Fastivus at Summit Point: October 2025
Last minute prep, minor problems, awesome people, new PB, best Fastivus yet
Fastivus (hosted by Track Daze) returned again to the Shenandoah Circuit at Summit Point Motorsports Park for 2025. In a time where everything costs more than ever, VW of America stepped in as a sponsor and pricing was dropped to just $100 for the single-day HPDE. I’ve personally been busy with a ton of other stuff going on and was honestly considering skipping this year, but the price drop was just too good to ignore. This news came roughly 45 days prior to the event… so that meant I needed to actually get my car ready.
Pre-event prep (and distractions)
If you read the last autocross trip report, you may recall that I swapped Golf R springs on, and the ass end was sitting just a tad too high for my liking. I had plans to install what I believed are Club Sport or TCR rear springs (5Q0 511 115 HL - they are, but that’s not the full story) before this event to correct that…
Long story short I received the springs and tested the rates (214lb/in) prior to going through the trouble of changing them again. I was surprised to find they are softer than my original GTI rear springs (5QM 511 115 AB, 230lb/in) … so I really did not want to spend the time installing them.
I didn’t have the club scales in time to test the Golf R rear springs (5Q0 511 115 EP) prior to install (a few weeks ago), but I found that spring applications are not specifically trim related… but depend on options and specific combinations of options. There are about 49 different rear springs in VW parts catalogs that can apply to the rear of a FWD MK7. This little rabbit hole was a big time suck when I really should have just been prepping the car. Much more on this will come in the future.
With that distraction behind me, my attention was diverted to replacing my cracked front rotor rings, swapping back to the DS3.12/1.11 pads, and mounting up the set of Toyo RRs that I got on clearance from Tire Rack. I originally had no intentions of going to an R-comp, but these were $100/set less than V730s, and while the RRs (40TW) are supposedly slower than modern 200TW tires, I was hoping they’d put up with heat better than RE71RS, and maybe even V730s.
I managed to find time to wash the car (the night before the event) for the first time since May
Last minute prep = little time to sleep
I am really bad about making plans to stay somewhere ahead of time. Generally when going to the track I’ll split a room with someone already going - Adam has been my Fastivus buddy for the past couple years but he was unable to make it this year. This time I decided to just rough it and drive up early in the morning. This meant I’d need to wake up at 3:00am to make it there with adequate time to change wheels and run through tech, etc.
I finished all the work Friday evening and got to bed at 9:30pm. The weather outlook was perfect so I threw on my18x8.5 Konigs/V730s to drive there, with the 17x9 SM10s/RRs in the hatch. Plus about 200lbs more for my track tool boxes, helmet, etc.
This was all so last minute that I didn’t take any good photos of the chaos.
Needless to say, I rolled out of bed on time and hit the road by 3:30am. Oddly enough, it was easier getting up with only 5.5 hours of sleep… probably because track things and not work things.
The drive was easy and uneventful. Fueled by Wawa coffee, I made it to Summit Point at 7:15am. I found a spot in paddock up near Bill’s Burgers and gridded between a couple MK8s, with a bunch of friends not far away. Unloaded the car, changed wheels/tires, and went through tech/registration.
Problems in session #1
What seemed to start out as a good first session, turned into uncertainty as the car began misfiring with terrible throttle response. My positive outlook for the day faded, realizing I potentially just woke up at 3AM to drive 200 miles to need towed back home.
I limped it off track and back to paddock and pulled DTCs via Simos Tools. Cyl 2 misfire, random misfire, and hide cylinder. I cleared the codes and started the car up to see if it came back… Yep it immediately began cutting cyl 2 after couple seconds.
I pulled the #2 plug hoping to death that it was all there… and it was (whew!). So with that one giant “oh shit” possibility of a broken plug eliminated, I moved on to swapping plugs 2 and 3, and swapping coils 1 and 2. The hope was that if the misfire persisted, it would move to either 1 or 3 which would narrow down plug or coil failure.
Lo and behold, after swapping them around, the car started and ran fine. I was still very suspect of the ignition coil so I began looking around to see if anybody had one they could sell me. Just swapping coils around might have been a decent enough solution to get home… but I really wanted to get my other 2 sessions in if possible.
