It isn't necessarily a good track car for that style of racing, because it is very heavy, and has too much weight on the front end. In 2wd form, it will eat up the front tires and brakes too quickly.
If your friend has a 1.8 Turbo engine, he has some advantages for tuning the car for street racing. In stock form, it is worth 170HP, and has a nice, wide powerband, broad torque curve, and alot of torque compared to the Honda engines when comparing stock-for-stock.
But with a simple addition of an ECU chip for between $300 and $500, he can increase the HP to about 210, with torque around 214Lbs at the crank. With a cold-air intake and a good exhaust upgrade, maybe a downpipe upgrade...the car will make maybe 225HP and about 220Lbs torque, with most of that power available quite low in the tach.
An Integra with mods will be able to keep up, but unmodified, it would have to be flogged to within inches of its life, with launches at 5000 RPM and revs held into the red just to have a chance. The Passat with mods will be a decent street racer for the stoplight grand prix stuff. Of course, he'd do better if he had the GTI with the same engine, as the car is much lighter and would perform better with the same mods.
But bring it to a road course and the lighter Integra will hand it to the Passat. In FWD form, it tales alot of suspension work just to make the handling respectable, and even then the lighter Integra would roll less, understeer less, and turn in sharper. It also wouldn't eat the brakes as much...the heavy Passat needs serious brake upgrades to avoid fade and warping.
Now my W8 on the other hand would have a much better time...with 275HP, 275Lbs, AWD, 13" vented rotors with 4-piston calipers, and heavy duty suspension!
