[Autocross] Novice School + Points Event #7 with TSCC: September 2025
Finally back to autocrossing my own car
I knew that I wasn’t going to be nearly as active in driving this year due to other stuff going on… but it dawned on me that the last time I autocrossed my own car was in November 2024. The last time I was on track was May of this year. While I did get to have fun autocrossing a friend’s wagon earlier this year, it’s not the same as driving your own car.
The Tidewater Sports Car Club was putting on a Novice School at the Suffolk Executive Airport on Saturday, with Points Event #7 the day after. The stars aligned so at about a month out I signed up to instruct for the Novice School and to drive on Sunday.
Changes leading up to the event…
Even though I haven’t been driving much, I have been acquiring bits and pieces here and there for the car. I picked up a set of 18x8.5 Konig Heliograms with some barely-used 245/40R18 Kumho V730s right after the May event. I got these in hopes of fitting a big brake kit in the near-ish future. Unfortunately they rubbed. I had gone from a 245/40R17 to a 245/40R18, so +1in in overall diameter from 24.7 to 25.7in tall.
New wheels look great, but the car now rubbed on the 245/40R18, an inch larger in diameter than the old 245/40R17s it was set up around
… leads to more changes before the event
The rubbing was 100% because I had modified the bump stops to optimize around a shorter tire while on the 034 lowering springs. I didn’t have any real issues with how they drove or performed, but it took some fiddling with bump stops to get there. Going to a taller tire meant that I had to give up about 12mm of travel. If you haven’t seen the Ride Height article/video… this is a big deal when there is only 18mm before touching the bump stops at STOCK ride height. The springs had settled a bit further (approx 3-4mm over nearly 2 years) since the measurements were originally taken as well. Not huge, not unexpected… but it all adds up. The shortened Volvo bump stops I used were perfect for maximizing bump travel on the shorter tire… but the taller tire now demanded more clearance or less bump travel.
A “quick” spring change over the course of a couple days before the event
So I picked up some factory Golf R (DSG) springs to try out, along with new factory Golf R bump stops. I figured the front springs (5Q0411105JG) were a safe bet since the 6MT version (5Q0544405JF) comes on the GTI Club Sport S in Europe… the big question was the rear springs (5Q0511115EP for all MK7 Golf R).
The rear is far less of a pain in the ass to change vs the front so I figured I’d just see what happens and worst case scenario I change them out. The bump stops installed were 5Q0412303B (front) and 5Q0511357N (rear) for reference, also from a MK7R.
Running the bump steer gauge on the car… yet again
While the car was apart (a few days prior to the event), I took the opportunity to run the bump steer gauge with the Whiteline ball joints both with and without the KCA462 bump steer correction inserts. I’m still putting all the stuff together but getting closer to doing a proper article on that subject.
The car sits a tad higher in the rear than I would like… but there’s no rubbing and the ride is great.
The front measured approximately 350mm center of hub to fender, while the rear was closer to 370mm, so it looked a bit silly to say the least
There wasn’t time to align the car after raising it back up, so I set the front toe with toe plates to about 2mm toe in up front, and checked the back which was about -6mm total toe out. Way excessive but I had to just send it.
Back to the original subject: the events
Novice School on Saturday
Saturday we held the novice school which was a fun time. I had two students: Ryan in a Fiesta ST who I’d instructed previously (though did not document that event) and another complete newbie, Sean in a 2025 Civic Hybrid.
Sean was a younger, more timid driver who required encouragement to drive faster. He had done one autocross event prior, but that was it. We whittled down several seconds pretty quickly, but he still was nowhere near the limits of traction as evidenced by the lack of audible tire feedback. I took one run in it with Sean as passenger to show what it was capable of (about 20 seconds faster than his best time at that point), and things immediately clicked. He was able to drive much closer to the limits. His learning style is very much the type where “good” needs to be demonstrated, then he can much more confidently attempt to replicate it. He knocked off a bunch of time immediately, and we continued chipping away the remainder of the day.
Ryan is a really cool older dude about my age. I had the pleasure of working with him (and his son) at last year’s novice school, so I knew his background already. He had done autocross and track days years ago, but was back just to hang out and support his son. Unfortunately the car was making some really loud/solid clunking noises in the morning session when getting on/off throttle. It sounded like a motor mount even though there was no physical play. Ultimately Ryan decided to quit his runs early to let his son make the call whether to keep driving or not.
