Golf R -v- Golf GTI

[robby_jai]

So yeah - I echo the comments of Maverick and brad in that if people are whinging about not being able to put down power in the GTI, that it's more a case of lack of talent from the driver, than lack of potential in the car

sorry i dont agree with this. my question to you is have you ever driven a high powered fwd car on the race tracks ???? Have you ever been on a race track ? it requires a completely different driving style to driving a RWD or AWD car.

the biggest issue is traction and understeer which are inherent to FWD car... and yes while lack of driving experience skills magnifies the issues of these cars... they do require significant amount of work around suspensions etc to make it driveable. those examples you gave to the Golf R and Golf GTi in the HTS ... had significant amount of suspension work done, had an LSD... sway bars put in ... and were running semi slicks and race brakes...the sum of ALL those parts equal a faster lap time. Not just a straight out power upgrade.

quite a significant amount of modification are required to handle the power upgrade that the FWD cars copped in the HTS.

most people here normally dont go for that extreme amount of upgrades when upping the power in their car... most leave the suspensions, wheels, tires alone and just up the power like crazy...because either they cant afford to ... or they cant be bothered

and quite frankly upping the power on the GTI like crazy and leaving everything else stock or almost stock will render the car quite difficult to drive on the track and is a lot less easier than you make it out to be.


Which goes back to the original statement... a golf r is much more capable of handling all the power upgrades with out significant modifications to other drive train components like suspensions wheels and tires etc.

[Guy_H]

I'm not sure that's enough information for a meaningful comparison. Most tuned STIs and Evos I know run on semi slicks which are notoriously bad tyres for the wet. Even the stock A046 tyres on my old Evo 8 MR was barely usable in the wet, much less my A048s

If the GTIs/Rs were on original PS2/CSC2, they'd have the edge in grip for wet conditions.

I've driven both the cars in question with the Hankook Ventus TD's - they are an awesome wet or dry tyre. Everywhere I have run them (Lakeside, Morgan Park & QLD Raceway), the R has only been just quicker (and these cars have near identical chassis setup), but an awful lot easier to drive closer to the limit.

The Golf R's forte is pulling out of tight, slow corners, the R rules that.

Honestly, the Golf GTI is so damn good (chassis balance), its taken some shine off the ever capable R. The Golf GTI is lighter, so gets away with less power as well.

[robby_jai]

Lol yeah... I mean, the R vs GTI - when both upgraded, have very little in it. Around Eastern Creek last year during the MOTOR Hot Tuner Challenge in the torrential rain the Golf R did a 1:59.0, beating EVERYTHING. $120k WRX STI's and Lancer Evo X's, $200k+ Porsches and Lamborghinis.... but then so did the GTI with it's 2:00.7 - only 1.7 seconds slower than the Golf R, and several seconds quicker than any "full time" AWD STI or Evo (or any other car for that matter).

So that's on a track so wet you could go swimming...

What YOU ALSO clearly failed to include in your above information is that the cars were all set up for DRY weather time attacks.. and all tuners were given specific instructions that they were NOT allowed to modify their suspension set ups other than reduce damping and adjusting tire temperatures.

All the cars were set up for aggressive dry time attack performance... with super aggresive cambers.... stiff suspension set ups etc... hardly condusive for fast time attacks on a very wet and slippery track

it just so happened that the APR cars... were set up quite well and suited the conditions on the day.

I can guarantee you with hindsight... a lot of the tuners.. if they chose a less aggressive set up on their suspensions... they probably would have topped the APR times with ease.

High powered cars with massive amount of gumbo on semi slicks makes for poor track traction.. which is why the porsche and co... suffered severely in the conditions that was last years HTS

[Corey_R]

Yeah - sorry about that... next time I'll write a ten page post listing in detail every single specification of all 100 cars and the results of all 20 tests for each of the 100 cars so that you can get all the information...

