The Itty Bitty NOVA VW Committee

[Jake]

Glad you finally got out for some Real Live Track Time and got a hit of the GFCP! You did well, you listened and made some good progress in the ~2.5 sessions we had. A few notes from my end before you go do this a second time - not trying to totally curb your enthusiasm, just provide my take on the car and your driving.

My approach as your instructor, knowing you and that we only had a few sessions to make the most of everything, was a bit more "attack mode" than I normally would use with, like, anyone else. A lot of the instruction beyond basic guidance of the driving line was focused on heavy braking and aggressive exits out of corners. Which... you did well with and the car handled fine for the time it spent doing so.

If you keep doing this in the GTI, I would be very cautious about being so aggressive on those tires and with those brakes. The tires were getting greasy in your second session - hence some of how they handled with my DE 2 laps - and the brakes didn't have a ton of feel beyond aggressive-ish initial bite (that's every new car, though).

For round two, set tire pressures lower so they won't balloon up to 900 psi after you take T3 and T10 in full attack mode each lap. Better brake fluid is cheap/easy and would probably do wonders for that pedal feel. If you were going to make this a serious long-term DE car, I'd buy some pedal covers that allowed for heel-toe, the way it's set up now makes that near impossible if you're trying to concentrate on other things.

Otherwise, the car is fine. The mechanical LSD is pretty wild when you really start pushing. Thanks for letting me drive it, it was fun to compare it to Joey/Zach's white one.

One note on the student end - we had one instance in the second session where our line/speed up the uphill esses was... a lot. We made it through T10 because I realized we were carrying a lot of speed, you did as I asked, and the stability control gave a helping hand - I felt it a bit, not sure if you did or not. The concerning comment after the fact was "I took the esses flat because you always say you can."

We entered off-line after passing someone, in a car with hot all-seasons, no aero, and a novice driver at the helm and it was pretty uncomfortable for me. In the future, I would ask that you communicate something like that before just doing it - and on my end, I should have asked how you were feeling confidence-wise through that section of track. Chalk it up as a lesson learned on both ends and maybe shoot a tweet at VW's ESC engineers for a job well done.

Aside from that one nitpick, you did really well. The autocross/circuitcross experience in the past set you up nicely to move into HPDE and I think you'll progress quickly, whether it's in this car or something else. Good job!