As a youth with little to no experience in the life-threatening injuries or the death department, this track day was something that I was looking forward to. I’m relatively new to car reviewing and corporate car culture, so the event seemed liked it would be a rather daunting experience, but it wasn’t.

This article details my experience with the i30N Hatch and i30 Sedan N. I’ll tell you what I did and didn’t like about each car, including tyre compounds.

This article is a continuation of the GCB N Fest article.

Before we begin, a massive shoutout to the PR team at Hyundai AU for allowing me to participate an event as they created to support our awesome “N” community. If you’re coming from the summary article, you’ll know that the N Festival 2023 was hosted at Sydney Motorsport Park (SMP), and over 500N’s showed up alongside around 1800 owners and friends. The main feature at the N Festival (besides the photo with all the N’s) was the track experience for all the owners, Hyundai had the BRABHAM CIRCUIT setup for use (see image below for circuit layout).

This circuit features a mix of “simple looking” corners, which when minor elevation changes, if you don’t know the circuit it is quite challenging. As this is a track event, we were required to wear a helmet, closed in shoes and long sleeves as well as long pants for safety reasons.

The Cars

For this event Hyundai prepared six cars for raffle winners (these few lucky winners got taken around the track for a hot lap by one of the N TCR drivers) and press to use, this included two i20N’s, two i30N DCT hatchbacks (one normal and one limited edition Drive-N) and two DCT i30 Sedan N’s. All cars initially started off with Pirelli P Zero semi slicks, which were fabulous at handling and gripping throughout all the corners and concluded the day with their stock tyres 😅.

Hatch N

I was able to drive the N Drive-N limited edition car, this beauty differs from the regular hatch with its limited edition number, white or black exterior paint with extra decals and badging, black Alcantara lined interior with red accents (compared to the normal performance blue) and Alcantara wheel, finally concluding with bespoke dark bronze forged wheels.

The mate I was with didn’t wear long pants 🤦, luckily for him Hyundai had a spare pair available for him to use. While waiting for him to change, I was signalled to get in the car by the Mark the pit manager . As soon as I got into the hatch, I knew something amazing was about to happen. I settled in and got everything adjusted, chucked it into manual mode. The soft Alcantara wheel in my hands with cool to the touch metallic paddles at my fingertips, I felt at one with the car.

My friend finally gets in the car, and we pull out of the pit garage and into the queue to go on track, almost instantly we get the point (👈) to go by the safety guy, we swiftly move onto the pit exit lane, shifting from first to second with the classic N pop. By the time we reach the top of second gear its time to hit the brakes for turn two. Midway through turn two I realised… “I’m on track baby!!”, this moment the culmination of pestering Alan for weeks, along with my dream of doing this for the last 3 years, all the sim time in the world doesn’t compare to what I felt in that one corner, we shift into third gear as we casually continue trying to get a little bit of heat into the tyres.

All of a sudden, I snap back to “reality” when in the right mirror I see another performance blue i30N hatch flying up on my right side, as he flies by me on the miniscule straight after turn two and we share a brief glance. They fly past and once they’re around 50m past me, something in my brain switches and suddenly were in second gear at around 5k RPM, my right foot spontaneously plants itself on the floor as we rapidly accelerate into turn three, closing the gap. We reach turn four and I apply a small amount of brakes to reduce the distance between the two cars, slowing down to around 110km/h we enter turn four a sharp to shallow turn, exiting the corner under full throttle using 90% of the track we migrate from the inside to the outside of the corner following the other i30N. Approaching turn five, we slow down to compensate for the sharpness of the corner, throttling out letting the E-LSD do its thing, you can feel the difference in power going between the left and right front wheels through the steering wheel.

As we approach what I’m going to call the “oh shit” part of the track (turns six, seven, eight, nine, ten and eleven), we slow down and shift back into second gear nearing redline, dashboard shift lights flashing and slow down for turns six, slightly powering out on to turn seven before letting mostly off the throttle for turn eight and nine. All this is happening while I’m sharply watching this other i30N’s line and closely paying attention to what it’s doing, learning and mimicking it. We’ve made it 50% of the way around turn ten, I apply around 40% throttle but somethings off, the backend loosens up and starts to come around… I let off the throttle and regain control of the car, at this point we were cursing at around 80km/h coming up to turns eleven. Entering turn eleven my mate notifies me that the checkered flag is waving and that’s it for this session. We complete the rest of the lap doing 60km/h all the way back to the pits, learning the rest of the track. When we get back to the pits the Hyundai pit manager , checks over our car and long behold the tyres were “fucked”. We sit out the next session while they change the car from its semi slick P Zero’s to its standard street P Zero’s.

With new tyres installed we head out, this time a bit weary of the grip level and the lack “heat” in the tyres. We make it through the first lap perfectly, keeping up traffic and even passing a few N’s. Along the straight away we go, heading into turn one for the first time at full pelt (around 205km/h down the straight). Looking at the 200 marker, then the 150 marker, around half way to the 100 marker, I apply a medium amount of breaking to slow us down to around 140km/h before heading into the turn. We fly through there like no one’s business, my ass gripping the seat as I can feel each tiny bump in the track surface, my body hugs the bucket seats and barely moves!!! We MADE IT (what a fucking rush)! You can really feel the difference between the two tyres even when lightly pushing the car, around turn four I feel like I could feel the tyres on the edges of the rims ready to just peel off. We continue the for the rest of the session, finalising this session with it being the first full track session of the day and my life 🥰.

