Sunset Red 1.4 TSI(TFSI) GT Sport - daily drive & track car

[the bruce]

Not bad !! 

You ran the V70 on the ring?

[rex]

Nope. I didn't feel the need for more traction on the Ring. I felt the need for better tire pressure there :). Since I am not pushing very hard on the Nurburgring, for security issues, the tires did not feel like the weakest point. The driver felt like the weakest link .
Only at Hungaroring I got to see the limits of my tires. After my first trip there I bought the v70. And with my second visit to Hungaroring I got to test them.

[rex]

I could really speak many hours of Nring but I do not want to bore you  .I have some other videos of Nring laps and, if you want so see them, look on youtube where the previous videos were. If you can't find them or have any questions about them, please ask.

And to continue my story... After Nring I found out some of my cars faults and I wanted to fix them. First, I was really pissed because the tires would rub against the wheel arches (you can hear this in the videos, especially on the Karusell, even if I was going really slow around here because of the rubbing, approximately 40MPH) . Since my rims were 8x17 ET50 and 225/45 tires I came to the conclusion that the body roll was to big. So I got a set of H&R Anti Roll Bars. The usual kits are 26mm front/ 22mm rear or 28mm front/ 24mm rear. None of these were adequate for me because I did not intend to increase the understeer. So, I got a 26mm bar in the front and 24mm bar for the rear. This is truly a great upgrade, I recommend it to anyone. Now the roll is significantly reduced and the car has more grip in the bends. I did not get any rubbing since, but I have to go to Nring so see if the problem is fixed.





After that I did a dyno. I got ~270 NM and 158 bhp. The most impressive thing for me is that I got more than 150 bhp from 4000 RPM. The dyno runs were made in 4th and 5th gears.









With these new bars on I had my first trip to Hungaroring. This is the F1 track from Hungary which is open 3 times a year for tourists.
This is a track were mistakes are not cost full, were you can make a lot of mistakes and get away with it (unlike Nurburgring). On this track it is really easy to get your car to the limit and beyond. At Nurburgring the driver is the most important, at Hungaroring the car is the most important. Hungaroring is a great place to learn to drive.
Here are some photos from that trip.

[rex]

And to continue with the Hungaroring experience... Below are some videos taken from that track day. The first 2 videos are with my worst driving yet :(

This is my first lap ever on Hungaroring. Unfortunately I was over confident and in the first bend I almost lost the car. Because I had really cold tires the car oversteered a lot (unusual for a mk5).

After the first session I saw that the track had plenty of space so I decided to play a little bit. I drove like a mad man. I was trying to find the lines for my later sessions.
Here are some things to look for in this video:
- at 6.35 a guy loses control of his car just in front of me and almost hits the side walls. My copilot got a little scared.
- at 11.40 my car oversteers at 85 MPH but I somehow get control of the car. This was my biggest scare of the day. It happened in the same place as the incident above. There is a little kink in the bend and, if you are not careful, you get oversteer. Although it may not seem much, it was really scary for me.

And this video is with my best lap that day: 2.26.86

From this trip I understood I needed 2 major upgrades:
- the driver
- the tires
I worked on both before my next trip to Hungaroring.

Enjoy!

[Top Cat]

The perspective of the second vid is quite funny. You two sitting there on the left, justs looks like a Sunday drive to the shops, but on the right looks like a police chase. 

[rex]

Ha ha... never thought of that. The truth is that if I had better lateral support from the seats it would look even better  . Unfortunately I have the stock GT Sport seats (equivalent to GTI USA) and they have nowhere near enough lateral support. Seats are on the update list, but not a priority right now.

And to go on with the story... As I said, I found out that my car needed 2 major upgrades: the driver and the tires, so I decided to work on those.

First of all I attended the classes of a rally school. My teacher is a pilot in our National Rally Championship. I had some theory classes and more driving classes.
My first impression was that I was miles away from where I wanted myself to be. The gap between me and my teacher is huge. I realized that this guy was gifted and had a lot of experience. I started to learn here and there and I hope I will continued my learning with some other courses.
I had driving lessons on a Dacia Logan competing in our National Rally Championship, a Dacia Logan prepared for school and a Subaru Impreza WRX STI (first generation). I truly had a blast in the Subaru, I really liked how it was balanced and that oversteer was easy to get and predictable. The rides in the Subaru and the rides around Nurburgring are the 2 thinks form motorsport that have really impressed me.
Here are some pictures.









The second thing I worked on were the tires. After some reading I found out that Kumho V70a hard compound are the tires for me. I chose 225/45/17 tires because I only had the 17 inch BBS and these tires were cheaper than the larger 18 inch. The price was about 25 EURO less for these than for R888 (somewhere around 175 EURO).  The next trip do Hungaroring I got to put these tires to the test and I am really pleased with the performance.







Of course, after these modification I found some other week spots in my car. I will tell you later what these were. Next episode is about the second trip to Hungaroring.