Rather than sitting out his session, I threw the keys of my car to Ryan to let him take a couple runs. I felt like I knew him well enough and trusted that he wouldn’t do anything obscenely dumb so I figured “why not”? He did great, though obviously trying to not overdrive the car. His main takeaway was that it was just the right amount of power, handled way better than expected, and comfortable to boot.
We did a few checks to ensure nothing was going to fall off, and his son chose to keep driving the car throughout the day, so we were able to continue his runs in the Fiesta in the afternoon sessions. Ryan was like 90% of the way there right out of the gate. We worked primarily on maximizing every bit of speed in some of the higher speed transitions, along with shifting to third because he was running out of gear in 2nd. I cut him loose to drive solo where he continued working away a few tenths at a time.
Overall the entire day was a lot of fun, which is really what it’s all about.
Autocross event on Sunday
The event on Sunday I was curious to see how the car (and myself) would do since there was a really large turnout. The V730s are NOT the best autocross tire, and the Suffolk Airport is a once-a-year site so there’s very little data for me to compare to, so I didn’t bother logging anything. It was really just a day to feel out the car and have some fun. Last time I ran here it was raining, so this was a nice change.
There were over 100 drivers over 4 heats, and due to some intermittent timing issues there was typically at least 10-15 minutes between each of my runs, so it was hard to keep heat in the tires, though my driving definitely left at minimum 0.5 sec on the table.
The car was lively in the lower speed stuff, but still pretty predictable. Transitioning felt a tad mushy, I think partially due to going from a 9in wide to 8.5in wide wheel (still on a 245 wide tire). Feeling out the front end was kind of vague, and you can see me testing the limits in two of the right hand sweepers.
The first sweeper you’ll notice I got on the throttle and pushed the car way beyond the point of understeering right before the course transitions from blacktop to concrete where the grip level goes way up. I have no excuse on the sweeper right before the finish… I just came in way too hot and it understeered to the point that I just had to scrub speed and open up the wheel to get some front end bite back. The lower speed corners like this are probably where I notice the biggest difference in the RE71RS vs V730.
I picked up a newer GoPro recently so wanted to play around with some new stuff. I tried getting a POV camera view which came out ok… this view isn’t really great at capturing the corner-entry rotation induced, but it’s pretty decent at showing what “looking ahead” means. For anyone newer to autocross… one you start doing that is when you will notice your consistency goes WAY up.
Results
Final results were posted HERE. To summarize them, I finished:
3rd (of 12) in XA
5th (of 24) in all of the Provisional class
15th (of 102) in PAX overall
8th (of 102) in raw time overall
Generally speaking I’m pretty happy with that considering it was on “meh” tires, with a mystery rear alignment, and only having one other autocross event in the past 10 months. I was one tenth of a second off of Rick in his Alltrack, which is pretty typical so I feel pretty good that a bit more sorting and better tires the GTI is better than before. And even if it’s not… it rides nicer on the street and I don’t have to worry about scraping stuff.
How bad was the alignment?
A few days after the event I was able to have a quick alignment done by one of my VW tech buddies because I was dying to know how far off it was. You could definitely tell something was up just driving around at highway speeds… and it was way goofy as suspected:
Tons of rear toe out… and highly uneven causing a bunch of thrust angle, plus rear camber was way off as well.
What’s next?
While this photo was taken while lifting to induce rotation… it’s pretty obvious that the rear sits way high
My only real gripe with the car is the rear ride height. It sit about 15-16mm higher than the front (and a couple mm higher with the Helix subwoofer removed for autocross/track events). I acquired a set of 5Q0511115HL GTI TCR (Euro trim) rear springs. Oddly enough from my local VW dealer. There were 2 listed in the entire country so I snagged them. As far as I know this part number isn’t used on any US models which is incredibly odd that it was in dealer stock at all. I’m hoping to have these swapped on and the car aligned (again) before Fastivus on October 4th at Summit Point.
I’ve also got a set of Toyo RR slicks that I picked up on crazy sale (due to the new Toyo R release) which need mounted up on my 17x9 Apex wheels. I’ve not run this tire before, so we’ll see how much worse this over-10-year-old design is than newer 200TW tires I suppose.
