Chump Car: Minnesota Meltdown

Jonathan Gitlin is back reporting for us from the tropical world of ChumpCar,   It was a buggy and   blistering hot race again but in Minnesota this time where he and his mates literally drove the wheels off their Golf.....check the video if you don't believe me!


The last time I graced the pages of this site, it was fresh off the Golf's ChumpCar debut at historic Road America. Despite running into problems both days, we brought home a pair of 7th places, but it was obvious that Wolfburg's finest had the makings of a great grassroots racing car. Could we bring the fight to the mighty E30 and E36s? The guys had been hard at work in the intervening weeks before we rocked up at another storied Can-Am track, Brainerd International Raceway (nee Donnybrooke), in Minnesota.

There were an awful lot of these guys, and some of them were very fast! 

A suspension refresh saw the car on coilovers, promising even better handling around the shorter 2.6 mile layout at Brainerd. The interior was even tidier than at Road America, and now the passenger footwell now bore a large grey cooler with a pair of blue pipes coming out. With 90˚F+ temps all but guaranteed, investing in a CoolShirt set up for the team was a no brainer. This year there would be no repeat of drivers coming in early with heatstroke!

Saturday started well. Fresh Dunlop Star Specs graced the front wheels, giving plenty of grip, and even if we were outclassed in the power stakes by the rear wheel drive competition, we were able to mix it with the very best of them in the braking zones. Alex (responsible for most of the photos and as talented with a camera as he is behind the wheel) took the first stint, and handed the car over to me in a strong 5th place.

The Great American Meltdown, Road America, April 2012

We're very happy to have our friend Jonathan Gitlin  as a guest writer on Axis of Oversteer.   
It's endurance racing season and we hope to bring you more reports from inside races of all kinds to add prospectives you might not get elsewhere.   
Chump Car World Series, while focused on extremely low cost ($500 cars) is not to be confused with the 24 hours of Lemons.  As you may recall Axis was banned for life from Lemons guilty of not realizing it had nothing to do with racing....Jon did not make that mistake.


The Great American Meltdown, Road America, April 2012

As a regular reader of Axis of Oversteer, it's probably no surprise that racing is fairly important to me. Holidays often involve visits to various circuits, and it probably wasn't a coincidence that my wife and I spent our honeymoon in the Cote d'Azur when the F1 circus was in town.

But as much fun as watching other people race is, donning nomex and doing it myself has been a goal for quite a while. Sadly, racing isn't the cheapest sport out there, and a career in science has been more intellectually than financially rewarding.  Fortunately different racing series now cater to different budgets, and the advent of the ChumpCar World Series has meant that you too can get your grassroots endurance racing thrills without having to drive a parade float either.

My first ChumpCar experience was at a very cold and somewhat snowy Road America in April 2011, where I discovered that video games actually could help you prepare for some aspects quite well, but were nowhere near as much fun. 

Work commitments and scheduling meant that I had a very long off season, for that was the only time I managed to get out on track last year. A year is a long time to wait, but last month saw us return to Elkhart Lake, WI, for the Great American Meltdown, a pair of 7 hour races that marked the start of my 2012 season and the first outing for our team's new chariot for the year, an immaculately prepped 1991 VW Golf GTI; big thanks to our sponsors, Frozen Rotors, Parts4VWs.com, The Alignment Guy, and The Four Firkins.

Photo: Alex Bellus