The Little GTI That Could
By Brandon Christiansen | March 24, 2010
With Volkswagen announcing the creation of an R Division that will focus on increasing performance, I’m reminded of a little white Mk5 GTI I saw out at Miller Motorsports Park last year. It testifies just how track capable these cars can be when in the right hands.
It was the Porsche club track day. One of the members decided to bring out their 4 door GTI for some fun with its older and much more performance oriented Porsche brethren. He was running with the intermediate group which included some 996 Carrera’s, a few Boxter S’s and Turbo or two.
What I saw blew my mind. This little white GTI was out running them all and even lapped a few of the Boxters. Lap after lap, the quiet little hatch back made its way down the straight without even a hint of competition. I thought, surely this guy has done a big turbo swap and had it tuned to the breaking point. Come to find out after the session was done, it was a bone stock GTI and all it had were some performance brake pads. It was even the DSG automatic model!
So how did he do it? How did he own all the other cars out there? Well, the driver admitted he had been to Miller quite a few times before and new the track pretty well. Obviously, he knew it quite a bit more than the others in that session.
As racing season is just around the corner, I encourage us all to get a little track time with our own versions of the little white GTI (whatever they may be) to really learn their limits in a safe environment. Maybe we, too, can put some serious cars to shame.
