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New to racing... Need your guidance.


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Posted

Hello all,

 

My name is Robert and I am looking to begin my amateur weekend racing career, which has brought me to this website. I have experience doing autocross weekend events at Qualcomm stadium, some drag racing, and the ocassional weekend track events at car club weekends (Dubwars, Dubfest, etc).

 

I have a race prepped (roll cage, fuel cell, single race seat, etc) 1976 Rabbit. I currently has the original 8v engine that came in these 1st generation VW GTI's. I recently obtained a stock engine and transmission that came out of the 2nd generation GTI's (16V 2.0 engine). I was thinking of swapping out the older 8v engine for the 16v one.

 

I wanted to ask if this will prevent me in participating at NASA events due to the engine not being original to the vehicle. What events should I be gearing or preparing for? Is there a time when the season starts or ends?

 

I have downloaded the "CC&R's", and have gotten familiar with them over the past few weeks.

 

Thank you in advance for your guidance. I look forward to making new friends and competitive enemies (in a racing fun kind of way) in this racing club.

Posted

What is your goal with tracking your car? Looking to go wheel to wheel, Time Trials, or lapping? This will point you in a couple of different directions in classing information with your projected build. While no modifications are disallowed (you will always find a place to run your car here), some series will assess different classifications for various modifications. Might I recommend GTS if you're looking to go wheel to wheel? There are a few crazy folks running VWs in the series currently, and, as long as the engine was available in a production model of the manufacturer of the chassis, you can swap it in no penalty (how about a 1.8t in that lightweight MKI?)...

 

 

Oh, and welcome to the madness/coolness! Since you've done Qualcomm, DubFest, and Dubwars, I assume you'd fall into the SoCall Region. There's a great GTS program out there that is growing fast. If you haven't already done so, check out the Amateur Racing forums on the VWVortex ... a wealth of VW information out there (http://forums.vwvortex.com/zeroforum?id=308).

Posted

Welcome.

 

Swapping the motor will not at all prevent you from participating. I'm not sure how many people could participate if that were in the rules.

 

What it might effect is your race classing when you get that far. I would assume you would have to run the car in one of the PT groups but beyond that I don't know much about the race classes.

 

We have a guy here in the southeast that has an older rabbit that he is currently running in HPDE. I can't remember his screen name but I'll see if I can direct him to this thread.

Posted
What is your goal with tracking your car? Looking to go wheel to wheel, Time Trials, or lapping? This will point you in a couple of different directions in classing information with your projected build. While no modifications are disallowed (you will always find a place to run your car here), some series will assess different classifications for various modifications. Might I recommend GTS if you're looking to go wheel to wheel? There are a few crazy folks running VWs in the series currently, and, as long as the engine was available in a production model of the manufacturer of the chassis, you can swap it in no penalty (how about a 1.8t in that lightweight MKI?)...

 

 

Oh, and welcome to the madness/coolness! Since you've done Qualcomm, DubFest, and Dubwars, I assume you'd fall into the SoCall Region. There's a great GTS program out there that is growing fast. If you haven't already done so, check out the Amateur Racing forums on the VWVortex ... a wealth of VW information out there (http://forums.vwvortex.com/zeroforum?id=308).

 

My ultimate goal will be to eventually be comfortable with competitive wheel to wheel racing. In the meantime I would be open to try any class or event to sharpen my skills. I will inquire with in the socal region in more depth since it looks like that's where i will be doing most of the competitions.

Posted

GTS could get expensive if you want to run up front as its a very open ruleset - meet a certain horsepower to weight ratio, then modify everything else as much as your wallet allows.

 

PerformanceTouring would be doable after you dynoed your car and sent in the info for a reclassification - and could be more budget-friendly. Another upside is its the same classifications as Time Trials so if you spend some time there before going wheel-to-wheel you could run the same class with alot of the same types of cars

 

either way, you've got quite a few HPDEs ahead of you to get there, learn all you can on your way up

Posted

Oh, and welcome to the madness/coolness! [/url]).

 

Here Here!!! welcome

 

My ultimate goal will be to eventually be comfortable with competitive wheel to wheel racing. In the meantime I would be open to try any class or event to sharpen my skills. I will inquire with in the socal region in more depth since it looks like that's where i will be doing most of the competitions.

 

SoCal is having an event this weekend @ Cal Speedway. If you have the time, you should come out and see whats up.

Hope to see you there

Posted

For NASA, initially you will want something with two seats as HPDE is an instructed format.

 

Don't worry so much about mod's and such until you figure out where you want to land. Typically, mods are assigned points according to a particular scale. You may find that the mod you chose is not worth the points it comes for.

 

Anyway, you'll be in HPDE for awhile, so you'll have time to learn and decide.

  • 1 month later...
Posted

not trying to high jack this thread, but i had a question as well....im trying to find out who i would contact for HPDE events, do i contact the track or nasa?

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