New German Performance (a sponsor of the event) was on site, but unfortunately had no MK7 coil packs. Some asking around to a bunch of people in paddock yielded no results directly. But a friend (who I met at my first Fastivus event back in 2022) got wind of what was going on and he asked around as well. A friend of his, “J” had a spare coil which he kindly gave to me. I tried to pay him something but he refused.
The VW community is what makes this event so great… the cars are cool but really it’s the people who matter. The rest of the day wouldn’t have been possible without this.
Session #2
I replaced the questionable coil (which was now on cylinder 1) with the spare I was given. I got caught up chatting with a few people in the process and wrapped up the repair about 10 minutes before going back on track.
I rushed to get ready and then started the session off like an idiot - on the out lap the yellow flags were up. Someone pointed me by and even though we weren’t allowed to pass under yellow, for whatever reason I took it. Just wasn’t thinking straight. I realized what I did immediately after and was anticipating being flagged for it, but there was nothing initially. I did a 1:44.53, then a 1:41.47, and then got flagged to come in like I was previously expecting.
I went into the pits and explained what happened and went on my way.
I managed a 1:42.80, 1:41.03, 1:40.92… but was having to work harder and harder to get those times. The front end of the car was getting noticeably greasier. I pulled back into the pits on lap 7 and dropped the pressures to 35psi hot all around. The fronts had gotten up to 39 and rears to 37ish.
The car felt noticeably better and was no longer skating around under hard braking… which was enough to run a 1:40.95 and 1:40.31, but at this point everything on the car was so heat soaked and my driving consistency was deteriorating as the session went on. I finished out with a couple 1:42s, somewhat peeved because I KNOW there’s a 1:39 in the car even with the rising ambient temps.
I WAS however relieved that I had no issues and I’d get one more crack at bettering my lap time before the day was over.
Session #3
I ate some lunch before going out in session 3. My main goal was to just stay out the entire time, working on the “big bend” in particular. That was one corner that I felt was my “lowest hanging fruit” in general. Fortunately I started out the session right behind a friend, Dimitri (very fast MK7 driver, local to the track). I was able to follow him getting increasingly quicker laps 2-4 (1:42, 1:41, then 1:40.46) before needing to take a slower-paced cool down on lap 5.
Lap 6 I had a completely clear track right up until catching another car in the carousel. I was anticipating a point-by due to a big closing speed difference on the exit of the carousel… but it ended up not happening until the big bend leading onto the front straight. This killed the ability to carry momentum for the start of lap 7 but it wouldn’t really matter because temps were getting high anyway.
Once the pass was made, I caught back up to Dimitri as he was cooling down at a slower pace on lap 7 and he pointed me by. Even though this particular lap was already written off time-wise, I was at the point of just having fun and driving the car.
By the time I reached the carousel, oil temps were at my comfort threshold (over 270F). I took the tail end of lap 7 and all of lap 8 to drive the car at a far slower pace to try and get temps back under control so that lap 9 could be taken without concern. A 2:00 lap (about 19-20 sec off pace) was good enough to take oil temps from 273F down to 242F, and coolant temps from 238F to 196F in that time.
I got a decent run on big bend to start lap 9. The tires were greasy (despite the cool down lap) and giving lots of audible feedback. I’m not sure how much was my driving, and how much was the tires falling off or the heat affecting the car… but I was about 1 sec slower than my best lap up until the bridge straight. I managed to compress the braking zone leading into the carousel quite a bit vs typical, which led to carrying more speed on exit and up the hill. I got through T17 decently and carried some momentum through the big bend, crossing the S/F line with a 1:39.68.
I was SUPER happy to finally chip away at the personal best time I set last year. Looking at the lap times this year vs last - the real improvement was actually in consistency overall. I had (13) laps between sessions 2 and 3 which were all in the 1:42s or faster. Nearly all others were either due to traffic or being on a cool down lap.
PCV updates
Last year at Fastivus was my first time with the IS38 on track. At that time, I was also trying out the modified MK8 valve just to see what happened. Last year I had issues with oil ingestion. It was somewhat hard to discern how much of that was from the added IS38 power, and how much was from the modified valve not jiving well with the 2019+ cars. I recently did a PCV knowledge dump explaining the reasons why here.
