In the eyes of many, the Audi R8 has been a second-run, budget alternative since its debut. Some elitist pseudo-enthusiasts said that if you wanted a Lamborghini but couldn't quite afford one, you went with the R8.
Not only is that perspective wrong and sad, it's a damn shame, because to discredit the R8 for sharing a platform with the Gallardo and, later, the Huracan is a lot like discrediting the iconic Audi TT for having Golf underpinnings. Or, worse yet, shaming the Porsche 356 for basically being a Beetle.
The Audi R8 is and has always been its own thing, though sadly 2023 marks the end of the line for that very special thing. After 15 years, it's being sent out to pasture in the best way possible, with a choice few flying laps around Laguna Seca piloted by a Le Mans Legend. That's appropriate given the origin of this car: Le Mans.
Origin Story
You could say the Audi R8 started with 2003's Le Mans Quattro concept, which made its debut at that year's Frankfurt Motor Show. Really, though, the origin is a little earlier. As you can tell by its name, the Le Mans Concept was a celebration of that epic 24-hour race and, more specifically, Audi's domination.
The R8 LMP first ran at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2000 and won. It came back the next year and won again. It kept on winning through 2005, giving up the overall victory only in 2003 to the Bentley Speed 8—but the R8 still won its class.
Audi was simply a juggernaut of endurance racing in those days, and while sometimes it's easy to get bored with that level of domination, with Audi it felt different. Audi Sport brought so much fascinating engineering to the table it was fascinating to see how the team would clinically find its way out of any problem to win.
The R8 road car is a direct result of that domination. Designer Frank Lamberty penned the original Le Mans Concept, then saw it through to production, which made its debut at the 2006 Paris Auto Show.
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Mainstream And Motorsport Success
While the R8 was overshadowed by its Lamborghini siblings in the eyes of some over the years, Hollywood ensured that the R8 won the hearts and minds of the mainstream. When Tony Stark rolled up in an R8 in 2008's Iron Man, a star was born. According to Audi, the R8 has since gone on to feature in 20 more films, many of them Marvel blockbusters.
Now, I'm not one to get too excited about product placement: It's pretty easy for any manufacturer to write a big check and suddenly a middling SUV is front and center of the show. This Marvel placement, though, is the rare case where it organically works.
Doubtlessly the car's success on the track is far more significant to its lineage. A race car inspired the road-going R8, but the R8 would get its own turn on the track. Many, many turns, with the R8 featuring in many international endurance racing series. And winning. The R8 LMS GT3 has won the Nürburgring 24 Hours six times.
Its final send-off, though, would happen on an American circuit.
The Day Of
Saturday at Weathertech Laguna Seca is always my favorite part of the Monterey Car Week. The Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion gathers together some of the most desirable racing machines on the planet' and then throws them out on track where they're run at speed wheel-to-wheel.
That speed is usually some fraction of what the machines were originally capable of, but with pro drivers lingering in the paddock, many drafted into driving duties throughout the weekend, the resulting show can be quite impressive. So it was this particular Saturday, vintage Formula One machines followed by Le Mans prototypes including, yes, one Audi R8 LMP.
As that car screamed by outside, followed by a Panoz LMP900 and a pair of Saleen S7Rs that all created a cacophonous roar, I stood inside the paddock getting a final safety briefing before it was my time to hit the track. Audi had brought two R8s to run, plucked from the final production run to help us celebrate this special sending-off.
The Cars
It was a pair of 2023 Audi R8s that ran that day. First was a Tango Red model, a R8 V=10 performance Coupe with quattro. Second was in Daytona Gray pearl effect, also V1-0-powered but this time lacking quattro, meaning only rear-wheel-drive.
Given my druthers I'd have probably taken the RWD flavor, as the sky was clear and though Laguna Seca's surface is a bit tired and lacking in grip, so the lighter, more agile of the two would probably have been the more fun. Honestly, though, fun would not be lacking because though this was to be just a lead-follow session, in which I'd not be allowed to pass the leader ahead, that leader was one Tom Kristensen.
Kristensen is the winningest racer at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, coming home first on nine occasions.
