The 2018 Audi driving experience tour kicked off with their Sportscar Experience at none other than the Buddh International Circuit, and we got behind the wheel of some of Ingolstadt’s finest four-ringed machines.
Story: Jim Gorde
Photography: Audi India
When your day begins with a two-tonne super-family-estate going sideways, traction control off, hurtling towards precariously placed cones that are intended to simulate people that you have to consciously avoid, after that very “predicament” was brought about by a conscious flick of the steering wheel to send the car sliding in the first place, you know it’s going to be something special. And it was!
Slalom Slide
Being divided into batches usually means one of two things: a classroom session or a visit to a cleared parking lot lined with cones before actually tasting the racetrack. This time it was the former followed by the latter, where we had some behemoths with four wheels, more or less 600 horses, and four-wheel drive, as well as permission to tap that “ESC OFF” button; after a quick sighting lap, of course. On to the timed runs and there I was in the RS 7 performance — a car that’s proved to be just as fun in the wet as it is in the dry. Powering off towards the cones meant a jab on the brakes and a sharp turn in, back on the throttle, turn in sharply, more throttle, slide the rear out, catch it, back on the gas hard and into the box braking hard to a standstill. A time of 24.3 seconds. Right.
On to the RS 6, my favourite business suite with a storage room that’s also mighty fast. Make that mighty and fast. Sliding may look dramatic and capture mobile phone flashes, but not sliding makes for a quicker time. And, after getting the big red box into the orange cone box, 20.3 on the clock reinforced that truth. And this had the same big blown 4.0 V8 with 560 horses — 45 less than the RS 7 performance — and quattro all-wheel drive.
