July 16th of 2022, we ran the Roval at Charlotte Motor Speedway for the first time ever. The Roval is the track within the oval in the infield, and it’s quite a riot. The day started with incredibly bad weather, so we were on a rain delay for about 3 hours which was unfortunate. However, the anticipation just built hype, and once all of us were all able to hit the track, we went balls to the wall.
I was worried since I had never been on the track, and had no coaching on it. I had played it before on iRacing, which may have helped a little bit but sim racing can never replace the real thing. The sensation of speed, the bumps, the G’s going around the banked oval, is something that is really best experienced in real life.
The car handled wonderfully, physically. My brakes and tires held up throughout the day, but the VW was never intended for high speed banked corners. Every safety sensor in the car had no idea what the hell was going on, and it was disabling ABS, Traction, Stability, etc because the values the car computer expected vs. what the car was physically doing was throwing it into some kind of panic mode.
I would absolutely do this again though.