Le Mans winner Andre L. grew up
dreaming of the Group B Audi Quattro. But he never imagined he'd be let loose
in its ultimate evolution, the legendary S1, on the challenging roads of the
Sanremo rally stages
How many current top level racing drivers
would be this excited to drive a 1985 rally car? Would any brave the freezing
cold of the Alps in winter and hang around for two days of photography and
video work just for the chance of a few blats along the twisting Alpine roads?
Would any other driver grin quite so widely at the sound of a turbo hitting
boost?
'I feel so privileged!' exclaims Andre
Lotterer, winner of Le Mans in 2011 and 2012, highly successful Endurance
Championship driver, and a former test driver for Jaguar Racing who missed F1
by a whisker, and is still approached occasionally with F1 offers.
Audi
Quattro S1 - Childhood Revisited
We're in San Romolo village square, a
service point on the famous Sanremo Rally, part of the World Rally Championship
since 1973. It was on the 1981 Sanremo that Michelle Mouton, and Fabrizia Pons
won in the first rally Quattro, and on the 1985 event that Walter Rohrl, and
Christian Geistdörfer won in the Sport Quattro SI. Back then, the square would
have been packed with hundreds of spectators, and the village green home to a
legion of service vans. Today, a handful of mountain bikers and endure riders
mill around.
André struggles into his race overalls in
the back of an Audi estate. He's only just arrived from Nice airport, a
90-minute drive away, but coffee and pizza in the local rally restaurant can
wait. We're all here to sample the Quattro S1 - the final derivation of rally
Quattro and arguably the ultimate rally weapon of all time. It's the last of
the Group B monsters; so powerful they sounded their own death knell. Rallying
never saw the like of it again.
All
quiet in San Romolo village square. In 1985, the support teams were set out on
the green. The village restaurant is a rallying
The S1 really is a monster. Comically short
and squat, there's nothing subtle about this machine. You can't imagine the
huge front spoiler 'directing' air, it just shoves it out of the way. The six
massive spotlights could melt retinas at 20 paces, the wheel arches add an
extra foot to the width and you could serve a banquet on that rear spoiler. The
bluff rear panel is crudely ugly, blocking out all vision; it unclips to reveal
a radiator as wide as the boot, located there to improve on the famously
front-heavy weight distribution of earlier Quattros. It's far removed from the
road going car, but at the Si's heart is the familiar and characterful
five-cylinder engine. Rally fans go weak at the sound of its off-beat exhaust
note.
There's
no sound like it. Dad was running the team but he also built the engines in
those days, teams did everything themselves.
'I still remember that five-cylinder sound
from childhood,' says Andre, who was born in 1981 and grew up to the noise of
competition cars at his father's RAS Sport race and rally concern. 'There's no
sound like it. Dad was running the team but he also built the engines in those
days, teams did everything themselves. It was pretty cool; they ran Group B
Porsche 959s, RS200s, Cosworths and Quattros! Dad took me to races and - when I
was older rallies too, but I was always hanging round the factory. I had a kart
with pedals there; the mechanics would push it and I'd counter steer. We had a
laugh!'
Andre went on from pedal kart to racing
kart at just seven years old, and from then the progression into circuit
racing, rather than rallying, seemed natural. After successes in both German
and British Formula 3, he became Jaguar's Formula 1 test driver, only to lose
his chance of a race seat to Mark Webber.
Alloy
engine now runs 15% less boost and no anti-lag but is still ferociously
powerful
He later moved to Japan for the Formula
Nippon and Super GT championships, and in 2009 took part in his first Le Mans
24 Hours, with the Kolles Audi team, and finished seventh. Since then he's been
back every year, this time for the works Audi Sport team, finishing second in
2010 and first in 2011 and '12. Now he also competes in the FIA World Endurance
Championship for Audi Sport.
André is patiently explaining this, but
we're both keeping close to the SI, where race mechanics Alfons and Thomas are
fussing over the engine, preparing to fire it up. The Kevlar bonnet shivers in
the breeze. The quiet of the square is broken by a couple of the 'crossers
barking into life. Thomas climbs into the Quattro. There's an agricultural
whirr of starter motor, a cough, and the 2.1-liter five-pot erupts and settles
into an idle so raucous that the motocross engines are suddenly drowned out.
The mountain bike riders ditch their mounts and hurry over, rushing to flick their
camera phones into action. They might have been calmer had they known that
Thomas and Alfons won't even think about moving the Quattro until the coolant
is showing full working temperature.
Now
he also competes in the FIA World Endurance Championship for Audi Sport.
Meanwhile Andre is strapping himself in. He
drove this very car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, and that fired up his
appetite for a proper drive.
'That was an awesome surprise. I thought
that maybe I'd get a chance to drive the Quattro one day if I stayed at Audi
long enough, but not this soon.
'That first time was, wooo... nothing...
then BANG, the turbo comes in! But actually I was surprised how easy it was to
drive - the clutch, the brakes, they were easy. Goodwood is narrow but not as
narrow as a rally stage - and in its day the Quattro would have run an even
higher boost with more anti-lag built in. After Goodwood I just wanted more.
Seeing this car and not driving it would be like having a hot girl and not
having sex with her!'
So Andre seems keen... On the instruction
of the mechanics he gradually raises the revs, and I wonder at the tolerance of
the locals as the exhaust crackles and echoes off the buildings. Thomas jumps
in alongside, straps himself in, and with huge grins the pair roar out of the
square, the rest of us in not-so-hot pursuit.
