A few months ago, Tesla released a new version of track mode that makes everything a lot better. Track Mode V2 adds something brilliant to the driving experience: stupidity.
For one, Track Mode lets you now see the status of your tires, battery, brakes, and motors (because Teslas, just like GT500s, like overheating) as well as a G meter. It also lets the driver choose how to cool the car.
But most importantly, it let’s you customize the power bias, stability control, and regen. Previously Track Mode disabled regen, and while it did also sort of let the car slip a little, it wasn’t much.
Regular Track Mode was only worth having for the extra cooling, other than that the car still under-steered a bit too much, and without the regen the brakes felt a bit overwhelmed.
With the new Track Mode each driver can have their prefered settings, it has a “race” preset (which I suspect is the regular track mode) and a drift mode, which reduces the stability assist as much as possible as well as making the car rear biased.
The modes matter
I feel like Tesla did (as they usually do) and simplified stuff Germans usually complicate, you can have your car turn fully FWD or fully RWD, and while it is noticeably slower) it does change the way the car behaves. For one, in FWD mode it does understeer a bit more than usual, and it seems rather like a FWD car. In RWD mode the car seems to behave like a full on RWD car, and since the motors in the Model 3 are very torquey, it takes very little effort to make the car slip or even drift.
Nonetheless, I suspect the stability control cannot be fully disabled, the car seems to never let you slide a lot. Additionally, even in full RWD mode the car can be made to understeer, and the stability control will come in and dab the brakes if such is the case.
I tested the new Track Mode down a few, wide, flat, and wet back roads and lets just say I wasn’t expecting the car to give me so much control. It feels like the stability control still kicks in a bit (and when it does, I don’t think the car remains in full RWD or FWD mode)
Cold summer tires, a wet road, a foolish driver and a two ton car do make for a very bizarre result.