Day 1- The R8 V10 Alpine adventure

After an early start at 04:30 AM, 1x Redbull and a spirited drive to Ingostadt I arrived there to meet my friend and Co-driver for the Alpine adventure: Dr. Z.

We were warmly greeted at the Audi Forum Ingolstadt by Ms. M. from Audi driver's day program, whit whom we did the mandatory paperwork and a short introduction about the relevant things to know for the next days (route suggestions, Hotline numbers, …). We fixed our program:

1^st: Audi R8 V10 handover

2^nd: Museum mobile guided tour

3^rd: Small lunch at the Audi Forum Restaurant

4^th: The adventure beginns

After that it was Showtime: The handover of our Audi R8 V10 for the next coupe of days.

Ibis White, standard V10 Y-style 19'' wheels - R-Tronic – pretty much full spec

Here you can see the Pricelist & equipped options

Here is our white beauty

We went through some functions of the car, but as we did an Audi Sportscar Experience with the Audi R8 V8 last year, there were not that many things that needed to be explained.

We thanked Ms. M for the warm welcome and perfect service, packed the R8 and went on to join our Museum mobile tour group

Here you can see some of the exponats at the museum.

After the very informative 1 hour museum tour we went for a light lunch at the Audi Restaurant and then the dream came true:

The Audi R8 V10 is ours for the next coupe of days. Timmelsjoch, Passo Stelvio, Passo Pordoi (among others): here we come

But 1^st we had to pass Munich on our way to Garmisch and Austria. In the Munich rush our, the R-tronic came in very handy. I'm – or better said – was not a big fan of the R-Tronic. We had it in our R8 V8 during the Audi Sportscar Experience in Spa last year, and one could not say, that we became close friends. But I have to admit, that it behaved here in Automode (in Munich) as you would expect from an Automatic – changing gears without any hussle in stop and go traffic. One feature of the R-Tronic that we would LOVE over the comming days: the automated double downshift (?) or Zwischengas in german. Sometimes i downshifted for now other reason, except to hear the 10 fold orchestra in the back do the music.

And apparently Audi did some "changes" or should we say improvements on the R-Tronic in the V10, that's at least what the reviewers in numerous car mags were saying. After our time with the V10 R-Tronic, i sure believe that.

After Munich we hit the autobahn again, I tried to do a full speed run, but stopped at 300 Km/h (186 M/h), as the safety of the other drivers was more important than my ego (=traffic got heavier)

Our next stop: Timmelsjoch

There is not much to say, except second highest pass on our jurney (2.509m / 8.231 feet) and to become one of my top 3 of the whole trip.

More to come soon...