Thank all of you who commented and gave advice in this thread. I figured you would all be interested to know how the event went.
Firstly due to lack of time to work on the car and general stinginess I did not upgrade my brake pads or fluid. Through the miracle of being really slow I managed to make it through the event with out boiling the fluid or melting my pads. I did notice that my brakes feel quite different after the event than before. I am no expert, but I think I may have chewed through a good portion of my pads life in my short time on the track.
Now on with the story.
I arrived at the event after a foggy, but uneventful drive from the Milwaukee area to the track in South Beloit. Tech took only a few minutes where they noted that my brake fluid was not completely clear and told me to be careful. Up next was the drivers meeting where they went though all of the normal track stuff including the meaning of the flags and again to be very careful of brakes in general as black hawk raceway is notorious for being hard on them. I also met up with my instructor and 2 other novice drivers in my group. We were going to do a lead follow style where the instructor drives the racing line and everyone else tries their best to keep up (More on this later) and stay on the line. Our group was 1 S2000 and 3 Miatas. Our instructor had a nicely prepped S2000 and my new novice friends had a ND1 Miata and a Mazdaspeed Miata like mine. With that out of the way we had a short delay until the fog lifted from the track. I used this time to get my Bluetooth obd2 sensor and the race chrono app setup to monitor my coolant temps and lap times. The race chrono ended up being a super cool tool that allowed me to see where i went fast and not. About 40 minutes later I heard the call for the novice class to get ready to go.
I found myself at the back of our lead follow line and we were off for our first session where we were to set a "spirited" pace and figure out where the flag stations were. Now being that I had never driven on a track before nor pushed the limit of my tires on the street I had difficulty keeping up with even this "slow" lap. Thanks to the race chrono I know we were running 2 minute laps. By the end of the day I believed this was slow, but at the time it was all I could do to keep up in the twisty part of the track. I learned a lot in that first session like how much grip I thought my tires had (I was wrong) and how hard I could stomp on the brakes. I came out of the session a bit stunned by these "slow" laps.
In the second session we picked up the pace a bit and practiced point bys and passing on the straights. Our pace had picked up to about 1:45 per lap. I was once again falling behind, but by the end of the session I felt good at this pace and could keep up mostly. After this session I mentioned to my instructor that I felt my tires were not as grippy as the other students. He informed me that I was right, but that I had not hit the limit yet.
During the 3rd session my instructor had the 2 other students run in front of him and me directly behind him. This was very helpful because I did not need to look a few cars ahead to try and follow his line. My only job was to try and follow the line and not let him lose me. This session went very well with my best time of the day at 1:33.9. I finally felt like I was driving to my cars potential until my instructor took me for a ride along in his S2000.
That ride was eye opening! The amount of grip he showed me was moderately mind blowing not to mention how late he waited to brake. By the end he had managed to do a 1:22 with some traffic. I now knew my car was capable of much faster times if I was willing to push myself a little. Unfortunately my instructor crashed in the very next session. He was just fine and his car had only minor damage, but his day was done. He released the 2 other drivers to finish out the day alone and got me a fill in instructor.
Session 4 was my first session with the fill in. He drove slowly compared to my other instructor, but did a great job of showing the racing line. We set down some easy and repeatable 1:40's. When we came back in he said he wanted to drive my car to get a feel for what I was working with and to show me where I could make up some time. I did not time these laps, but he was easy on the gas and brakes so I would guess somewhere in the 1:40s. The real interesting part of this ride along was where he started to get back on the power coming out of turns. He was on the gas so much earlier than I was and just kept it down where I dared not. It was incredibly helpful to have this session as it showed me the gap between my abilities and those of the cars.
In the final session of the day I asked my instructor to pick up the pace a bit and I worked on getting on power earlier and using the entire width of the track. We set some very consistent 1:35 laps for the entire session with me playing with applying more and more power earlier and earlier. This was the first session where I actually felt like I had a handle on everything that was going on and I could relax a little. In the end I never did beat the 1:32.9 lap I had with my first instructor, but I had a blast none the less. Crucially both me and my car came back in one piece.
Once again to all who commented thank you for your collective wisdom on how to prepare and do my first track day.
