The Itty Bitty NOVA VW Committee

[Senor_Taylor]

Mileage: 1600 as off Monday night.



After dragging one of my highschool friends to a few track events, I finally convinced him to do a hyperdrive. After doing some thinking, I realized it made no sense not to hyperdrive the GTI as well, so I emailed Laura and got signed up. Since I was busy working, I had to go out in a later DE1 session instead of the hyperdrive session, but by the time that rolled around, it was pouring rain. Sean was my instructor and we agreed that perhaps it wasn't the best idea to waste my one session then, and to just save it for Sunday. That prompted me to ask Laura if I could actually run DE1 for Sunday and her and Jack agreed. With that good news, I felt inspired and begged Sean to let me go out in the rain.



I didn't record that session, but it was a very cool experience to see how well the FWD LSD and All Seasons could hurl me around in the rain. What it really did was make me hungry to get out on the dry stuff. Jake agreed to be my instructor for the day and we headed out after lunch. This was my first time on a full course with other cars, but it wasn't my first rodeo entirely, so I had something to prove. We started at the very back of the grid, which I was thankful for since I expected to be much slower than all of these people. These guys were in their 5 sessions of the weekend and I was only in my second one ever, and my first one dry! We took our pace lap, followed a C7 around for a lap and got the point by on the front straight. Off to the races! This car absolutely rockets from 40-100mph which makes it really easy to get the point by early in the straights. I pushed more and more each lap, running up on quite a few people, biding my time, then rocketing by them on the straight. It was an awesome experience.

Jake and I went out for 2 more sessions in the car after that (barely avoiding running out of gas in the second) and Jake even took it out in DE2 to terrorize Ryan in his Miata (Which he is absurdly fast in). The car itself blew me away constantly. The straight line speed was expected and was a treat to ride the tail of V8 Mustangs down the back straight until they get tired of all the plaid in their mirror. The turn in was also a bit expected considering the short wheel base, FWD, and electric steering. What impressed me was the sustained cornering speed and exiting acceleration. I found myself running up on people coming out of turns because all I had to do was make the initial turn in, set my steering angle, and plant my foot. The mechanical LSD would CLAW at the pavement and hurl you around the turn. If you had a little too much speed and started to push through the turn (surprisingly rare), a quick tap of the brake would slide the rear out very nicely and a stomp of the gas would whip the car straight and send you to warp speed. This car is REALLY awesome on track. Did I mention we were on 500 treadwear All Seasons? My car also has the larger Golf R brakes which include massive 14 inch calipers in the front and you can tell. We were braking hard and they never once complained. I didn't push because it was clear from Jake towards the end of the day that it may not be smart to try to win DE1 on the first time out there in my brand new car, but I'm confident the brakes had a lot more left to give.



Part of me is excited to get something less expensive that I can build into a true race car, but another part of me is a LITTLE sad that this car is THIS good on track and I'll be driving some cheaper and slower instead. In the mean time, I'll be signing up for at least 2 more autocrosses, a track cross, and A DE or two in this thing before I retire it to a life of commuting. One of my favorite parts of the weekend is when I brought the car back in fresh off of 3 almost back to back to back sessions with me and Jake driving it. The car is hissing and popping and creaking from everything being so hot, and Tom's dad asked me what kind of tires and brakes I had on the thing. I replied "Eh... Whatever VW uses at the factory" and he laughed his ass off. It really is wild to be going this fast in a little hatch back that college girls drive because they're cute.

Here is the middle session of the day before Jake realized I wasn't going to take it easy and encouraged me to back off.