Gerry

Hans' was clear to point out (although I was not) that for a given turn (if you only had to drive it once) the Audi was not really any faster than the other cars. The real difference was that in the other cars you could not drive them 100% through every turn in every lap of the race or you would overheat and use up the rear tires. Trans Am cars have such high power/weight ratios that they generally have to pace themselves (manage their tires) or the overheated tires will have poor rear traction and degraded handling towards the end of a race. There were no pit stops. Because the Audis distributed the engines torque load between all four tires, and didn't overheat (overwork) the rears relative to the fronts, they could drive at 100% lap after lap and not "use up" the tires, something the rear wheel drive cars couldn't do then, or now. Hope that makes more sense.

Aldous

I spend a fair amount of time on the track and could pile on some more rambling (and probably redundant) comments here also, but I'll resist the temptation. I simply appreciate logging on and seeing this type of Audi discussing going on and seeing the tracked and related treads you're so good at collecting.
Thanks,
Loren

..Oh, just one thing ...you ought to read Skip Barber's "Going Faster!" and Ross Bentley's "Speed Secrets", if you haven't already. OK, I said I wasn't going to ramble, so bye for now. : )

ZCD2.7T

Didn't mean to give no credit to Galati, who has won in everything he's driven-he's a GREAT driver!

Stoney

Interesting stuff, thanks!

avdh

understeer in the following sentence:
<i>and adjust the throttle to compensate the oversteer coming out of the corner, was indeed the best way to handle both the S6 and the S3</i>

On the track the S6, when pushed seriously hard would understeer, specially if I came a bit too fast into the corner and kept accelerating, the front of the car would want to go out.
By simply lifting off the trottle a bit and immediately accelerating, I would induce a bit of oversteer which would compensate and put me back on the right line.
In any case by using what I call the Quattro method, I was definitely faster at the exit of the corner.

A good example was when I had a 996 Turbo in front of me with a so, so driver. After the hairpin, you can go flat out for quite a while.
The way the guy with the 996 Turbo was taking that hairpin although, his car was a quattro as well (but he was not driving it the Quattro way), made it so that his speed out of the corner was much, much slower than mine, and because of this, although his car is much quicker than the S6, I would keep up with him all the way to the next corner. The next corner being an easy wide corner he would then pull away, two tight corners further I was right up his back, Then he pulled away on the main straight and I would close behind him again after the hairpin.
What I am trying to say here, is the the speed in a corner and how fast you are out of a corner, also dictate the speed you will doing on the next piece of straight track. Quattro seems to give
a definite (unfair?) advantage, if you know how to use it, as in theory an S6 should never be able to do the lap times a 996 Turbo does....
I must say that a better driver (who agreed with my "Quattro" theory) took that same 996 Turbo out and was 4 seconds faster than my best lap time. This driver aslo happens to be an "official" Porsche racing driver...

Singletrack

Lots of good info there. I like the link boscoj posted too, more links at the bottom of the page.