Audi R8 shows up at Autocross yesterday
 

Yesterday at Autocross, an Audi R8 showed up. I'd never seen one in person.
There were rumors it would run. It didn't run for the timed events, but it did stick around and run afterwards during fun runs.

We stuck around to get some video of it. It pulled a pretty impressive time at :51 and change. I figured it'd do a bit better seeing as how some were pulling high :40's. Still, a pretty dang impressive time.
The car was much quieter than I expected.

Here's the video
Shot with a Canon G7 camera, originally at 1024x768 resolution, 15fps 125MB. Compressed to 720x480 and 8.5MB. Still looks pretty good for all that compression. :D

For anyone who wants to see an in-car view of the track layout, Here's a video shot from my car using an Archos recorder and helmet cam between the visors.
For comparison, I pulled a :57 and change...

Cool. An R8 autocrossing, and a Cessna landing, all on the same video.

There was a yellow and blue Biplane takign off and landing all day, over and over again. I figure it was practice landings or something.

I missed yesterday's autocross.

Instead of prepping the 911, I ended up putting new front brakes on my wife's Jeep.

I flew out to the coast for breakfast instead. Beautiful day to goof off with an airplane. Used the airplane again in the evening for dinner. Am I a spoiled brat, or what?

A customer of mine has an R8. Its an evil car.

Thats a pretty serious autocross course. It could give some tracks a run for the money. The Audi looks pretty stable.

Sweet! I heart those cars.

It's a great autocross site. An entire runway/taxiway that's currently closed to airplanes. It's also used extensively for drag racing, and the SCCA sets up a road course there as well, where I've raced my 944 quite a bit. The taxiway is the main straight, with most of the twisties out on the main runway. Next race is in a couple weeks.

Every weekend, somebody is using the site. Car clubs, driving schools, police training, yada yada.....

The problem is that the airport is making noise about ending the access for racing, and returning the area to aviation uses. The airport owns lots of land across the highway that is leased for industrial/business uses. There is still quite a bit of available land for lease, so I hope we continue to have access to this side of the airport for a few more years.

They've been talkign about ending access for awile. They said yesterday that a new site should be opening up south of Tacoma...15 (?) acres of blacktop, south of Tacoma. I forget where exactly, but my wife will know.
There will be a huge multi-region Autocross there soon...early July, I think...

Fifteen acres of blacktop sounds glorious.

With today's building codes requiring absorbing rain water on-site, it's difficult to have that much impervious surface area.

I look forward to burning up a few sets of Hoosiers there.

Bremerton is fun... the roadcourse can be HELL on brakes and the 180* turn on the end is always a slippery little bastard.

I sometimes stop over there for gas in a j-3..(the open runways)

I love doing a few patterns to see if an auto-x is going on... could probably land at the end and taxi over..

in washington state all you need is the "land owners permission" right?... hum...

ABS / DSC / TC how could you not look good in the Audi? Its like racing in a Vette.

Great vids and I loved your in car, looked like a fun course with lots of room to play.

Bremerton drives me nuts. Drive 1.5 hours to have it rain all day on you. Bleh! Total crapshoot!

That course layout looks familiar, I've seen that layout used for rainy day runs alot.

It was a beatuiful day on Saturday. I actually got sunburnt slightly...
Yeah..it rains soemtimes. But that's what waterproof socks are for.
And the rain makes driving liek that just that much more...interesting...
http://www.wolfetone.com/911/autox/autox.gif

Well Saturday was that freak weather day WA seems to get once or twice a year ;)

I see there were 113 entrants, that's a loooong day.