Audi R8 RWD 2020 UK first drive

By not going for broke with cast-iron body control, Audi has given itself freedom with the suspension tune. The setup is passive and so there’s no push-button adjustability, but barely is there any necessity for altering things, and if the Bilstein spring rates are not the softest in all of supercardom, I’d be surprised. The R8 RWD is quite different from the regular R8 in this regard, and while it doesn’t interact and work with the road in quite the same magical way as do many McLarens, the car's ability to soak up rough stuff makes it feel custom-made for the UK. Genuinely, it rides significantly better than most GT cars. 

Apart from the car’s unexpected ability to crush day-long drives, what this means is that you’ll drive the R8 RWD fast. It wants to go fast and you’ll want it to go fast, if for no other reason than the fact that the 5.2-litre V10 is strangely subdued below 5500rpm.  

Here again, the Audi makes life deceptively easy. In terms of raw throttle response, there’s now daylight between the R8’s more demure-looking V10 and its Performante-sourced counterpart in the new Lamborghini Huracán RWD, but the delivery remains so perfectly linear that even without the front axle working away, straight-line traction isn’t an issue, even on damp roads. Shifts from the seven-speed dual-clutch automatic gearbox are also beyond objective criticism, although the stubby, plastic and thoroughly unromantic paddles have no place in a machine like this.   

And when you really want to drive the thing, the R8 RWD has two ways of doing things. At a good lick it’s still a bit aloof, but you can still enjoy the ebb and flow of weight through that double wishbone suspension and the electromechanical steering. This sensation is nicely pronounced, although in typical Audi fashion, you get almost nothing of the road texture bubbling up through the firmly padded, perforated leather of the steering wheel rim, and that’s a shame. Body control, despite the fluid ride, is also excellent, if not quite at the same incisive level you get with more senior mid-engined cars, particularly in terms of vertical control. On the track, you might miss that, but on the road it hardly matters. 

What you get with the R8 RWD are intuitive direction changes (thankfully, there’s been no mucking about with hyper-sensitive initial steering response or strangely variable gearing) and a marginally sweeter and more palpable rear-biased balance (as well as all of the propulsive efforts, 60% of the car’s 1595kg mass is working the back axle) than with the quattro model. In short, you can cover ground at subsonic speed, with quiet satisfaction and without any unpleasant surprises, again playing into the R8’s everyday appeal. 

But the other way in which you can drive the R8 RWD is much, much more exciting, and it can challenge you in a way that the regular model simply cannot. This is because the R8 RWD will slide freely and dramatically through second and third-gear corners should you so wish, even if the traction and stability control systems are only in their midway Sport setting. Moreover, and in most un-Audi fashion, there seems to be little in the way of amber-warning understeer to tell you what’s about to happen. Part of the issue here is the steering. As we've discovered, it doesn’t communicate the details of what’s brewing down at the contact patch particularly well, and when the car’s tail does begin to rotate, it does so in text-book mid-engined fashion: like a switch being flicked. 

Get the application of throttle just right and the chassis will allow you to open the steering a morsel (or, frankly, quite a bit more than that) once you’re heading through and past the apex of a corner. Needless to say, this feels glorious, with the car's angle of attack faithfully dictated by throttle opening rather than steering angle. In these moments, the control and balance the car possesses also demonstrate the sheer class of Audi’s engineering efforts. 

However, the margin for error is slimmer than in any 911 or, to an even greater extent, Aston Martin Vantage, both of which you’ll also be considering at this price point. It’s one reason why the ESP is, in its default setting, draconian in its calibration, the light flickering away especially if the corners you’re splicing through are damp, but also often if they are not.

The takeaway here is that, with the RWD derivative, you quickly need to see through the R8's deceptively benign demeanour and friendly road manners, because this car takes skill to exploit and fully enjoy and, more so even than many other mid-engined machines, doesn't tolerate complacency.