After the checkered flag is waved, we come back to the pits, my heart absolutely racing, the apple watch on my wrist vibrates “your heart rate is higher than usual” peaking at around 160 bpm. We stop at the garage and get out, my legs weakened after what we just did, I drink half a bottle of water then get tapped on the shoulder for another session… How can I say no? Within 5 minutes we’re into the Sedan N.

The Sedan N

My beloved i30 Sedan N (Natalie, checkout my review of this ), is literally my favourite car to drive on the street and now I’ve had the experience to drive it on track, it unlocks a next level driving experience that you’d expect from the likes for Porsche or Audi. Having driven this car down for the N festival from Queensland, I can say the dual personalities really do come true.

I had what I would consider an extremely good experience in the Sedan N on track, with one exception… TURN ONE, on our second or third lap, we come flying down the straight, slowing down for turn one. I look down a check the speedo, were doing 160km/h, IMO way too fast for the line that we’re on. Running through my brain is two options: 1. Stay committed and lightly reduce the amount of throttle to allow the car to turn in more 2. Fully let off the throttle and who knows

As we’re getting further into turn one, my brain switches from option one to option two as we’re fast approaching the edge of the track. The weight instantly moves around unloading the front tyres and loading up the rear tyres, the back end starts to go. We’re still doing 150km/h at this point and are starting to point off track around 80% through the corner, I correct the steering in a motion that slows the car down, after a few tyre squeals… phew. We make it to corner two, alive with no physical issue, mentally drained, we take it slow and give a few cars point by’s. By turn five we’re back at it going along as if nothing happened.

The cornering ability of the Sedan N appears to be a bit limited by the lesser grip between the “leather” seat and your ass (at least for me a 6”3’ slim build). BUT two benefits of the less grippy wider seats, is (1) the on-road comfort and (2) the active ventilation. Coming off our third lap I was starting to get HOT, so after turn one I chucked on the ventilated seat and by the end of corner 4 I could feel it, cooling my back and ass.

I20N

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to go for a drive in one of these, but they’re an absolutely stunning car and are able to keep up pretty well with all the i30’s on track.

IONIQ 5 N

During the event Hyundai was allowing customers who preordered the IONIQ 5 N to have either a test drive or a ride along experience with a professional driver (they did 100 of these). We unfortunately couldn’t drive or sit in these cars. Looks wise though they are soooooooo fucking cool, and look awesome in person (even more so than the regular IONIQ 5). The curves and sharp edges really make the car standout against all the other “performance” EV’s especially the KIA EV6 (which is based on the same underlying platform). Geeze at the main article if you are wanting to see some pictures of their test bed car.

Some blokes car broke

Just before we were scheduled to go on, someone had a minor little issue with their car (and we believe one of the mods they had performed). We believe one of their mods was relating to the fuel delivery system on their i30N Hatch, from what I heard there was a trail of fire leading to where their car stopped. Unfortunately for them they had to be towed off track and it looked like their engine bay had caught fire.

How was Sydney Motorsport Park

Sydney Motorsport Park is… well, awesome! Excluding the track aspect, it has plenty of parking and decent viewing spots, everything is clean and modern. The built-in café has some tasty ass food, we had the Chicken Schnitzel burger, now since your at a track you wouldn’t really expect decent food… BUT this was actually good.

Now onto the main event... the skid pan 😆. The skid pan is setup well with decent water flow from the top down along a slight hill, the downside with the skid pan and this event is definitely the FWDness of the N’s. Most of the N’s that tried it, either sounded like someone letting a phatty rip every few seconds with all the pops and bangs OR the absolutely railed first gear (I swear I could hear some metallicy noises from time to time).

Track time, it 👏 fucking 👏 rules 👏. It has in my opinion the required elements of an amazing track; decently long straight, highspeed corners (that require commitment), corners with slight elevation changes and most importantly lower speed “S” style corners (it really makes me sad, with the lack of interesting tracks around south east queensland). For a new Nthusiast or even a regular joe schmo, this track is perfect. The runoff out of each corner is massive, with turn one (the one at the end of the straight) having plenty of cat litter (gravel) to save you if you fly off track.

Sadly, we ran out of time and couldn’t go to the drag strip (we could hear it though) or the go kart track 😢.

If I had to give the track a rating out of 9 it would be 8.5/9, would’ve been better if there was more undercover area.

What I learnt through this experience

The N brand really does mean business when it comes to the dual personality of the N cars. You can go from driving a “dinky” “standard” i30 to driving a full-on track monster with a single button press. Especially as a newer track driver the N’s inspired a level confidence that I wasn’t expecting, as well as the plus of me being unlikely to spin out (unless I do something dumb), cause of that front wheel drive. With that being said you still need to drive within your limits and commit to every action you take on track (👀 turn one 👀), as the track is a dangerous place.

Again, I’m extremely thankful to the entire Hyundai team for putting this event on (as both an N owner and a “journalist”) and for allowing me to take Alans place, without them I wouldn’t have found my potential new passion.

Love, Ryan 🥰