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Got the call last night from a good friend, turns out our tuning equipment got put in his car and buried under all his stuff. He just recently cleaned out his car and found it! So with that good news we are back in buisness! Ready to help with all your tuning needs!

I recently had the chance to take the IRDC’s (irdc-racing.com) Performance Driving School. I have been preparing my car for lapping days for quite some time now and finally felt the car was ready for action. The cost of the school is $250, and includes a classroom session and a full day of on-track action! I highly recommend this school to anyone looking to get into racing, lapping days or just want to go have fun in their car!

Registration was at 7am so it was an early morning. Got the car loaded up late Saturday evening and loaded everything up. We made it to the track by 7:15 and got the car un-loaded and started with my pre-run checks. Soon we all loaded up into trucks and were taken on a track tour. Our guide for this session drove us around the track to point out not only driving lines but also hazards and pointers for each section and turn of the track.

From there we waited by our cars for our driving instructors to come by. My instructor for the day was IRDC President Ron Johnson. I had met Ron a few times at events in the past, and knowing his history driving Rabbit’s, I knew today was going to be a fun one! I waited for my session to come and we headed onto the track. Ron drove my car first to give me a good run of the course at speed in my own car. It was a little nerve racking at first, but after he opened it up a bit it was pretty obvious he had done some laps in the mk1 vw chassis before.

After 3 laps (he remarked after the 2nd that he wanted to take one more just because the car was fun to drive haha!) he pulled off and let me hop in the drivers seat. I gotta say, the rush of getting onto a road course for the first time was intense! I only got a few more laps in that session but i really started to get a feel for the car and the track. The car was performing very well and felt extremely stable, corner grip was good and got better as the tires got warmer. We pulled in and i breathed a sigh of relief, my first session was over and the car an myself were completly in tact! I was ready to get back on track.

I had 3 more 30min sessions for the day, each one i got progressively faster and was able to push the car closer and closer to the limits. By the final session i got the ok from the Instructor to run solo, and i went out feeling very confident in the car and what i had learned through the day. I got out just in front of a friend in his R32 and i pointed him by the next lap (he had me on the straights). The rest of the session him and I ran hard and eventually caught up with a pack of cars. After making our way through we were stuck behind a new Mazerati Quattroporte’. Yeah that’s right, 130hp rabbit stuck behind a 130k 400hp exotic!

The driving school taught me a ton about car control and driving at racing speeds. I had so much fun my girlfriend said I was grinning ear to ear for a week solid! I’m officially hooked, and already doing some upgrades and planning out my next track day! -Brendon

This weekend the RalleyTuned/TRAKS Clothing SPU race car made its season debut at Pacific Raceways in Kent, Wa. It was a very warm weekend with temps in the shade hovering around 90deg. We saw track temps both days in the 130′s!! Needless to say it was a very warm weekend and we are pretty certain everyone got some color from the sun!

The weekend started off shakey on Saturday morning with a very tail happy practice session. We found that the issues lyed in the heat cycled out Hoosier R6′s. The decision was made to take the Saturday qualifying session on the better/newer Kumho 710′s. Brad set a pretty decent pace despite the heat running in the high 1:41′s for Saturday. He also noted some pretty high oil temps due to the ever increasing track temps, and the search for some better synthetic oill was on. We found something, although not ideal, but would work for the day. The Redline oil was sourced in a very light 10w, and the crew settled in for an evening of watching drag racing.

Sunday morning came with the forecast of even higher temps and another beutiful day at Pacific Raceways. The oil was changed, car fired and warmed up and was set to go. Working through a soft brake pedal all weekend the crew was finally able to squeeze out a few air bubbles and get a nice firm pedal, which relieved the driver as you could imagine. Brad went out and set a fast qualifying time of 1:41.9 and was sitting mid group in the huge 56 car field.

Brad took the green and pressed the orangazmic Rabbit hard to keep up with the faster cars in the group! Running in a group with probably 90% of the cars running at least double the HP makes for a very hard working vw! He settled into a battle with a well prepared Nissan Sentra and the battle was on! Eventually besting the Nissan the TRAKS Clothing/Ralleytuned Rabbit finished the race strong. With the thin oil presenting an oil light at anything under about 4000rpm, the car was loaded on the trailer and the exhausted and overheated crew headed home to cool off. All in all a great weekend, the car ran strong and we had no issues, a successful weekend!