Bartek S.
Aerodynamic Ace
There’s a maxim passed around Capitol Hill staffers of the left coast variety. “In L.A., people ask Where do you live? or What do you drive? In DC, people ask What do you do? and Who do you work for? The adage very quickly describes the nuanced difference between how power is gauged whether you’re an Angelino or Washingtonian.
DC isn’t the typical place to go for a test drive. Residents tend to be less susceptible to admiring a flashy car and, as the third worst metro area for traffic congestion and with more winding traffic circles than winding roads, there are few places to really push a car to its limits. Yet here we sit in a stunning white R8, taxing the car’s single-clutch R-tronic transmission in the bumper-to-bumper stop and go traffic of M Street.
We bug left off of M for a brief respite, trading the snarled lanes for the cobblestone back streets that lead toward Georgetown University. Our U.S. spec R8 with its Magnetic Ride in the most comfortable setting does an admirable job dealing with the colonial-era cobblestone, though we still resort to an old DC cab-driver trick of riding on the now-unused trolley car tracks that run down the center of the street – two narrow-yet-smooth lines down the center of a raucously bumpy surface.
The R8’s flashy looks may be more L.A. than DC. On M Street passing under signs like Dean & DeLuca and Benetton, the R8 got stares, looks and appreciative nods. On the more quiet back streets, the Audi takes on a smarter demeanor. While it still sports the proportions of an exotic, its more Teutonic lines, comfort and four-ringed badge seem to make it a smarter buy.
Most of the high dollar homes here have but one garage and little-if-any driveway, but it’s not hard to imagine a Georgetown resident opting to fill that one coveted spot with an R8. Okay, maybe not the self-righteous Prius-owning type. Still, the R8 with its daily-driver comfort and refinement would make it a solid pick. So too would its quattro all-wheel drive for the few times a year snow drops on Washington.
We stop momentarily to photograph the R8 near one of the few modern-looking homes in the neighborhood. Were this my house and the R8 my car, I’d head west toward Virginia’s Skyline Drive area to run the Audi through its paces amidst the Shenandoah Mountains. Neither are though unfortunately, so instead we head East through downtown DC and a test course Audi has set up near Washington’s own FedEx Field.
When the invitation for the R8’s launch came weeks before, I noted it was a regional affair. Those from the East came here to DC. Those from the West went to California’s Infineon Raceway. Infineon Raceway or FedEx Field… you’re probably thinking the same thing we were. Geographically, I and my fellow right-coasters drew the short straw. Turns out I may have been wrong.
In DC’s defense, the parking lots around a stadium actually played home to an American Le Mans Race several years ago… just as Infineon currently does. The National Grand Prix happened only one year, but Audi’s ALMS drivers tell us that the course was quite decent, temporarily built within the lots near DC’s RFK stadium.
Still, parking lots at FedEx Field aren’t exactly a world class racetrack, so I pulled off of the DC Beltway and followed signs toward the stadium with a fair degree of cynicism. That attitude changed though once I had a chance to sample the course. The long and undulating parking lot underlined a chalked and coned course that was decently long and very well designed. It was tight – basically a second gear run the whole way round, but it was technical, inviting and offered little to no danger of damaging one of the expensive aluminum Audis. Game on.
At the beginning of the course the corners were long and lazy, perfect for building up speed and acquainting oneself with the R8’s sportier suspension setting. After that, things got more tight and technical, with sharper corners and decreasing radius turns. While typically larger powerful cars often make courses such as these less fun, the low-slung and flat-riding R8 powered around it with a surprising degree of dexterity – the brakes reigning in the quickly gotten momentum at the last moment.
Having learned the fastest lines around the course and outlasted other writers with a larger appetite for lunch than laps, time on the track increased as did the hardcore nature of those left driving. With no walls to hit and hot tires getting slippery as a K Street lobbyist, it was time to see how the R8 would perform beyond the limit.
What I found was interesting. With ESP still fully engaged, the R8 is more than willing to drift. Get it hot into a turn, dial off the throttle then back on and the tail breaks. Stay hard on the accelerator and steering with the throttle becomes quite easy. I began to believe I had discovered latent abilities for drifting. Maybe I missed my calling.
Maybe not.
Then I deactivated the ESP and went out for more. Given the R8 is all-wheel drive… okay seriously rear-biased all-wheel drive, how much the R8 is will hang itself out there is quite surprising and like no other Audi I’ve ever driven. The car is ready and willing to provide you with more gut-wrenching oversteer than some might want in a six-figure steed, but ready to go Grade-A hooligan and travel in directions far different from the way the rear wheels just happen to be pointing as they slide along churning rubber into smoke and chunks.
Frankly, given its Lamborghini roots and Gallardo-shared viscous-coupling based all-wheel drive system, I’m not all that surprised that the R8 showed this harder edge with ESP safety nets disengaged. What does leave me surprised, more so even than the sheer amount of rubber-burning fun one can have in a parking lot at FedEx Field, is just how good the R8’s ESP system programming is. The car will let you have an ample share of oversteer… drift even, though perhaps not sideways… and make a moderately experienced driver look like a superstar.
Measuring the power of an R8 is a little bit like measuring power in DC. While it does have the exotic looks of an Italian supercar and easily passes muster on the boulevards of image-focused L.A., the Audi isn’t just about its looks. Its daily drivability and comfort levels are more akin to a Porsche, but its mid-engine layout and all-wheel drive nature managed by that just-right ESP calibration make it more forgiving than the Porsche. What the R8 does is deliver and who it works for is the driver. If I had but one garage in the heart of Georgetown to park a car, I’d have to imagine that in it would be an R8.
http://www.fourtitude.com/news/publish/Features/article_3652.shtml
