Monday, February 14, 2011

Racing with Clean Diesels

Found this little gem after poking around for historic racing footage. It's a small documentary of the inaugural season of the Volkswagen TDI Cup from 2008. The TDI Cup pits equally-matched Jetta TDI's against one another with the focus on determining which of the thirty drivers selected should go pro.

Volkswagen's intent is to build a feeder series that whittles 600 drivers down to 100 and on down to 30 as the best of the series. The point being to both highlight the up and coming drivers between 16 and 26 years old and the efficient-yet-still-quite-enjoyable Jetta diesel.

From first glance, one would think that a diesel race series would be a boring but from the footage it appears to be anything but! Cars slamming into each other, flipping, spinning and running into the armco is far more exciting and plays out across some wonderful North American tracks like Mid-Ohio, Road America and the VIR.

This is great little documentary to see what its like in the feeder series in North America. I believe it's two parts - I'm looking for the second part of the documentary. Also attached is the 2009 documentary in full with some of the drivers from the original series reprising their helmets for a few more laps in the Jetta's as veteran drivers. Either way, interesting to see such young drivers compete for a professional drive - some still under 20 years old! The racing seen in this series is in many ways more intense and interesting than many of the U.S.-based racing series' you'll see.


2 comments:

  1. This was my first time seeing "Racing Under Green" and I thought that it really did a great job showing what the TDI Cup drivers really go though. It is not as easy as some might perceive it to be. Plus, the coaches are much more hardcore than I would have ever imagined. Great find. Keep posting awesome videos like this.

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  2. The coaches are like drill instructors! I really enjoyed seeing this series - thanks for the kind words!

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