S4 sees track time! Road course mini review

Visited Shannonville this past Sunday in the german Camry.
It was pretty awesome–the car surpassed my every expectation. For context, I was doing a best lap time of 2:04.9 in the Boss. The S4 in stock configuration did 2:06.3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viqCEFH8Ahk

As expected, the greatest thing to manage with this car is understeer and keeping front tires in check. Once this car begins to push, I either maintain or reduce steering angle, and lift. Unfortunately, the rear end doesn’t tend to rotate off power, so the only way the car maintains the line is through the scrubbing of the front tires. Not the fastest way, but that’s what you’re dealing with when you have awd, stock alignment and 55/45 weight distribution. I countered this with a lot of trail braking, and really chucking the car into the corner to get it pointed to the apex. Once the machine is pointed at the apex, you can have fun with the go-pedal. Roll onto the gas hard and the car has a mild rear steer effect at high speeds, tightening the line as you power through a corner. This is the greatest advantage of the car. As a result of the torque vectoring rear diff, one can get on power not only earlier than usual–but also much harder than usual. The action of rolling into the throttle can be much swifter with this car. It simply slingshots out of the corner and eats up the pavement really rapidly. There are a number of corners where I hit WOT the instant I’m pointed to the apex. These corners were turn 4 (the moss carousel exit), turn 5, turn 11 & 12.

Brakes actually have better initial bite than the Boss did, and less brake dive. I was more confident in being aggressive with my braking and really compressing my braking zones–despite the car being 4000lbs and hitting 180 down the back straight (per my lap timer), I’m hitting the brakes at the 75 ft mark. Stock brakes are stunning with Castrol SRF. I could always trust my pedal. No brake checks needed.

Coles notes: surprisingly fast. Expected entry understeer. Exit is where the car shines. Sport diff is worth it. Lots of lap traffic, excuse my cursing :smiley:

A more indepth drive review on my blog :slight_smile: