For your first race while still learning the car I think you'd want to set the car up as neutral as possible. While you're on your Novice Permit trying to get your races in the winning set up isn't what your looking for, consistent driver improvement is. As someone who is midpack, I'm still learning the car and as a driver. After chasing the elusive hot set up in my second season of racing, I decided to heed the advice told to me many times over. Set the car up to be predictable and evenly balanced while working on your race skills. Instead of screwing around with the car I went out with the "average" set up and ran an enduro at VIR last February. By the time the first MARRS race at Summit POint came around I had three hours of track time to start the year. I worked on threshold and left foot braking techniques. My laptimes were THREE seconds faster than my previous best at Summit! This put me about 2 seconds off of the pace of the class front runners. I'm still "midpack" but running without a LSD or welded diff on a non GTI motor that's down a full point on compression and running Kumhos compared to the more expensive and faster Hoosiers that the front runners are using. What's really cool is to see your lap times drop every race with the satisfaction that it's YOU and not some magic set up. I know it sounds boring, but make sure that the car is reliable as can possibly be.That way you can be assured to finish your races and get signed off. Trust me, drving home from the track with a broken car is totally dejected feeling as well as a tremedously poor use of your racing budget. Not to get too far off of the original question here, but chance are if the car ran well before, don't change it, learn it and later on you can "find time" in the set up. I can't tell you a great set up for your car, because I'm still learning mine, but I think that advice of "fix the loose nut behind the wheel" was the best advice I've been given. JOE