[rex]

And to talk a little bit about the second trip to Hungaroring... Well it was better than the first one in some respects and worst in other.
I will start with the better things  . Well, I became a better driver and I could control my car better (still far from perfection). Because of those classes I had at the rally school my confidence increased and so did my lap times, helped by the new tires. I managed to shave 3 seconds a lap because of these. But there is still place for improvement.

And the bad thing is that I had a lot of traffic and I got really mad because of this.
At Hungaroring there are 2 groups: below 150bhp and above 150bhp. Since I have 122 bhp in the registration form, I signed in at the "lower league" (I had to, those are the rules). And I was really fast for this league. I do not think I could do one lap without overtaking somebody. But this is not so bad... The problem was that at this league there were a lot of crazy people. For them, track days are just like carting. They would not let me pass even though I was clearly faster than them. Some of them were really bad drivers and did not look in the rear view mirror at all. After I saw this I decided to go with the big boys. Over here, everybody was civilized and understood the risks involved. Surprisingly I wasn't the slowest and I had to cope with some traffic here also (some I overtook and some were overtaking me). From now on I only want to go with the big boys 
Here are some photos form that track day.

























Here are the 2 friend I went with on that trip. Unfortunately they did not tell me they had theme T-Shirts  , so I had no answer for that :).
One of them is member of this forum.

[G30 MC]

Hi Friend, Your car look's superb, Do you have the part number for the R-LINE rear valance? Kind Regard's George

[rex]

Sorry mate, I don't have it and I do not have ETKA to look for them either.
Anyway, there are 2 types of RLine rear valance: the one like I have or the one identical to ED30 rear valance (for 170bhp engines and 4motion cars, non GTI or R32).

[the bruce]

Still very interesting car an nice story.

I like these mods far way from mainstream.

[rex]

Thanks.
Well, because of the engine my car is far away from the mainstream. And the modifications must exclude the engine since there isn't much I can do over there. So, I must concentrate my efforts elsewhere.

So, I was last telling you about the last trip to Hungaroring. I showed you some photos and now I would like to show you a video I made this time. This video contains my best lap (~ 2.23.86). This is the last lap of the video. Unfortunately this is far from a clean lap and I am a little frustrated because I could not do some more clean laps.
In the video below I went with the "big boys". As I said previously this is the category for cars above 150bhp. Theoretically I should not have been in this category but I asked permission from the organizers. In this group all the seriously competitive cars were present. You may recognize some cars form the video as 997 GT3 RS, 997 GT3, Subaru evo IX, M3, Acura NSX, Mini, M3 E46, Z4M, etc. I am really glad I could keep up to some of them and even over take some. I was really surprised of how weak my car is on the straights and that my car is quite ok on the bends. For example the Mini in the video was a lot faster than I am on the straights but it was the same on the bends (that Mini is a modified Mini which I found it had 270bhp and a lot of mods). I am also proud of overtaking the Z4M. Of course, it is really hard to compare car and driver during these track day because everybody is going for fun and there are no real contests. The Z4M driver could be very cautious and the comparison is not correct then. I have no doubts that my car is a lot less slower than a Z4M but, that I am trying to say is that I am glad that my car is not that far behind in the real world. Hope you understood what I am trying to say  . I am not a native English speaker so I might have not made myself understood.
Enjoy!

P.S. Another funny thing is that the 997 GT3 RS is about 3-4 seconds faster than I am on the straight in front of the pits. 

[rex]

Just one more episode and I am up to date.

After the last Hungaroring trip I found other flaws in my current setup  ...
The biggest concern was that I needed some rims to fit my semi slicks on. After much debate I went with VW OEM Goal Anthracite Rims (7,5x17, offset 50). I have done a lot o investigating to find the perfect rims for my taste and these ones are not perfect, but are close. I wanted the rims to be:
- cheap (these are ~145 GBP / rim)
- to have a complete different look than my BBS Rims, preferably anthracite or black (because these will be used on a track I don't want so spend ages cleaning them up from rubber and dust)
- preferably with the center hub 57.1mm
- preferably light. These are 9,9 kg, nowhere near as light as a track rim should be, but these are the lightest OEM 17inch wheels for mk5 Golf.
Team Dynamics was in the final but, because these wheels cost 200 BGP/ rim in Romania, I decided to go with the OEM rims.
Here are some pictures with the wheels. The tires are not yet fitted, but I will do this in spring.













Here is how the rims look on some other cars:







The second thing I found that my car was lacking is more camber. I am not pleased of how much the car understeers and I would like to improve on this. I currently have -1.1' camber but I truly need some more negative camber. I will soon order some TT arms that should give me ~-2.3' camber.
Here is a car with an aggressive camber:



And with this we are not up to date. I have some other modifications in thought but I do not want to bore you with them now. I will write later about them.
Cheers

[keano]

My favourite thread on the forum :D

Keep it up

[rex]

Thanks. You make me blush  .

So guys, we now came to the tricky part... I need better brakes. I opened a new topic with this problem since it does not belong here.
Cheers

[the bruce]

The Votex Goal with only 9.9 kg are nice for the price. 

I should have gone for them instead of the heavier Denver/Monza 17" when
 I was looking for a third set of wheels.