I returned this year with an unmodified valve (still full retrofit, with the BMS can inline… mainly because the connection is a bitch to remove from the Venturi and I don’t want to break a $180 hose). Unfortunately there is something going on with my PCV sensor. Not sure if wiring-related or what, but it had a 0v reading at all times. I WAS however able to monitor the knock. From all sessions, there was one single isolated blip to -6 deg on cyl 1. This happened in a weird transition on/off throttle, with no KR on other cylinders at the same time.
The following are some screenshots of the KR from this year on the unmodified valve (first two) vs last year on the modified valve (last two). Quite the difference. I did back to back testing of the two valves at VIR, but that track doesn’t induce problems near as easily so I wasn’t going to find out if the MK8 valve would still work up until this event. For my car at least… I see no reason to change for the time being.
Unexpected surprise: hood vents in action
It was great having Josh and Alexus of Sixth Media Group out shooting photos - one of them managed to get a really neat shot where if you zoom in on the full-res version… you can see the low pressure zones dropping causing the dew point to be met where 100% humidity air is now visible. This was taken in the first session where the ambient temp was only 2-3 degrees above the dew point. You can also see the refraction of light trailing off the tip of the first vent. That isn’t anything new… this has actually been caught on video at VIR last year.
Changes to the car and their effects
For reference - setup on my car for this event
So the main differences in my car this year vs last were really the Golf R springs (vs 034 lowering springs) and Toyo RRs (vs the V730s). The Toyo RRs were bought because they were cheaper than a set of V730s, and I was curious to see how a ~12 year old tire compound compared to modern 200TW tires. But mostly because they were cheap.
In my opinion they felt more “precise”, particularly on initial turn in… but I think that’s almost entirely due to the lack of tread (and thus, tread squirm when loaded up). It wasn’t terribly dissimilar vs well-used V730s though. The RRs seemed to deal with heat better than the RE71RS, possibly even better than the V730s?
What surprised me most was just how audible they were… this is a trait that is normally not present on a lot of R-comps. It made it easy to push the car harder and harder. Note the squealing coming around big bend at the end of the 1:39 lap video above.
Comparing the combination of tire + suspension change is made easier using the Garmin Catalyst app since I have data from both this year and last. Using the “Optimal” laps I’ve found tend to be best for comparing setup changes from one event to the next, since each lap is the “best of the best” going around the course.
It’s important to remember that there was both a spring/bumpstop AND a tire change to factor in.
Some observations that jump out to me:
Overall lateral Gs, min corner speeds are VERY comparable to the V730s. The speed lines are almost perfectly overlaid in all the corners.
Hard braking zones are where the most obvious car-capability improvements were made (how much is tire vs suspension, I’m not 100% certain).
Optimal laps were within 0.10 sec of each other right up until entering the carousel.
The improvement in the carousel was entirely from applying throttle just beyond mid-corner. This translated into a 0.4 sec immediate drop in relative lap times before exiting the carousel!
I continued this speed up the hill, but lost some time in the low-speed T17.
Slightly better line through big bend onto the back straight.
So most of the improvement this year came from my exit out of the carousel (primarily driver I’m fairly certain), with minor help from the few hard braking zones (primarily from tire and/or suspension change). I suspect this improvement is mostly from spring change - the 25mm higher ride height means more travel, and more travel means it won’t be as quick to fully compress the bump stops which makes the effective spring rate go towards infinity, throwing away grip (especially on any non-perfectly-smooth surfaces).
The ass end of the car still sits just a hair too high in my opinion, but not detrimentally so.
What’s next??
I’ll be at VIR in December again, and as long as rain isn’t in the forecast I’m hoping to bring my V730s and RRs both to do a bit of a better comparison over two days. The V730s will be on an 18x8.5 wheel as opposed to 17x9s, but since I’m primarily looking at a comparison under braking with the new suspension setup, I think it’s reasonable to assume that won’t be a massive factor.
I don’t know if I’ll bother changing the rear springs prior to VIR or not. We’ll see what happens.
The most exciting new change isn’t actually the car itself… but for me. If you’ve followed the trip reports regularly, you’ve probably noticed that getting a good night’s sleep has been a struggle. I recently had a sleep study and started using a CPAP machine. After only a week of using it (started the night after returning from Fastivus), it’s made a massive difference. To the point that I’m kicking myself for not listening to others and doing it sooner. I’m hoping waking up and not feeling fatigued all the time will translate into better focus and lap times going forward.
