Last week I had the last trackday for this year at Hungaroring. There are many things I want to share with you, so here is a review of that trip...
Before the trip I was watching the weather (it snowed in Romania 2 days before the track day in Hungary) and I must say we were lucky because it was sunny. But it was very cold... In the morning there were 2 degrees and in the afternoon it got to 12-13... This had a severe impact on the cars handling and power. During the first session I felt like I was on ice. The car was very, very unpredictable and I must say I was quite scared. The brakes were also rubbish because of the cold tires that had no grip. The only positive thing was the power output. I've never seen the car pull so hard. Compared to my friend Stefan (mk5 Golf 2.0 TDI with a remap) I was faster on the straight line and even with a passenger in my car he still couldn't get closer to me on the straights (in spring we was faster than me).
The tires didn't get to temperature until the last laps of the second session. And after that I still had the felling the car was unpredictable and would oversteer without a warning. It was really strange considering I haven't done any mods since spring... I managed to regain control of the car on a number of occasions but I lost control of the car on three occasions. On two occasions I saw that I could not control the slide so I hit the brake pedal and the car just did a Tet-a-queue. I will speak about the 3rd case on another post.
Incredibly, I got to improve my time by 0.08 and now I got to
2:21.60 (even a bit below that). I say incredibly because I had about 4 laps (during the 5 sessions I've completed) without traffic and the best lap (best 2 laps) were in the second session when the tires have just came up to temperature but the car was still a little bit loose because of the cold tarmac and I did not push so hard. I was really, really surprised.
This trip we were quite a big gang... The cars from our group were:
Renault Sport R26 F1, VW Golf 2.0 TDI, Stage 3 TTRS, BMW 335i Performance, BMW 335i MSport, Civic FN2 Type R Championship White, my 1.4 TSI Golf and a 2.0 TFSI Stage 2 A3.
Guess who had the best time?
Nope, it wasn't the TTRS because, even if he had the fastest car in a straight line, the tires were rubbish and the driver didn't push so hard. The fastest car was the A3! He's got Stage 2 Revo Software, semislicks, TT hubs front&back, APRacing brakes, LSD, etc. It is a very fast and balanced car. You can see this car in a video below (I tried to stay with him on a fast lap, in the twisty part of the track).
A few pictures of my car 'in action':
The fastest lap (the film is rubbish because I had the GoPro facing downwards and the focus is on the interior of the car, even if I had the Spot Metering ON):
And the session when I had a friend (Alex with the BMW 335i MSport) as a passenger (again I had issues with overexposure) is below. He was really amassed with the brakes and suspension...
In this session I try to stay with Silviu, the A3 driver but I really can't. He is about 6-7 seconds faster than me on Hungaroring (2.15 vs 2.21).
I almost lose control of the car in this video also @ 6:14.
And the second part of the video is the same session filmed from Stefan's car (mk5 Golf 2.0 TDI):
All comments are welcomed!
Thanks for watching!
