ABDC 2017: Infiniti Q60's DNF

The Infiniti Q60 Red Sport was a car that promised so much.

When road test editor Matt Brogan drove the twin-turbo Q60 in the USA late last year he piled praise on it – and with good reason. For performance and power-to-weight ratio it threatened to fire a shot right across the bows of the Teutonic trinity: the Audi S5, BMW M3 Competition and Mercedes-AMG C 43.

It was a clear and obvious choice to take part in Australia's Best Driver's Car for 2017, following its local launch just weeks earlier.

Unfortunately – and it's always a risk with a high-octane event like ABDC – the Q60 fell victim to a series of circumstances that saw it unable to continue beyond the first day.

Here's how events unfolded…

Your writer was behind the wheel of the Q60 for the morning of the first day, driving south-west from Devonport. While I loved the outstanding performance offered by the car's drivetrain, it was clear that the Q60 was struggling for grip. Even in normal drive mode it was prone to oversteer on the wet bitumen roads of country Tasmania. A fair degree of turbo lag didn’t help the matter…

Switch to Sport mode and the problem worsened. In that mode the Q60's stability control software allowed more latitude for what would be tail-out fun on a racetrack with plenty of run-off area. But on slippery public roads, the Q60's characteristics were arguably capricious and, certainly, demanding.

In addition, the engine's power delivery and transmission calibration both changed to mapping that was more aggressive. Turbo boost was sudden and the transmission would kick down sooner for fierce acceleration and hold lower gears longer. Note that this was the Sport mode – not Sport+, which was seriously hard-core.

I felt that leaving the car in Normal mode ensured it handled safely, but would maintain a quick pace across country in the diluvial conditions.

Halfway to our first driver change I checked in with Luke Youlden, who had been driving ahead of me in the M3 Competition. Luke revealed he was suffering similar difficulties in the BMW. That didn't stop him blasting off into the distance, leaving me and the Q60 in his wake.

At the first driver change I handed over to motoring.com.au’s UK correspondent John Mahoney, and advised him that sport mode would give him plenty of straight-line performance, but that it could also be a handful around corners and bends.

We were literally less than 20 minutes into the next leg of our journey, on the Murchison Highway in the middle of nowhere when we approached a slow-moving Hyundai from behind. The driver of the Hyundai was travelling at a speed I estimate to be less than 60km/h in a 100km/h zone. Although there was some low cloud around, there was at least 400m visibility ahead. And although it wasn't raining, the coarse-chip road surface was still wet.

With the road ahead clear of oncoming traffic, the two cars in front of me pulled out to overtake the Hyundai. I blatted past in the M3 also and watched for the other cars in the mirror.

John in the Q60 was the fourth car on the road. He too pulled out to overtake the Hyundai.

And then it happened… An unexpected blink of its headlights in the rear vision mirror was the first clue to the Q60's predicament.

Still in sport mode, the Infiniti had accelerated with enough force to break traction and the tail of the car stepped out. As the classics go, as if in slow motion I observed the right-rear flank of the Q60 collect a roadside post before the tail pendulummed back in the other direction.

John tried to rein in the skid, but the Q60 whipped back again and this time there was no soft landing. The rear of the car ran out into the gravel, hit a low bank and dragged the rest of the car into the bank with it.

I pulled over and returned to the scene, to find John was walking around unhurt – apart from a self-inflicted kicking. The Q60 was missing bumper covers front and rear, there was damage done to the right-side sheet metal and the side-curtain airbag on the driver's side had deployed.

Randy, our mechanic along with us for the week, checked out the Q60 and noted that although it was driveable, numerous error messages were being displayed. Then we noticed leaking fluids. Infiniti’s run in ABDC 2017, short though it was, had definitely ended.

Eventually, the Q60 was picked up by a tray truck and returned to civilisation.

For the record, John didn’t blame the car but himself – and also subsequently described it as his 'most embarrassing' experience in over 15 years of motoring journalism.

Reality was this was one of those incidents that could have caught out anyone – and very obviously even with the advent of stability control.

As the adage goes – you cannot change the laws of physics. And as motoring.com.au’s own Bruce Newton put it: "There but for the grace of God go all of us."