ABDC: Inside the dragging den

Performance Testing
Australia's Best Driver's Car
Heathcote, Victoria

We've said it before and we'll say it again: Australia's Best Driver's Car is more than just a numbers game. That said, you can't conduct the largest performance car test in Australia and not find the hard limits of the cars involved. It's for this reason we test the cars on track and on the drag strip. Knowing the entrant's real-world straight-line acceleration figures is important – especially if you're about to throw down your hard-earned for that sub-five-second sports car...

So what's the relevance of taking our Australia's Best Drivers Car contenders to the drag strip?

Well bragging rights count. And so do claims that don't stack up in the real world.

"We don't use the figures [gathered at the strip] to judge the cars, so there is no weighting put on performance times," explained motoring.com.au road test editor and ABDC guru Matt Brogan.

"What it does tell us, though, is how close the cars are in real-world conditions to the manufacturers' acceleration claims.

"We think people who are going to throw down their hard-earned money to buy something based on performance claims deserve to know what it will really do on an actual road. That's pretty important in my view."

Well, savour these results folks, because they only came after a monumental effort by all involved.

In fact, let's backtrack 12 months. You may recall ABDC 2015 was struck by enough rain to drown Noah. As a result, acceleration times weren't recorded until we got back to the mainland and ventured out to Melbourne's Calder Park.

This year it got even more convoluted. The weather was dry at Queenstown when V8 Supercar racer Luke Youlden lined up to set times at the local airport. The trouble was the surface was simply too loose to achieve them. It literally tore up under the wheels of the first of our 13 ABDC contestants.

So we postponed it three days to TAS Dragway near Launceston, only to have heavy rain hit about an hour before we were scheduled to test.

Postpone to the next morning and the bloody rain shows up again!

Finally, the cars, the weather and Youlden were reunited the following week at Heathcote Park dragway in central Victoria.

The only problem this time? The surface. It was so coated in rubber and chemicals in the launch area that it was impossible to get the grip for a hard launch.

If you want evidence, check out some of the video highlights. Never has it been easier to smoke the rear tyres than it was on this day. Or the front tyres. Or all four…

It was so bad that Youlden elected to move off the concrete launch pad and down the strip to the craggy looking bitumen, before flicking all the traction and stability controls off and going for it.

Even then traction proved scarce for Youlden, who experimented with both launch control – where available – and his own skills. In the end he went his own way, consistently able to produce better times.

But not necessarily the times he wanted.

"I went half-a-second quicker just idling it off the line," said a frustrated Youlden, after emerging from the Ford XR6 Sprint.

As repeated 4.6-second 0-100km/h passes at the launch in March confirmed, the Sprint should be able to knock off consistent 4.5sec 0-100 times on just about any surface. Youlden's best? A 5.029sec.

Which meant the all-wheel drive cars were the ones with the chance to truly shine. Or one all-wheel drive car in particular: the Audi RS 3 Sportback quattro.

A 4.338sec 0-100km/h time and a 12.097sec 400-metre pass put the RS 3 to the top of the pack on both counts. To watch it launch was incredible; raise revs, release, squat, grip, go ... hard! Then bang through the seven-speed dual-clutch auto like a machine gun at speeds no traditional manual can match.

Youlden was marvelling.

"This thing is just so easy. Just load it up and step off the brake and boof, away you go," he said. "That's where it gets all its time, it just rockets on down there."

For the record, Audi claims the RS 3 Sportback quattro is capable of hitting 100km/h in 4.3sec. True to its word then...

The one figure the RS 3 didn't top was speed through the trap at 400m. At 180km/h it was bested by the Porsche 911 Carrera S and the HSV ClubSport R8 LSA at 183km/h. But drop-kicking everything else into the shade was the brutal Mercedes-AMG C 63 S at an awesome 191km/h.

That ridiculous terminal speed advantage played a key role in the mega-Benz setting second-fastest 0-100km/h and 0-400m times, despite the battles to get it off the line.

"This thing gets rocking," laughed Youlden. "It has just so much torque it can fry the tyres like you wouldn't believe."

AMG claims the C 63 S is capable of a 4.5sec 0-100km/h sprint. It would deliver too on a better surface...

Amongst the rest, the XR6 Sprint was the quickest Aussie rear-wheel drive muscle car to 100km/h, but the ClubSport R8 LSA took over by mid track.

Understandably, the Holden SS V-Series Redline, with its lower outputs, lagged them both. The imported rear-drive BMW M2 and Ford Mustang GT Fastback were mixed up in this lot too – the latter inhibited from delivering full throttle unless launch control was selected.

Amongst the front-wheel drives it was the incredible little Peugeot 308 GTi 270 that continued to show the way, albeit suffering with the same traction issues as almost everything else, and only just pipping the MINI John Cooper Works.

At the end of it all Youlden was left marvelling not only at the Audi, but just how fast this bunch of machinery was.

"I thought the RS 3 would be quick, but being all-wheel drive was an advantage," Youlden said. "It has been a real challenge managing the wheelspin on all the cars, but the times are pretty impressive all the same.

"We've got cars that manage 12s and 13s on the track but are completely docile on the street. It wasn't that long ago that only proper race cars were doing those times."

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