VIR with TSCC: Memorial Day Weekend 2026
Shaking off the cobwebs, 3-day threat of rain, and a soft brake pedal
Headed into T4 “Left hook” at VIR
Back on track finally
It's been about 6 months since I was last on track. The start of the year took a turn with some other stuff going on, and for a long stretch I just didn't have much motivation to do anything with the car - prep, planning, none of it. That changed about a month prior to the event. The opportunity to buy a used APR plate popped up on the MK7 forums, and around the same time a set of Audi 8Y RS3 steering knuckles showed up on eBay for a price I couldn't ignore.
Note: I intend on covering these both in a bit more detail at some point, though I’m unsure of exactly when that will happen.
Between the two, I had some project stuff to tinker with again - and for the first time in a while, I actually wanted to be in the garage. With that motivation back, I ended up accomplishing a bunch in the month leading up to the event:
Installed the 8Y RS3 steering knuckles to replace the Whiteline lower ball joints as a source of camber - This also gained back ~1.0 deg of caster which was lost going from OE to Whiteline ball joints originally
Replaced both front hub bearings as preventative maintenance
Replaced the Golf R rear springs (which sat way too high) with 2.5x7in 450lb Eibach springs left over from my prior track day car, with some borrowed Silvers height adjusters from a friend to make sure they'd work reasonably well
Installed the APR plate with a Radium catch can and fittings for crankcase pressure baselining on track (with intention of future modification to keep vacuum at idle) - I made a “custom” adjustable bracket with some crap from Home Depot Racing to mount the Radium can. Eventually I’d like to draft a mount in CAD and have it redone by Send Cut Send.
Oil and filter change
Got the crankcase pressure sensor working again for monitoring on track
Made some last-minute tweaks to the new ECU tune that's been getting covered in the Simos Tools Tuning Series on YouTube
APR plate, Radium catch can, and crankcase pressure sensor installed
Needless to say, it was a lot of stuff changed all at once - assessing changes accurately wouldn’t really be possible due to the many variables at play. Everything done was based on prior experience, but I was pretty confident it at least wouldn’t suck. I was less confident in myself as a driver since it had been a while.
The knuckle install and lowering of the rear necessitated a proper 4 wheel alignment. My normal guy doesn’t do side work anymore so I had to roll the dice at a local Firestone - and I lucked out because the guy doing the work had an 800hp Evo and actually gave a shit and took the time to do stuff right. Plus he didn’t say anything about being “modified” so I could use the “lifetime alignment” I originally bought on a whim back in 2023 and hadn’t used at all since.
The only unfortunate thing was that the LF has notably less camber than the RF when all was said and done. This is an unfortunate side-effect of the subframe alignment kit - sometimes the car is just not even side to side from the factory. It’s always been slightly off to some degree - just depends on which alignment rack it was on. Might eventually need to remove the deadset kit so that I can push the subframe as far to the driver side as possible.
The ride heights were fine at all 4 corners (665mm floor to fender on both fronts, 672 and 673mm rear on the 245/40R18 V730s) for reference. So it wasn’t due to the car leaning on one corner.
Alignment a few weeks before the event - afterwards I fiddled with it a bit more to even out the front camber.
I told the guy to just leave it because I knew they were set for max camber, but after some consideration I loosened the RF to pull outwards in at attempt even them out. By my gauges at home I’m hovering around -3.1 and -3.2 deg now so they’re at least even. I reset the front toe via my toe plates at 1mm total toe, then changed again to 2mm after driving it a bit. 2mm = roughly 0.18 deg total toe, or 0.09 per side.
Side note: Taking it back to be re-checked is on my to-do list.
Half-assed prep = half-assed results
The catch can stuff was wrapped up just the week before the event. By then, the forecast had turned into rain expected all three days, which really took the wind out of my sails. I went from "excited to drive on track again" to "is this even worth spending the money," and debated for a few days whether the added expenses of track insurance and fuel were worth it, or if I’d just show up to instruct again like I did back in March.
To be clear I don’t object to driving in the rain and usually have fun doing so… but I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to really put the PCV system through it’s paces for the data I was after.
