2007 Audi A4 2.0t White on 2040-cars

Auto blog

One Lap of America, with three times the madness

Instead of celebrating last weekend face down in a sombrero full of tequila-spiked OJ and a few lime wedges, 71 racing teams with one set of tires each and no support crews began Cinco De Mayo — and this year's 35th running of the One Lap of America — by hitting the wet skid pad at Tire Rack's headquarters in South Bend, Ind. There were Porsches, Vettes, Camaros and BMWs galore. There was a Miata, a vintage NSX, a Honda S2000 and even an old VW Rabbit. There were GTIs, the odd Evo and, oh yeah, six Toyotas, a couple of Vipers and a couple of GTRs. When the skidding stopped, a 2011 BMW 1M emerged triumphant and led the pack out into the heartland, where it will spend 5,000 miles this week hitting road courses, dragstrips and time trials at tracks as far west as Denver, as south as Fort Worth and then New Orleans. From there, it will barrel north through Mississippi, Alabama, Nashville, Kentucky and back home again to Tire Rack in Indiana. Twenty events, eight venues, with a three-hour window for each event. It's a nonstop, no-sleep, one-week road trip comprising 150-ish friends and brothers, partiers and pro racing drivers, spouses and other family-member combo packs. Some will never speak to each other again, some might end up divorced, some might get married. All of them are nuts. I know this because I made three laps. Three laps I will never forget.LAP ONE: 1984 Vehicle: 1984 Dodge Van Team #0: Jean Lindamood (Jennings), Walker Evans, Parnelli Jones I was present for the inaugural 1984 One Lap of America because I worked at Car and Driver back then and so did Brock Yates. He was the guy who came up with the clandestine, illegal, unsanctioned Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash from Connecticut to Redondo Beach, Calif. It ran five times in the 1970s, with Yates joining Dan Gurney in a Ferrari Daytona for the second run. They won, Gurney insisting that "at no time did we exceed 175 miles per hour." One Lap was born of Cannonball nostalgia (read: Brock was bored), and I was beyond game for it. After securing a van from Dodge and two giant decals for the van sides, along with $5,000 in sponsorship from local Detroit Stroh's Brewery, I coaxed my friend, nine-time Baja 1000 winner Walker Evans, into running One Lap by suggesting he didn't have a hair on his ass if he refused. Then I suggested that if he didn't get his best friend and longtime road trip buddy, Parnelli Jones, to go with us, I would actually have to drive the van, too.

Audi RS7 prototype is world's sportiest self-driving car [w/video]

Audi may not be the only automaker out there toying with self-driving automobile technology, but it is arguably the fastest of them. A few years back, it raced unleashed a driverless TTS on the Bonneville Salt Flats, then sent it up Pikes Peak and around Thunderhill. But now it's taking things a step further with the vehicle you see here.
This RS7 Sportback has been fitted with steering, brakes, throttle and transmission hooked up to a computer system that combines GPS, high-frequency radio signals and 3D imaging camera to drive the vehicle autonomously not just in slow-paced, stop-and-go traffic, but around the track at the same pace a professional racing driver would push it: full throttle on the straights, full braking before the corner and 1.1-g of cornering force.
As promised, Audi plans to unleash the self-driving RS7 - which it calls "the sportiest piloted driving car in the world" - at Hockenheim next weekend prior to the DTM season finale, where it is anticipated to pull a 2:10 lap time. The next stage will be to set it lose on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, all 154 turns and 13 miles of it, which ought to pose a heck of a challenge to the engineers from Ingolstadt. In the meantime you can scope it out in the high-res image gallery above and the second teaser video below.

First official Audi R8 photo leaks

The next-gen Audi R8 makes its grand debut in a just a few days at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show. However, leaks aren't uncommon for such a highly anticipated model, and it appears that the first official shot of the future supercar is now online. Autoblog en Espanol claims this is the first leaked factory photo showing the new Audi R8 completely undisguised. The single image depicts the supercar from the front, and it looks a lot like both Audi's own official teaser and the previous blurry image from Instagram. Based on this picture, the German designers thickened the outline around the grille at the front and added vertical slats at each corner. They also removed the gentle curve in the headlights in favor of a completely angular look. While the side blades were one of the major styling features of the original, their appearance has been toned down by removing the vertical, contrasting strip running up the body. Though the exterior design seems to evolve the R8 slightly, there are some big changes for the powertrain. Audi is ditching the V8 for the latest model and opting for two tunes of the 5.2-liter V10. The standard version gets 540 horsepower, and the Plus pushes output up to 610 hp. The top trim can reportedly hit 60 miles per hour in 3.2 seconds and reach a top speed of 205 mph. Although, there are already the rumors of other variants, including a turbo V6, coming later. Related Video: