Quote:
Originally Posted by davesaddiction
What are your biggest let-downs about the R8 V10 manual? That's been on my "list" for a while, too...
I think a good solution to the lap time issue is to use something like Harry Lap Timer on your phone, but promise yourself that you'll only look at times after your day or weekend is over. That way, you can see your improvement over time, but you aren't trying to go out on your next run trying to best your previous time.
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I've thought about that Harry's strategy, but even if you wait to look at lap times until later, you're still out there knowing that you're trying to set a lap time. But yeah the people who have the predictive lap timing showing how far off pace they are from their theoretical best or their last lap is a whole other level of risk. No way I'd touch that while driving a car I wouldn't mind walking away from.
On the R8, it was one of my bucket list cars as well, so I sort of hated my friend when he first got it (before the GT4 existed). But I've now driven it twice out on Hill Country roads out here, once before and once after I got the GT4, and the simplest way to say it is that Audi's (semi-)supercar simply has
too much Audi in it. The steering is numb and criminally overboosted (which all Audi models are, but I'd have expected better on the R8), and the suspension is a bit too soft even in the firmer setting. But my two biggest letdowns were the shifter and the noise, probably because those were where I'd expected to be wowed the most. Everyone raved about the "snick-snick" sound of the R8's open-faced shifter. I thought that was the sound that it made going into and out of gears -- turns out it's the noise it makes scraping against the walls of the gate! The shifter also doesn't have a lot of heft to it, and the gates are pretty narrow considering the width of the "dividers", so shifting felt flimsy rather than meaty, and an aggressive 2>3 shift carried a reasonable risk that you'd slam into the divider between 1st and 3rd rather than engaging 3rd. And I couldn't believe (in a bad way) how quiet the car was considering that there was a big 5.2L V10 right behind me. It was also kind of slow to rev compared to the S65, presumably because it had so much more rotating mass. In a lot of ways I thought the S65 gave the M3 more "theater" to its driving experience, which is especially disappointing considering that the R8's MSRP was 2.5x higher than my M3's. I don't know if Audi just had a mandate to keep the Gallardo adequately differentiated or if they deliberately designed the R8 for their A8/S8 customers who wanted a supercar that drove like an A8/S8, but considering how gorgeous it looks on the outside, I was disappointed behind the wheel.
So that was my first experience with it. The second time, I'd had my GT4 for a while and my friend had gotten a Capristo exhaust for his R8, and this time I drove it on a road with much tighter corners. On that drive I noticed how heavy the R8 is. I didn't notice before since it's 100 lbs lighter than the E92 and the corners were more sweepers, but it's 600 lbs heavier than a GT4, and having experienced the superior agility of the GT4 over my M3, I was left wanting with the R8. The Capristo exhaust definitely cured the sound problem (for $6K....), to the point that it was now a bit too loud for my taste, but it was still much better overall. But the other problem that these really twisty roads surfaced for me is that it just has too much power to be totally fun, at least in that setting -- instead, it's fun tainted too much by fear. The acceleration pulls I had were definitely exhilarating, thanks in no small part to AWD helping put all that power down, but getting all the way to redline in 2nd was frightening because of the rate of acceleration. The M3 (and GT4 for that matter) by comparison offer more than you need on public roads, but not so much more that it becomes LESS fun. I don't know, maybe I'd get more accustomed to the speed if I drove it on a regular basis. My M3 after all felt ludicrously quick to me when I first got it, and then after a while just felt "fun fast" as I adapted, though it always impressed/scared my friends who weren't used to performance cars. But I can't help but think that there's got to be a tipping point somewhere beyond which you do not acclimate fully, and the R8 V10 may be beyond that point. My buddy the owner drives it like a grandma, sadly, so he can't offer any insight here.
I'm reminded of the Evo 2015 CotY contest, specifically the evaluations of the GT3RS and 488 wherein they said that although both of those were phenomenal cars, both of them compared to their predecessors were just giving you more of what you can't use on public roads, whereas the GT4 won because it had plenty of power to be fun on public roads but not so much that you had to either be suicidal or just leave a huge chunk of the car's reserves untapped in that setting. I never thought I'd find myself wishing for less power in a car, and if it weren't for twisty back road driving I probably wouldn't for the R8 either, but the GT4 seems much better suited to that type of driving. The back to back experience just reinforced to me that not all fast cars are fun, and not all fun cars are fast. In my view, the GT4 strikes a very nice balance in the way it's fast without being scary fast, which allows it to be capable on track while remaining very fun on the road, arguably more fun than both some slower cars AND some faster cars.