I eventually talked myself into running the car, but that indecision ate into my prep time. Most of the actual track prep and packing happened the week of the event, which coincided with a busy work schedule as well. I ran out of time to swap brake pads and bleed the fluid beforehand. I hate doing that at the track, but with the time crunch, it was what made the most sense.
I was bleeding the brakes while Bryan cooked Hibachi for everyone on Thursday night, Cash was acting supervisor
I rolled in around 6:00pm Thursday, swapped pads, bled the brakes, and spent a bit too long BS-ing with friends afterward while eating Hibachi - which was a problem considering I had to be up at 5:30 the next morning for work… that’s right… I took work with me to the track.
On top of all that, my RS3 brake deflectors were still not replaced yet - they were damaged a month prior, but I still put off ordering them out of sheer laziness/forgetfulness. As the event rolled around I shrugged it off and figured “eh they probably don’t do THAT much”.
That assumption did not hold up well, and it didn't take long on track to find out…
Friday: Remote work, rain, and a bit of fun
Friday was a solo-only driving day with a relatively fluid schedule, and due to obligations I was unable to fully take the day off work. Unfortunately, this meant starting the day doing nerd stuff over the track's unusually slow WiFi, which was its own special kind of frustrating.
The weather wasn't helping my mental state of mind either - rainy, with more of the same still predicted across all three days at this point.
Weather forecast for the weekend…
… Not exactly thrilled about that.
I pushed through work stuff before and after the drivers meeting. The rain while present was never too heavy, and it actually started to let up mid-afternoon and got to the point of a drying track. It turned out to actually be a pretty good “wet” driving day. I gave a bunch of ride-alongs and ran a 2:13 on the skinny 215-width Continental ECS tires in the damp.
I was definitely being abusive to them… but there's something genuinely fun about sliding the car around on a tire that narrow and short on grip - the car squirms around a lot which provides a very… memorable experience for passengers.
It went from damp to drying in the afternoon and when I started really leaning into the car… then the brakes went soft going into T1.
I had a passenger with me so was not pushing brake zones very deep, and managed to NOT leave the track surface at all. The pedal went from “normal-ish” on initial application and continued to sink towards the firewall as I passed the 3 -2 -1 brake markers.
In hindsight - it’s probably a good thing that things happened the way they did - the weather, the slower tires, backing up braking zones with a passenger - it’s entirely possible that if I were going ham on the V730s or RRs that the brakes would’ve degraded to a more serious degree.
After that I called it a day on track and not too long after we started getting stuff ready to make dinner in the garages.
The real reason I enjoy doing track days - hanging with buddies
That evening, while friends grilled steaks and hotdogs, I bled the brakes again to get ahead of the problem before Saturday. The forecast was continually changing, now calling for a wet Saturday morning followed by a dry-ish afternoon. I went ahead and swapped on the 245/40R18 V730s that night, hoping Saturday would clear up enough to make use of them. I definitely knew that I wouldn’t be pushing terribly hard the rest of the weekend after the brake scare.
I was still feeling a bit “off” driving wise as well. I’ve gotten pretty good at learning to distinguish when to push and when not to push for a lap time - it’s 95% a mental game and is probably the single part I struggle with the most.
I stayed up a tad bit later than I had wanted and made a few tune revisions based on what I'd seen in the logs and felt on track so far:
Spark IAT correction - wasn’t pulling enough timing on the highest boost map when IATs were higher and logging knock pretty consistently (especially on map 1 with all the boost and timing)
Pedal-vs-torque request change to reduce pedal sensitivity coming out of corners
Bumped the knock threshold from a 10% increase over stock to 20% - my personal comfort limit and what I had previously done in the past
Lessened the Switchpatch spark modifier in the 4500-5500rpm range to address some knock I'd been seeing
Saturday: a day for my student
My student’s GR Corolla with all 3 cylinders of fury
Saturday morning brought more rain, but with the forecast changing for the afternoon to clear up - which made having the V730s already mounted from the night before feel like a good call. I was still feeling a bit “off” mentally so I didn't drive any of the morning sessions myself, instead spending the time focused entirely on my student, Joe, in his GR Corolla. After his first session, I took the opportunity to grab a nap, which turned out to be one of the better decisions of the weekend. Side note: Staying on-site at one of the hotels is very convenient for this purpose.
Due to everything the day prior and my lack of sleep catching up to me,, I was running on fumes by Saturday morning - and that nap completely reset things. The second half of the day felt night-and-day better, both in terms of my own energy level, situational awareness, and the quality of instruction I was able to give Joe.
He was doing fantastic and really just needed me to egg him on to brake deeper and make some tweaks to his line here and there. His biggest opportunity was rollercoaster which he’d made a ton of progress on by the end of the first day.
As for myself: I drove just a few sessions in the afternoon but didn’t really do anything crazy - two sessions were still pretty damp, while my third and final session was dry-ish but I only ran a 2:15… still timid from the brake pedal sinking the day prior I think.
Sunday: Redemption... sort of
Sunday I had a much better outlook - I got some good sleep and the weather was looking good with just some lingering dampness from overnight. It remained dry all day aside from a short 20-30 minute sprinkle late in the morning, which mostly dried back out soon enough. I had swapped onto the 245/40R17 Toyo RRs early that morning and managed a 2:09 in the first session - my best lap of the weekend. That said, it was a genuinely sloppy lap and far from my best driving.
The tires felt "off" all day - they seemed to overheat easily even with keeping hot pressures right around the 35psi happy zone. I tried going +/- 3psi hot to see if it would help but to no avail. The grip seemed to give up specifically under combination braking and cornering. This was especially noticeable going into Oak Tree and Hog Pen as being anything but gentle to the outside front resulted in abrupt ABS intervention. T1 braking in the video above (first lap) was also a bit dicey as you can see. I also got what I needed: some solid crankcase pressure data on a few comparable laps to what I’ve done previously.
From there, the day was mostly about having fun - playing around in traffic, doing more ride-alongs, and Joe let me drive his car for a session, which felt genuinely great under braking and was a nice contrast to my own car's drama this weekend.
He was on G-Loc R12s front + rear for reference.
He continued to get confidence in the car and himself - to the point that I had him braking at the 1 marker entering Rollercoaster from ~132mph. He just needed to learn that he could trust the car.
Despite the tire weirdness on my own car, Sunday ended up being a solid, low-stress way to wrap up the weekend which I really needed.
Packed back up and ready to head home after 3 days at VIR… of course the sun starts shining and everything REALLY started drying out at the end of the day. Oh well - there’s always next time.
PCV Data Collected
The PCV plate gave no drama all weekend. To be clear: I wasn't expecting any issues - the goal was simply to gather some crankcase pressure data to compare against what I'd previously logged with the MK8 basic and full retrofit on track.
The crankcase pressure data w/ the APR plate can be seen in the video embedded further up in this article.
The most interesting thing when looking at the logs (and especially obvious when overlaid on video) was the fact that the crankcase still went into (very light) positive pressure under hard braking. I don’t perceive this as an actual “problem” because unlike an OE PCV, the positive pressure events do NOT carry over several seconds after corner exit while on throttle.
The plate system at least does away with the possibility of ingesting oil via the cylinder head intake passage (which I think is where OE PCVs have most of the problems). The effectiveness of plate systems on track were never in question - the “need” to do away with idle vacuum was.
There will be a much more in depth article/video about this some time in the future. The APR plate is going to be getting modified to more closely mimic OE operation (by maintaining some kind of vacuum at idle/cruising conditions) so that it (hopefully) is a no-compromise solution for a dual-duty car… or I’ll waste a bunch some money trying at least.
Observations: Suspension
As a reminder: There were lots of changes made at once… I’ll cover how it FELT and how I perceived the aforementioned changes, but this is by no means “data driven”.
The front end of the car felt like it lacked grip all weekend, and I have a few theories why. The most likely is just the tires - these R-comps already have 3 days on them, and spent the winter sitting in a non-heated garage that saw near-freezing temps. I really need a fresh set to know for sure whether that's the whole story. For reference, the V730s weren’t exactly great, but I had limited time with them and on a damp track, so can’t really accurately comment there.
