bars, light weight clutch, and R-Comp tires. It was the SH*T, only I was not and was no where near ready for this step. The car was so far above my abilities I learned almost nothing for the next few years. The car was one big bandaid for all my weaknesses as a driver. The lap times dropped and I thaught I was a god on the track, I was shaving 10 to 20 seconds off my best times at every track I went to. Guys that were faster than me were now just little dots in my rear view mirror, it felt great and I thaught I was making huge progress. The problem was the car was what improved and while I was only able to drive my first car at 80% of its potencial and had not learned to drive any higher, I did the same thing in the new car. I could only drive it to about 80% of its potencial. While the new cars potencial was much higher than the old cars, my abilities were stagnant. I then started changing this car looking for even better lap times, I spent more money found a few more seconds had more fun then hit a plateau. For the next two years I changed a lot more stuff and never found any more time.
Every change I made to the car was only done to mask a short comming I had as a driver, you can only mask them for a while then one day you sit in your passenger seat with a club level hot shoe driving your car and realize that you have been on the wrong path. Then you sit next to a Pro Level driver and you want to slap yourself in the face. I have not wasted a lot of money (that is not true, but I had a lot of fun) but I have wasted a lot of time. I could be a much better driver than I am today and I still would of had just as much fun. In the group of guys I run with now I see the same mistakes happening, guys spending crazy amounts of money on tires that last a weekend, buying motors, performance mods, and $8,000 shocks chasing the ultimate lap time. For the last three years I have changed very little on my car, mainly the alignment, and have focused my efforts on finding time by improving me and relearning the bad habits that took years to learn. I have made improvements and can honestly say I am a better driver today than I was three years ago, I have a long way to go but I am on the right path now. The skills I am learning now will translate into any car I drive the changes you make to your car will only help your car.
Dave
