yes it was poor design on toyota's part, when they put the engine in the lotus elise they redesigned the cutoff point and raised the rev limiter, so it could stay in vvtl after shifts.

Even though the vvtl came in so late, it kicked in quite hard for a 1.8 litre.

Anyway the s2k, is a very boring car if you dont keep it in vtec. These engines are made to rev, so why dont you just let it do what it was supposed to do? The responsiveness of this engine is what makes the s2k so easy to drive hard.