Toyo RRs aren't exactly known for a steep drop-off, and what I felt this weekend was nothing like the cliff I experienced with my old RT660s a few years back, or the Hoosier SM7s on my old Mazda2 - but it's still something I want to rule out next time. Or find out that maybe I just sucked this weekend after all? After rewatching my 2:09 lap I’m thinking that the latter was definitely in play.
I didn't touch the front sway bar settings in the dry, and ran the same stiff setting I've used previously, but I think the softer setting might be worth revisiting. Back when I was on the stock GTI springs and bump stops, there was a lot more body motion and the stiffer setting made a clear difference (for the better over the softer setting). I detailed that experience here.
Note that I DID run the softer bar setting in the wet. I’ve found this helps keep the front end less “edgy”.
Visibly lifting the inside front right before the lower esses, granted with some help from the stiff rear hitting the curbing - you can get an idea of what’s going on with the rest of the sequence below
I need to revisit the soft vs stiff front bar just to rule out. It might also be worth going to a softer rear spring as long as I’m still running the Golf R fronts (perhaps a 350lb instead of 450lb).
On the alignment side, I actually lost a small amount of camber (intentionally) - about -0.1 to -0.2 degrees, going from -3.3 down to around -3.1 to -3.2. The RS3 knuckles seem to add roughly -0.4 degrees of camber per side, but removing the Whiteline lower ball joints removed about +0.5 degrees, so the net result was a very slight loss overall. I have screenshots of all my prior alignments so will need to go back over everything in detail at some point to try and pinpoint how much each individual item was worth. Based on tire wear from last year, going down a tad on camber was what I had wanted to try anyways. I think that a bit less helps with corner exit.
The bigger surprise was caster: going from the Whiteline ball joints back to stock gained a full degree, from 7.1 up to 8.1 degrees - I wasn’t expecting quite that much. With taking some of the rake out of the car via the spring change, there’s a good chance that 0.1 or 0.2 of that caster came from that.
For reference, my car measured 7.5 degrees of caster when bone stock.
I still have the +0.5 caster JXB LCA bearings installed, and it took those just to get to 7.1 degrees when I still had the Whiteline ball joints in place. Without those the car was at something like 6.7 or 6.8 degrees and wheel pushed really far back in the wheel well.
The front end felt good with noticeably more steering feedback than before, but the RS3 knuckles come with some built-in bump-steer (just like stock knuckles) that I'd previously almost entirely dialed out using the Whiteline ball joints with bump-steer spacers. It’s not to an insane level, but I got spoiled having near no bump steer for the past several events - made it very easy to carry speed in the esses.
Above: When I say use the curb… I mean USE THE CURB. You paid for the whole track… use it.
The RS3 knuckle inserts are a larger diameter than the MK7 inserts, so mixing and matching (off the shelf) parts to correct bump-steer again isn't an option here.
The bump in rear spring rate felt like it helped quite a bit with getting power down earlier coming out of corners - the car seemed to respond faster to mid-corner throttle changes, and it didn’t teeter diagonally when transitioning from corner entry trail braking to corner exit rolling onto the throttle.
That said, the 450lb springs are definitely under-damped by the Koni Special Actives - it’s not ideal. After 3+ years on the shocks, it's hard to say how much of that is normal wear from a lot of track time versus just the design limits of the dampers. Probably a bit of both. A refresh might be coming up soon, and I'm still deciding between buying another set of the same dampers or finally biting the bullet on a set of quality coilovers. If I just replace with the same shocks again, I’ll probably go down to 350 or 400lb springs so they’re a bit better controlled (and nicer for daily duty). If I get a new daily then this car will probably get real stupid real fast.
Car setup in case you’re interested - but mostly for my own reference later on when I forget.
What’s Next?
I have a bunch of stuff to-do on the GTI over the next several months:
Carbon cleaning - it’s now just shy of 90k miles at the time of this writing
Rebuild or replace fuel injectors as preventative maintenance
Install the oil cooler I’ve had sitting in my garage for over a year, along with replace the related seals etc.
Modify the APR PCV system as mentioned further up in this article
Sell all my 17in wheels and tires to make garage space for 18s (in preparation of bigger brakes)
Oh yeah… and replace the RS3 brake ducts again
Also…
Last but not least: Thanks to Josh and Alexus of Sixth Media Group for all the above on-track photos!
