The author at speed on the Virginia International Raceway road circuit. Okay, make that moderate speed.
They say age, experience, and treachery will always overcome youth and exuberance. But after the opening races of the 2010 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup season, it’s clear that the “always” assertion is not an absolute.
I can say this with absolute confidence, because I was in the field as a guest driver for the first two races, which went down at the beautiful Virginia International Raceway, near Danville, Virginia.
Not to put too fine a point on it, I have acquired a fair amount of age, and a lot of competition experience—almost 30 years in Sports Car Club of America club racing, including 35 round-the-clock endurance events.
Blown Doors
But the youthful VW hotshoes assembled at VIR, many of them series rookies, blew the whole age and experience theorem to pieces. Which is a roundabout way of saying they blew my doors off.
The starting field for both days was 27 cars, which included your humble narrator and one other guest driver. I qualified near the absolute back of the pack, and while I finished 19th on Saturday and 18th on Sunday, most of my forward progress was due to over-exuberance on the part of those ahead of me (read: off-track lapses), rather than my own prowess.
Maybe I should have ramped up on my treachery? But be that as it may, I left VIR Sunday afternoon with a lot of respect for all that young talent, and for Volkswagen’s first-rate program.
The TDI Series
A word on the series. This is the third year of the Jetta TDI Cup, a development series for young drivers similar to programs VW has been supporting in Europe for many years. The cars are race-prepped versions of the Jetta TDI, stripped of all non-essentials, with their 2.0-liter turbo-diesels tuned for 170 hp and 260 lb-ft of torque (versus 140 hp and 236 lb-ft for U.S.-spec production cars).
The drivers—25 of them this season—were culled from a group of about 50 applicants. Many of them have some racing experience, mostly in karts, and youth is a key requirement. The organizers will accept drivers up to age 26, provided they’re returnees. Otherwise the limit is 24, and many—most?—are much younger.
For example, this year’s opening rounds included one 15-year-old, and two who were 16. The winner of both weekend races, Ryan Ellis, is 20. Your humble narrator is in a different age bracket. Let’s just say I have enough mileage to be grandfather to many of these kids.
High Aspirations
The author (right) explains the fine points of road racing to TDI Cup competitor Ryan Ellis. Ellis assimilated the knowledge, and was tops in both ends of the season-opening double-header at Virginia International Raceway. Swan finished 19th and 18th, respectively.
A returnee from last year’s series, Ellis, from Ashburn, Virginia, aspires to a career in pro racing, a goal he shares with many—if not most—of the TDI Cuppers.
Is this realistic? Yes, with an asterisk. Tim Megenbier, last year’s series winner, is competing this year in VW’s Scirocco Cup series in Germany, and doing well. But if you’re well into your twenties, and just starting out, the prospects of moving up another rung of the development ladder diminishes exponentially—unless you happen to have access to plenty of money.
This experience is far from cheap—$45,000 for a 10-race season. That includes a turnkey race car, with strong technical support. Everything is highly professional. The only thing the driver is required to do is help out with car cleanup.
In addition, the price includes access to VW’s huge hospitality pavilion, with meals for drivers and their sponsors (who are, in many cases, also their parents).
It does not include travel expenses, and drivers are responsible for crash damage repair.
Things That Go Bump
There was a fair amount of damage at VIR, although the drivers were apparently better behaved than in the first two seasons. Volkswagen Motorsports and SCCA Pro Racing (the series sanctioning body) are cracking down on this with a “no contact” race policy.
However, with a field of evenly matched cars, occasional rubbing and bumping is almost impossible to avoid at times. I’m happy to say that I did avoid it, which was my one real achievement of the weekend.
On the other hand, it is now abundantly clear that I can forget about a career as a race driver.
Related posts:
- 2010 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup Street Edition – Auto Shows
- Green and Kinda Mean: We Race in the Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup – Sport
- Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup Street Edition – Auto Shows
