- 01/27/2020
- 1 Min Read
- By: Evan Madore
Motorsport Mondays - Volkswagen Motorsports Parts Unboxing
What’s the oil change interval on a sequential SADEV gearbox? How do you figure out what tire pressures to run during a qualifying lap? And what exactly are the settings for camber and caster to optimize your vehicle’s contact patch during a hot lap?
All of that and more will be in our latest series, Motorsport Mondays.
By now, you know about FCP Euro’s motorsports documentary series, The Paddock. It provided a behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of our motorsports program, from securing sponsorships, traveling to races, and even some of the hardships we faced throughout each weekend at the track. But this year, we’re going to do things a little differently.
This year, our program is coming in-house. What’s that mean? Rather than using a logistics partner for the transport, prep, and race support, we’re going to do it all ourselves. That includes working on the cars in the off-season, transporting them to the race, working on them at the track during a race, optimizing them for winning the event itself and, more importantly, running it all out of the same facility that you pick up your parts. It’s a massive undertaking.
If I had to summarize Motorsport Mondays in one sentence, it’d be: translating how working on two professional championship-winning race cars can help you work on your European car. Our Volkswagen GTI TCRs are just cars, after all, and there’s plenty of things we have under our belts that could help you in your endeavors, whether it’s in your driveway doing routine maintenance or at a track going after your own fastest lap.
Last week on episode three of our Motorsport Mondays series, the team tore the TCRs down, pulling the engines out to make a list of what would be needed for the 2020 season. This week, boxes of those very parts began rolling into the shop, and that's where Nate and Gareth come in.
It was like Christmas in the shop, with both Gareth and Nate tearing into box after box of parts for the TCRs. In those boxes was everything from suspension components, to fuel system parts, air-jack supplies, and best of all, brand new VW Motorsports IS38 turbochargers. Watch along as they walk you through exactly what each component is, where they go, and why we need new ones.
On next week's episode of Motorsports Mondays, Gareth and the team begin the process of getting the Sadev Sequential transmissions unmated from the engines and palletized for shipment down to North Carolina.
Like the series? Want to see something specific related to our race cars? Have questions about working on your race car? Please leave it in the comments below.
