Racing Our Jetta on a Budget – a Little Good Fortune Is Always Welcome

Incredibly Close and Popular Racing

All cars run on Dunlop 15-inch semi slicks, of which we are only allowed 8 new in Class B for the season. The top three qualifiers and the top three in the first races get respective 75, 50 and 25 lbs. ballast penalties. All of which makes for incredibly close and popular racing. Quite literally for a song.

In the four heats leading up to this point, we were on pole position twice, won two races and broke the lap record in both outings, to close on the championship lead, having joined the chase a round and two heats late in April. So, coming in to round 4 our man was closing in on the championship lead, albeit that our principal rival Eden Thompson had kept us honest by winning the other two races. And it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster ride since!

The fourth round dawned bright and pleasant, and the day got even better when Gio put the Bullion IT and Banhoek Chilli Oil Jetta on pole position is spectacular style. “Nian and the team gave me the perfect car for qualifying and we had our second set of new tires on the car for the season,” said Giordano. “That allowed me to turn in an incredible qualifying lap — 1 minute 27.2 seconds is the fastest ever Class B lap at Killarney by over half a second!”

Track Temps Rose Quicker than Anticipated

As noted, GTi Challenge allows Class B eight new tires for the season and being out of sync having started at round 2, we needed to be right on it for our new rubber races. But we failed to turn that fresh rubber pace into another win. “Race 1 proved a bit of a struggle,” Giordano confessed. “The track temperature rose quicker than we’d catered for in our tyre pressures and Eden was really quick too. “He managed to get ahead and try as I may, I could not get back past. “I did however manage an all-time B lap record in his tow.”

The second race went far better. “Race engineer Chase and I tried a couple of changes we had scheduled to test before our next meeting for race 2,” Giordano explained. “Happily, those tweaks seemed to work and I managed a lights to flag win with another fastest lap, but under constant pressure from Eden.

While Gio and Eden scored equal points in the races, our pole and lap record bonus points allowed us to provisionally close to three points behind Eden in the class championship, making their fight one of the focal points of the cheapercars GTi Challenge this year.