Audi R8 Performance quattro 2019 Review — International

I love the Audi R8. Every time I get in one the nagging thought that it may be the last big-banger naturally-aspirated junior supercar migrates from the back of my mind to the front.

The end of cars like the R8 is inevitable, and what we’d all lose is immeasurable. The 2019 Audi R8 Performance quattro drips in authentic, un-synthesised character like no other car near its price point (which will be about the same as the outgoing one when it arrives in Australia late next year).

It’s stripped away the chrome from the nose – because Audi Sport’s designers insist chrome has no place in motorsport, and the R8 Performance shares 50 per cent of its parts with the GT3 racecar and it rolls down the same production line.

Motorsport is also why it gets three horizontal vents in the nose, a front splitter that trails off down the sides and a huge air diffuser at the rear. And why it just looks meaner, with optional laser headlights and standard LEDs with 37 modules at the front and 118 at the rear.

The engine note – at any point in the rev range you care to mention – is one of the most heart-warming sounds known to man and the throttle response verges on synapse-fast. It’s so accurate it feels like the Man-Up pedal knows the difference between your toeprint ridges.

And it helps you to shift your butt faster and further than ever before, with a 3.1-second burst to 100km/h and a 331km/h top speed.

The charm isn’t just the speed. It’s the shameless beefiness with which it gathers it, attacking the horizon, the ears and every piece of skin that touches part of the car with equal enthusiasm.

If the Performance version hits harder, it’s because Audi Sport has bolted titanium valves, valve springs and roller rockers inside it, which seems a lot of effort for the 456kW V10’s extra 7kW, but there you go.

In the turbo era, the R8 Performance quattro’s 580Nm of torque isn’t impressive. It lags behind, well, lots of stuff. Yet it’s 20Nm more than the old car had and it’s enough.

Even the stock Audi R8 quattro’s power has seen its power rise from 397kW to 419kW and lifted its torque 20Nm to 560Nm, and it’s capable of sprinting to 100km/h in 3.4 seconds and topping out at 324km/h.

The joy of the Audi R8 Performance quattro’s torque peak is that it’s a genuine peak; a throwback to the days before engines didn’t have a torque plateau that began at 2000rpm and stayed at the same level until 5000 revs. I mean, it’s a good way to get around town, but it’s not the R8 Performance quattro way.

This is a car that prefers to — nay, lives to — give life to the 5.2-litre engine’s performance, not just to deliver it.

Every single point in the rev range has its own character and sound, and it runs into every other point in the range logically and beautifully, creating symphonies of intake noise and throatiness and sheer gristle rising to arias at 8500rpm. And few people complain it’s not getting there fast enough.

While the beautifully crafted manual gear-lever faded into history with the first-generation R8, it left the R8 with a mid-mounted 5.2-litre V10, pumping out quite a lot of horsepower at high revs, smooshed onto a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission that spreads drive to all four wheels.

It can spread them very quickly from one end to the other, too, and is capable of firing all of the torque to the front or the rear, as needs be, and from side to side via the skid-control system.

All this is based around an aluminium space-frame chassis that’s backed up by a CFRP (carbon-fibre reinforced polymer) rear bulkhead, transmission tunnel and two B-pillars that add body stiffness.

And it’s not a small car, with a 2.65-metre wheelbase in a body that only weighs 200kg out of a total of 1595kg, so it’s the body-in-white and 1395kg of other stuff.

There are lighter mid-engined cars out there, but not many of them have an all-wheel drive as sophisticated as the Audi.

The real steps forward here aren’t the extra power, but the R8 Performance quattro’s extra manners and fun from inside each wheel-arch and from inside the skid-control software.

It has stiffer springs and dampers and the software has been rejigged to be more stable in its standard modes, more calm in the rain and both looser and faster in the Dynamic mode.

