Ringer at the ’Ring
Just how close is our roadgoing Audi RS3 to a Touring Car-spec race version? By Ben Barry
If you bought an Audi Quattro in the 1980s, it was passably close both visually and mechanically to the ones Mikkola and co drove in world rallying, especially earlier iterations. If you buy an RS3 today, it also looks much like Audi racecars, but fundamental technical differences abound.
An invitation from Audi Sport to see its customer teams race RS3s and R8s at the Nürburgring 24 Hours (and its
WTCR support race) was a chance to learn more. I even had a decent parking spot lined up for the RS3 in WTCR racer Tom Coronel’s pit garage, and my best race-driver ice-breaker ever (Tom’s dad used to instruct at the exceptional drift days I’d attend on Circuit Zandvoort).
Half-term and Liverpool fans heading to Paris for tear-gassing gummed up the Chunnel check-in process early Friday, putting me about 90 minutes behind before I breezed through France and into Belgium, where a helpful local provided a 120mph buffer to law enforcement. This highlighted several things – the Audi’s generally excellent at this long-legged stuff thanks to comfy seats and suspension (especially at speed), well-suppressed wind noise and punchy audio, but I was surprised how floaty it became as speeds rose, and that the user-configurable digital dash was so hard to switch to kilometres. It’s in there somewhere, but g-force readings are easier to find (remember when old analogue dials had both?).
Traffic thwarted a crack at the 174mph top end on derestricted German autobahns, but I’d somehow clawed back lost time, averaged 29.2mpg at an often decent lick, and was soon surreally whisked through crowds, into the paddock and parked alongside Tom, not only able to compliment his snappy red-and-yellow DHL livery, but complement it too with our car’s Catalunya Red.
Said ice-breaker worked a treat (‘ah, Paul Vlasblom, Olaf Commijs!’) before Tom got
down to business, explaining that he contests both the TCR Europe and WTCR championships. He’d won only the week before at Paul Ricard.
The racer’s saloon body is the most obvious difference to our car, and is used partly because it’s aerodynamically superior (now they tell me…), partly because that’s the variant Audi’s marketing people wanted to push. But there’s a more fundamental difference here: regulations stipulate Tom’s RS3 LMS racecar has a 2.0-litre turbo four and frontwheel drive rather than five cylinders and Quattro. So really an S3 is a better – if still imperfect – match.
Coronel has been integral to RS3 LMS development. ‘Audi won’t accept that some small problem creates bigger problems [as engineers gradually upgrade the car, stressing lesser components], so we were doing miles and miles until something breaks, then analysing and making sure it doesn’t happen again – we’ve tested at Aragon, Estoril, Vallelunga and at the end of last year the car was finally “Audi spec”, but it’s also of course about developing the performance, the power steering, the brakes…’
If you want one, you’ll pay €139,000, which is the price