Elise Cup 250 catalytic converter broken after 4300km/2700miles: go to original ceramic converter or a metal sheet-based sports converter?

[JohanDB 10]

Hi there,

hope you are all well.

yesterday during LoT’s track day at Zolder my Cup 250 threw a MIL with the engine check lamp lit in the combimeter and an error code reading the catalytic converter being below efficiency threshold during 2nd sighting lap (top speed 80km/h).

I understand it could be either a bad reading of the O2 sensor pre/post converter (unlikely) or the converter being broken (likely as the exhaust smells quite strongly, definitely more than new).

As the car is under warranty (1 year old), parts may likely be exchanged under warranty but I wonder a couple of things someone might have experience with:

1. the car has 4300km of which about 2500km run in (gentle drive), around 1000km additional road drive (not aggressive, following posted speeds and no strong acceleration) and about 800km on track (obviously less gentle driving, due to Covid situation only Zolder x2 and Spa x2 - they were absolutely great so far) : that seems to me quite a weak catalytic converter considering all the protection logics normally implemented - do you guys also experience frequent catalytic converter failures??
2. if I have to exchange the converter, ideally by original under warranty, I wonder how long it would last... Would it be an option, later on, to consider a “sports converter”?? I understood it as using a metal mesh rather than the factory-installed ceramic substrate in the converter but info so far is that those sports converters are considered for performance such as higher exhaust flows and lighter weight. Conversion efficiency seems not be guaranteed neither. My interest here would be rather durability... I understood race cars, rally cars etc actually do use these metal substrate-based “sports” converters: any recommendation as to, yes indeed they do withstand higher temperature cycling, and for any make (could only find Larini, Janspeed and HJS as suppliers of these sports converters so far)??

thank you so much in advance for your advice!

cheers,
Johan