And there are more optional tricks up its sleeve. There is the magnetic dampers, which have had a speed upgrade over the old cars, plus Dynamic steering, plus a really cool-looking lightweight CFRP front anti-roll bar with red mounting brackets.

While the magnetic dampers are a known quantity, the Dynamic steering set-up is new.

At the global press launch, we were limited to just day and night laps of the private Ascari race resort in Spain’s south, with the Audi R8s shod with track-biased Michelin Sport Cup 2 rubber instead of the stock Pirelli P Zeros. So read on with that in mind.

The handling is crisper than before. It’s more accurate than before. It’s more fun than before, especially in its Dynamic mode and especially-especially with its crash-busting software switched to its higher-drift plane and especially-especially-especially with its crash-busting software switched off altogether.

For lovers of hard driving – and, oddly, those who drive in cities by necessity – the Dynamic steering is a big addition. But it’s not for everyone.

The standard steering has one rate and for some people it will actually be the better – and cheaper – set-up. Sure, it isn’t as easy in town, where you have to wind on more lock, but it feels more linear and intuitive in high-speed corners.

Where the Dynamic steering comes in to its own (besides the theoretical urban advantage) is in tighter bends, particularly a series of tighter bends.

It comes with a range of steering ratios, from 10.5:1 to 15.8:1, though its default ratio in Dynamic mode (and above 80km/h) is 14.1:1.

Effectively, it predictively shortens up the driver’s steering inputs for a given corner, especially if it’s a tight corner. In some bends, like hairpins, it cuts off more than a quarter of a turn of steering lock.

Now, some people won’t find it intuitive, especially for corrections in high-speed corners, but it is incredibly well suited to very precise driving styles.

Lean the Audi R8 Performance quattro into a corner on its nose with fingertip steering inputs and it now takes less input to do the same job, and the input-gap between the stock system and the Dynamic gets larger as the corners get tighter.

So it takes less energy from the driver so the driver can feel more relaxed and stable in the grippy sports seats, and a series of flip-floppy bends take no more than a couple of flicked wrists.

However, it’s not as intuitive to correct the car when it slides at speed, and it does that often and progressively. The steering’s weighting is perfect, but it’s not as nuanced in its feel as a McLaren.

Unlike previous Audi R8s, the new one is happy to drift its way into corners, with the skid-control nuancing the car’s way to the apex time and again, making it fun and fast at the same time.

Even at 200km/h-plus, its drifts on the way into corners are easy to play with and the all-wheel drive makes the exit drifts even easier. Just keep stamped on the throttle and it will bite and go.

The brakes, too, feel like they are unstoppable, though our cars carried the optional carbon-ceramic units and not the regular steelies, which Audi claims stop the R8 in 1.5 fewer metres from 100km/h and five metres from 200km/h.

But I wouldn’t know because I didn’t try them. Instead, the CC versions bit hard, with a consistently high and firm pedal.

The best part about the latest Audi R8 is how egocentric it is. It feels as though every rev change is just for you to enjoy, every cracked gearshift is for your enjoyment and every hard-pushed slide is intentionally designed for you to feel gleeful about.

But it makes sure of it by turning the interior into a homage to the driver. There’s exactly zero stuff for the passenger to play with, even though there is 226 litres of luggage space behind the front seats.

The 12.3-inch infotainment screen is for the driver’s eyes only, including everything about navigation, speed, revs, fuel, lateral acceleration and torque and power use.

And it’s really all you need. Everything seems to work inside with far less fuss than standard Audis.

Turns out the Audi R8 Performance quattro, with its mild upgrades, hasn’t rocked the boat too much and improved the handling just that smidge it needed.
And that’s more than enough.

How much is the 2019 Audi R8 Performance quattro?
Price: TBC
On sales: Late 2019
Engine: 5.2-litre petrol V10
Output: 456kW/580Nm
Transmission: seven-speed dual-clutch auto
Fuel: Quite a bit
CO2: Ditto
Safety Rating: TBCA