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Pre-Staging
For his leading duties, Kristensen was given the keys to an RS e-tron GT, dipped in a stunning but unusual shade of olive drab that Audi calls Tactical Green. The Tango Red of my R8 was far more traditional for Audi Sport duties, the car a little more traditional for hot laps at Laguna, too.
I would have just two laps chasing Tom on this day, and I wanted to get the most of them, so I spent more than a little time obsessing over my seat position, steering wheel alignment, and everything else to ensure that I'd have no distractions on track. The R8's interior makes that easy.
For a supercar, visibility fore and aft is great, and while I wouldn't need to worry too much about what was going on behind me: Keeping sight of Kristensen's camo-colored R8 would be key. Finally, after an endless delay thanks to some oil deposited on the track by one of the racers that had been ripping by, we finally pulled out onto the track and tore down Laguna's long front straight.
Hot Laps
The front straight at Laguna Seca may be up front but it surely ain't straight. You come out of turn 11, the most agonizing corner at the place, and then need to immediately get back on the throttle to carry yourself up and over and through turn one. Turn one is a flat-out launch into the clear, blue California skies. You can't see a damned thing ahead of you except for your steering wheel, which suddenly doesn't seem to do much of anything thanks to how unweighted it becomes as you crest the turn and realize that you're a little too late on the brakes for the steeply downhill Andretti Hairpin.
It's one of motorsports' great pucker factor moments but, for our first lap, Kristensen was still getting us up to speed, so I didn't even feel a touch of engagement of the R8's ABS. The car simply turned in cleanly, skipping the first apex and just touching the second.
From here Laguna gains speed. I made my way through the next two flat, progressively faster right-hand bends, circumnavigating this place's namesake lakebed. Then we turned left and started the climb up to the Corkscrew.
Corkscrew-Bound
It's here that I finally got to really experience all of the R8's 602 horsepower. Kristensen was on the radio giving instruction, still remarkably quick while critiquing my lines in the rearview mirror. But, as the V=10 sang and the speed increased, his invaluable feedback was lost in the roar of the moment.
The first uphill left-hander is quick but easy. The second is even faster, just a lift of the throttle and a brush of the brakes before diving into the curb to take advantage of the camber of the turn and continuing to sing our way up to the top of the hill where the Corkscrew awaits.
Motorsports' most dramatic corner as a spectator is honestly not that difficult from the driver's seat, but it is good fun. Though the braking zone is a bit tricky the R8 handled it cleanly and calmly, diving willingly into the first turn and tracking cleanly as I got on the power to drive through the immediate right.
It's the following left-hander, named after motorcycling icon Wayne Rainey, that's a better test for the R8's quattro all-wheel-drive. Sweeping fast downhill, corner falling away to the left, it's a great test of car balance and grip. The R8 monstered through, keeping me out of the sand and the wall to the right, and slinging me back over to the left in time to get hard on the brakes again for the last, fast right-hander that leads into that ugly, tight turn 11.
Final Lap
Tires warm, Kristensen started to really open things up on the second lap. On the first lap down the front straight he'd been coasting over the crest through turn one. The second lap he gave no such leeway, charging over the hill and down into the hairpin.
We gained speed through every corner, enough that the R8 started to move a bit more under braking and squirm under acceleration. I still struggled to hear Kristensen's instruction and feedback as the R8's V10- was now louder than ever, but I was encouraged by the occasional "good" and "nice" I could hear during the braking points.
It was on the second lap R8's somewhat reluctant transmission programing started to become a nuisance, hanging onto the wrong gears for a little too long for these duties. Thankfully, a quick nudge of the shifter dropped me into manual, so I could use the little wheel-mounted paddles to tell it what to do. In this mode all was well, all the power I wanted, more than enough grip than I needed, plus the glorious sound of a naturally aspirated V-10 and the knowledge that this was a very special day.
That second lap was over all too soon. I screeched to a stop aft of Kristensen and staggered my way back into the paddock, still hopped up on the inevitable adrenaline you get when trying to keep up with a pro tempered with the sadness that this particular combination of car and track would never happen again.