VW Golf GTI TCR Race Car Review
It鈥檚 always weird to write a review about a race car because they鈥檙e never as good as you want them to be. They are living and breathing organisms that are constantly being improved, no matter how happy you are with the handling or the power output. Sometimes you鈥檙e given 2 laps in a beast of a car and then have to write a piece about it when you have barely scratched the surface. Or you鈥檙e the 6th journalist to drive it on the day and the tires are completely shot, giving you a radically different impression compared to journalist number 1 who had the new boots. The list goes on but at the end of the day a racing car is not a refined machine in the same way a road car is. There鈥檚 always something you can improve upon. Case in point is the Golf GTI TCR race car I drove this week. Judging by the dirty sidewalls on the tires it was clear someone had been off prior to me driving it and track conditions were the kind of cold which robs a tire of any temperature.
But I鈥檓 complaining about small things here because the truth is the TCR was a brilliantly fun car to hammer around the track. I had the added benefit of being able to chase my instructor who was also in a TCR, as opposed to the Golf R pace maker that everyone else had to deal with. This meant I was not slowed by the car infront for safety reasons. I already have extensive experience in racing cars and the guys at VW were kind enough to acknowledge that and accommodate me. Once the tires were up to some kind of temperature we really started to push on track and it immediately struck me how difficult it is to compare a road car to a race car. Even if they carry similar DNA, like engine, differential and gearbox, you are still dealing with a machine which has no ABS, traction control or stability control and those systems make a huge difference to how the car behaves. Whereas in the road car you could easily rotate around an apex while smashing the throttle, if you did that in the race car you would understeer off the track.
It was challenging but utterly engrossing. During my time in the car I wasn鈥檛 thinking about how I was going to get to the airport or the eggs I had for breakfast. Instead I was totally engaged in the task of keeping up with VW factory driver Benjamin Leuchter. After I got out the car all I wanted to do was get back out there and do it again. With the sensation of the chassis being transported straight to my hands and backside without any insulation I got closer to the car after every corner. As I鈥檝e already mentioned it was difficult to feel any direct comparison to the road going TCR but I could definitely sense the DNA. A lively rear-end on corner entry was apparent and despite the used tires the race car still had a super responsive steering rack which was very reminiscent of it鈥檚 road going cousin.
The results were all very similar. The dogbone mount arm showed signs of bending with just two burn-out induced wheel-hop events. Complete failure of the dogbone arm occurred in as few as four wheel-hop events. We have high confidence that other brands spherical dogbone mounts will have similar failures. This testing revealed the cause of the bending, and our engineering team developed the 034Motorsport Billet Upper Dogbone Mount Insert to solve the issue. This insert slips into the front void of the upper dogbone mount puck, limiting the forward motion of the upper puck to match the limited forward motion of the lower puck with the lower insert installed. The result is an upper and lower insert package that eliminates the rotation inside the puck assembly during extreme drivetrain shocks, and keeps the forces acting on the dogbone arm in the direction the arm was designed for. Subsequent testing showed no signs of bending or stress in the dogbone mount arm with both the upper and lower dogbone mount inserts installed. Watch the demonstration video below to see how the dogbone mount pucks move with just the lower insert, and the upper and lower insert combined.
