TBH its a struggle to make sense of what it says in the manual re Initially it says Traction control (TCS) reduces engine power to help prevent the driven wheels loosing traction. That has you thinking that TCS uses throttle cut or boost cut. But then it goes on to say that TCS works in conjunction....with the ABS system and that if there is an ABS failure that you will loose TCS. It also says ESP uses individual wheel braking to pull the car back into line if it starts to slide ie the ABS system too.
That to me really says that that TCS is just a component of ESP ie. they both use the ABS system to apply brake force modulation, its just that the TCS cross monitors the front wheels only for wheel spin and ESP monitors all 4 wheels for slides. I'm guessing that when you turn ESP off, that ESP is staying fully on, its only TCS that gets turned off.
Its just the power cutting claim that I'm really curious about. On the course I've been hillclimbing on where its got really tight hairpins, down hill off camber carousels that then switch straight through chicanes etc the power just dies in the ar#se. It may not effect track guys so much because you don't get really sudden G changes from one side to the other up or down hills as much? Maybe the system is way more sensitive in 2nd?? Whether what I'm feeling truly is a power cut done by direct means or if it happens indirectly due to ESP applying the brakes for me (which kills the power too - just try and left foot brake our car and you'll see what I mean) I don't know but its freaking frustrating. There's a guy there with a skoda fabia vrs who apparently can seperately deactivate traction control and ESP. He runs with ESP off but TC on and said he has no such dramas. I'm hoping someone out there with full VCDS has at some stage checked to see if throttle plate cut, boost cut or fuel cut actually does happen when the TCS or ESP or whatever the hell it is cuts in.
As it turns out, there is a seperate fuse for ABS and two seperate ESP fuses (maybe one for TCS and one for ESP proper?). If it wasn't my daily I'd just start pulling fuses to see if ESP can be disabled without deactivating ABS - as it is i'll do a bit of reading before I get too carried away.