Had a great weekend with the Tidewater Sports Car Club at the December to VIRmember HPDE!
Was great to see
@tigeo in person finally along with a bunch of other MK7 buddies, some from Facebookland and some old friends.
The intercooler: awesome. I never got logging from a full session, but I got a few laps in. I think I have a problem with my dongle or need to update firmware to work with the latest version of Simostools. Not a big deal but in a nutshell IATs were never more than 12-14F over ambient when on throttle. They'd creep up a bit when off throttle of course but go down and stay down to +12-14F. Oil temps never exceeded 245F. Coolant stayed fine at 190-200F.
The sway bar feels great out back. I do think I will go forward with installing the front bar this winter since I already have it. For science. If I hate it in February then the stock front will go back on before a May event.
The Garmin Catalyst: friggin awesome. VERY useful tool for comparing lines and different braking techniques. I still have a lot of work to do myself as a driver as far as getting back to consistently doing the same thing every time. Keeping myself in place in the seat seems to be the biggest issue. Arms and shoulders are so sore
I was able to work on individual sections of the track throughout the weekend and it pieces together an "optimal lap" video where you can figure out which ways were fastest.
The main thing is it doesn't tell you what the CAR is capable of... only what YOU have already done. As long as that is understood, and you can feel comfortable pushing yourself and know WHERE you can do it safely, you can figure out what works and what doesn't pretty quickly. I think the value in this thing will be huge in speeding up learning a new track. Try a few different lines and it'll slowly adjust the recommendations to piece together what is a decent goal.
On the APR DSG tune: prior to the event I tested out the manual mode and found out it did NOT auto-upshift as I instructed to... unless you lift off the throttle. Even then it didn't work every single time. I took the car back and had it flashed to run manual with no auto-upshift as I'd rather it be consistent. MAN was it hard to break the habit of letting it upshift itself on the stock tune... At some point I'll have to make a montage of me yelling inside the car "DAMNIT SHIFT" etc as it hits the rev limiter, I remember to hit the paddle, and then it takes FOREVER to complete the shift. Finally on my 4th session on Saturday I started to get a rhythm down... Basically only used 3rd-4th. Stock ECU tune was speed limited to about 121-122mph GPS speed (due to the shorter 245/40R17s).
Here was MY personal fastest actual lap of the weekend, Saturday in session 4:
And a buddy of mine did a slightly faster lap... but there is a TON of time as he blew turn 1 and left some time in the esses... but had a ton of speed on me through South Bend and Hog Pen:
Can't wait to go back in February! Shameless plug in case you're interested in joining in on the fun:
https://www.motorsportreg.com/event...rginia-international-raceway-tidewater-120123