I am considering making a week out of end of the month track days. I was looking at 2 days at road america and 1 day at mid ohio with a possibility of going to national corvette museum motorsports park. As always vehicle reliability is in question when asking 4 or 5 days of racing from a 15 year old car but more importantly I was blindsided by the cost of track days this season. When did this happen? A few years back I did 2 days at road america and it was 275 and a day at black hawk at 175, this year 2 days at road america is $500 2 days at black hawk is 350, mid ohio is 320, and 500 for the corvette museum. I have to take my car out for a shake down this year I am going through withdraws from lack of racing this year. I guess it is trying to decide where i’m going this year.
where are you racing this year? how is nelson this season I have not gone this year.
One step closer. My slickes arrived yesterday. Repaired the leaking heater core this morning. Installed lowering springs, and now i am at the alignment shop. It is amazing how powerful this can feels for just being gutted with now power enhancements
update on this weekends fun. I did 2 days with chin racing at road america over the weekend and did a day with autointerest at mid ohio. I had a absolute blast. This was a outstanding way to break in a new track car. 3 days of racing and 56 gallons of fuel later the A8 performed much better than expected. The 145K 4.2 V8 engine consumed only 1/2 qt of oil which is very un audi like, but ran beautifully the whole time. I was able to touch 130 consistantly and I tried for some deeper braking coming into turn 1 off the long straight and was able to touch 135, but I didn’t have enough brake and ended up taking turn 1 at over 90mph which is way way too fast for my car and so I threw the car sideways to scrub speed and got back on the power and let quatro do its thing and pull her back straight. I shit myself a little I am not going to lie.
As the day went on and I got more comfortable with the track and the cars handling I kept pushing harder and harder. I very quickly learned I cannot use full power the entire way down the 2 long straights because The hawk blues just don’t have it in them to bring things back to reality. I kept pushing harder and harder in to turn 6 and 7 and I finally decided to try taking turn 7 without lifting. So coming out of 6 I would go WOT and hold it all the way to 8. Prior to this idea I would lift right at turn in to get a bit of rotation and roll back into the power very quickly. Turns out this was a bad idea, and both left tires hit the rumble strip and it upset the suspension enough to bring the car completely sideways, and again being an audi the only way to fix sideways is either to stand on the brakes and take what is coming or to get back on the power and ride it out which I did and I was able to keep it off the grass. The rumble strips at road america are massive unlike any track I have been to. You cannot ride these like at most tracks without upsetting the suspension badly. Other than those 2 incidence I had no issues and the only 2 issues we had on track was a C6 vette going off after 8 and kissing a wall with the RR in the rain and someone dumping coolant a long way near the end of the second day which is when I decided to call it a day, because I had to load up and go straight to Mid Ohio.
How did the car do?
Engine
*Engine consumed 1/2 qt of oil in 3 track days
*I lost electrical and engine power 2 times in the course of a few seconds at Mid Ohio and the problem has not presented itself again yet which bothers me.
Transmission
horribly slow predictable shifts for 3 days, with mild overheating at Road America near the end of the 30 min sessions and significant overheating at Mid Ohio with 20 min sessions. The over heating brought me in 1 lap early session 6 and I sat out session 7 to let it cool and made a final 8-10 laps during open lapping after it had some time to cool. I also had a issue with the transmission coming out of gear on I think turn 7. It is a off camber left with a major elevation change. I think the oil is being thrown away from the sump in the trans. I might look into adding a baffle of some sort to keep the trans oil from being able to splash up the side of the inside of the transmission.
suspension
LOTS of body roll, springs are way too soft, dampers are too soft for road course even though they are new, but the character of the car is fantastic! nice smooth trail brake oversteer, light oversteer with lift off turn in and a hint or understeer at WOT wich is great for pulling the car straight after getting the car a little loose. The suspension bushings are something that need attention for sure. At mid ohio I didn’t notice it as much but when I reach the absolute limit of the tires at high speed Road America turns I get a shudder from the rear, and I believe the soft rubber bushings are collapsing in the control arms. I drove around this by trail braking and getting the weight off the rear a bit so it was not loaded so hard in the corners. This car will lift the inside rear wheel on hard corners!
Brakes
The hawk Blue pads on stock size rotors held up very well for the task they had. They did so well that I don’t plan to upgrade them next year. Yes lap times are suffering at big high speed tracks like Road America but at Mid Ohio they had only minor fade. I will instead upgrade the suspension and larger tires so I don’t have to slow down as much for the corners. That is how I worked around the under powered brakes on my SHO and it worked great.
I don’t have much for pictures but I will have video from my buddys C7 ZO6 when he gets home next week.
Updated - - -
The kick down button was removed for lightness. I do need to recode to disable auto upshifts in tiptronic mode. That should help improve consistency for corner entry speeds and picking braking points.
nice… we should make a chumpcar out of it… there was an original quattro V8 in chumpcar earlier this year at the glen. you should consider frozen rotors for the front if they keep getting killed.
I don’t know what a frozen rotor is but brake upgrades are cheap for this car since I have the smallest brakes offered on an A8. The 385mm X 37mm W12 brakes bolt on for about a grand and I didn’t fade them on my 450hp W12 at mid ohio and I know that thing was heavy and hitting over 140 on the straight. The rotors are 47lbs each and I would like to avoid adding that kind of weight. Brake ducts would help a bunch I am sure and I can always step up the brakes to something more than hawk BLUE pads
Schedule for April to October:
April (4pm-Dusk), May to August (5pm-Dusk), September to October (4pm-Dusk), October (3pm-Dusk)
Every Wednesday from April 1st to October 28th
Every Friday from April 3rd to October 30th
Saturday Evenings : May 30, July 18, Sept 19
Pricing:
Pre-registration: $70 +HST
Registration at Track: $90 +HST