But it's not really relevant. The R and the GTI were setup for dry too, on semi-slicks, and most importantly for this thread (R vs GTI), they were both prepared by the same company and both had similar performance and handling upgrades (suspensions, sways, LSDs etc in addition to the power mods as you mentioned).

Of course one requires a different driving style to the other, that's a given, and yes, FWD or RWD reqiures more effort from the driver than AWD.

It still doesn't change the fact that the Golf GTI was within 1% of the R's time in conditions which many people would have written off a FWD car in favor of AWD cars...

[Guy_H]

What YOU ALSO clearly failed to include in your above information is that the cars were all set up for DRY weather time attacks.. and all tuners were given specific instructions that they were NOT allowed to modify their suspension set ups other than reduce damping and adjusting tire temperatures.

All the cars were set up for aggressive dry time attack performance... with super aggresive cambers.... stiff suspension set ups etc... hardly condusive for fast time attacks on a very wet and slippery track

it just so happened that the APR cars... were set up quite well and suited the conditions on the day.

I can guarantee you with hindsight... a lot of the tuners.. if they chose a less aggressive set up on their suspensions... they probably would have topped the APR times with ease.

High powered cars with massive amount of gumbo on semi slicks makes for poor track traction.. which is why the porsche and co... suffered severely in the conditions that was last years HTS

Cant bank on the weather

Robby, you need to go to a Porsche club trackday, try to stay with a well driven GT3 (or GT2) in the wet - you will be shocked how good they are in the wet.

I suppose we will never know, I know what our cars were capable of in the dry, and they have run Porsche club events (mainly because I'm a member & get good value track time) and I know how they perform against GT3's & the like - believe me, they never get embarrassed anywhere they go.

We can always have an excuse I suppose - fact is it rained. rains at Bathurst too, rains at Le Mans, Monaco etc - lucky Motorsport happens in all weather. Imagaine if we had driven 1000kms down from Brisbane with a wet setup & it turned out dry, how silly we would have looked

P.S. - This year there will be dry circuit (weather permitting) & "mandatory" wet skidpan, so that evens everything out for everybody. You have to make a choice on what will run best on the circuit & the best on the wet skidpan.

Our setup (Chassis & tyres) will be identical to what we ran last year - in fact, most of the parts off our old Golf R are on the new one!

[brad]

Robbie
I was merely commenting on the so-called quote "no point doing even a stage1 as i can't maintain traction in stock form" - or whatever the words were. Can't maintain traction with ~150kw at the fly? That's sad.

As for the Tuner Challenge - the results on the day were reality & everyone was under the same rules. IF they'd changed set-ups, IF they'd had wets, IF, IF, IF. IF my Aunty had balls she'd be my Uncle.

[dave_r]

Not sure why these modified cars are even coming up in the topic. A Golf TDI could probably win le-mans with the right about of mods and money but who gives a ****. Corey shouldn't have brought the shootout thing up IMO.

A GTI with lots of suspension work, tricky diff and good tyres would easily rival an R, and if they both had the same amount of work then the gap between both might be a lot smaller than stock for stock but its all a big fat what if.

What if VW made the R 200kg lighter and fitted the TT-TS driveline? There would probably still be people that say a GTI is better because it uses less fuel or costs $x less. blah blah blah.

Topic is GTI vs R, stock for stock. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Corey_R]

Mainly because of the comments that the R is better because the GTI can't even handle it's stock power...


But if we're doing stock for stock, I think that the GTI is better as the R is too much of a porker and the AWD is next to useless with only 188 killer wasps and all that weight....

[Guy_H]

What if VW made the R 200kg lighter and fitted the TT-TS driveline?

Now you are talking, but you are right - stock vs stock is a good comparison. There is a motor lap time comparo here (stock cars):

https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/hp...0VP6yGKQ#gid=0

unfortunately its not up to date for 2011.

[adzy]

The thing is if you are on a forum to do with cars there is a big chance that your are going to modify your car in some way, so the modification arguments just add more detail to the thread topic which I, among probably other members, do appreciate and it assists us further into which car we would prefer to purchase.