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escapA8 speaking here live from ryoung's garage. As you can see, there's even a D3 that showed up. docmusolf showed up as well.

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PaulW is washing his car: it's got to look good for the pictures the track photographer will be taking today! ;-)

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We did a track walk this morning at 7 am (yikes, that's early!) and it's pretty amazing to experience the track out side your car, standing still. You hardly recognize it after going at an average pace of about 75 mph...

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Ooops, that's some heavy traffic on the track. Chicago style!


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Now that's what I call some nice elevation. The track may look big when you walk around, but feels rapidly smaller in your car the faster you go around the track.

Stay tuned today for the latest lap times live here from the A8/S8 garage at Mid-Ohio!!!

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The driver of the hour...ryoung.

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The competition is on! ryoung and PaulW exchanging tips to improve their lap times...

He pulls it off on the last lap.....gets signed off too, next time out the car will be 230 lbs lighter without the instructor....watch out!

But first will be going out with Randy Probst in Randy Young's run session....we'll see the real time this car can do....have the video camera mounted!

Holy **** Batman! Can you say full throttle for three laps, drifting through EVERY corner!!!!

He loved the brakes, we were in the advanced run group and passing everybody!

He was held up at the end, I'll give him a 1:54!

pw

Randy couldn't get past the 2:00 on his 2nd run.....

Paul just finished his.....1:58 flat! I was sliding the car all over!

Passing S4's including a new one with a 4.2 six speed all over the place. If they don't have a stage 3, they don't have the power....

However.....if I went to the next group....this wouldn't be so....it's ALL ABOUT driver ability.....

We are having fun!!!

Two more run session this afternoon.

Randy says that Randy Prost got a 1:56 and nont a 1:55....so I'm two seconds off his time! ;-)

I just like the sound of it.....the way he ran my car around the track it wouldn't really last much more than 3 laps....it had a lifter tick for the first time ever after his run.....I heard it yesterday too on the track, put an extra 1/2 quart of oil in and all is well.

pw

And this isn't Randy Young!

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EscapA8 had to get those shots somehow!!!

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One second each sesson and then you will match Pobst's time. Seems as though you have your work cut out for you...Good Luck!

As I've said before, he spent a lot of time in the Audi Corral at last Fall's Petite LeMans weekend at Road Atlanta, talking to the enthusiasts. You should have seen his face just *light up* when a few drops of rain started falling from the sky; it was about 90 minutes before his race.

;-)

Brent (docmusolf) actually has it....he's going to send it over to me.....it was so funny, I'm telling him that "if you get a good lap, it will click into 4th gear at the end of the straight", he says "Oh, so I've got something to shoot for, huh?".....

Needless to say, we talked the whole time which should be on the video tape, he was passing people left and right!!!

Flashing the headlights, etc.....

My car couldn't take more than 3 laps of it!

I just downloaded the data, and it looks like the biggest difference is that Pobst takes T1 at 75 mph versus 65 mph for either of us. He was a bit faster almost everywhere else (I was 4 mph faster at the end of the back straight), but my feeling is that he was probably holding back, especially thru T7 and T11. If Pobst owned your car, I'd bet that his times would easily be under 1:50.

I'll be sending you Excel files of all three of our data logs.

The first time down the back straight, he lifted well before T7 (for good reason, this was the first real test of your brakes).

Lap 1: From that point and then all the way around back to T7, Pobst never went to full throttle, not even once!

Lap 2: The Hot Lap (and full use of the right pedal)

Lap 3: Looks like you ran into traffic after T9, and then came in.

How are cars lighter than yours, with the same powerplant, but turbocharged, and with a nice ratio 6 speed manual, instead of the poorly spaced ratios on the A/S8 SLOWER than you?

It's all driver skill?

One, an A8 is faster than a B5 S4 (V6 turbo) coming out of a slow corner onto a long straight.

I've experienced that at Grattan, Road America and now Mid Ohio. We have a lot of power and torque under our relatively light body.

Even with a chipped car, the A8 is just as fast until they have a lot of boost.

As far as the new S4 goes with the V8, they had two people in it versus one, plus had to switch the gears manually.

Driver ability is by far the most important thing....Randy Pobst posted times two seconds faster than my best time and he had me in the car.....two seconds is very, very hard to find.

Therefore, I am happy to say that I was consistently mashing the gas to the floor at the apex or just before the apex of the curves before going onto the straights....therefore, driver experienced allowed a lot more speed by the end of the straight.

Maybe I'm good, maybe I'm lucky, but I'll take either! ;-)