[s-cars] More Audisport HistoricalTrivia

[QSHIPQ at aol.com]

I agree completely James.  I know for a fact that I saw video footage with commentary with a k29 turbo hanging off the I5.  KKK gave a boatload of turbos up to Audi in the WRC years, and really tracking it was hard to do back then.  Nows nearly impossible.

I have amassed an extensive library of audisport books and trivia over the years.  But, I have to say, getting Audisport stuff straight isn't easy.  Privateers tweeks, Suttton's ("Better Built Audisport Werks") toys, as well as, Buffum and Bruno's, all add up to quite a quagmire of options.  Lehmann (a known 27 user) and MTM in the later years have all added to the pile.

Dave Lawson and I started to track the WRC "IN" (audisprots racing vin numbering system) numbers on and off over the last couple years.  Even that has huge gaps in it to this day, and Audisport themselves have abandoned and lost quite a few chassis over the years.  A couple have been reconstituted (I can remember 1 in SA - abandoned, and 1 in Australia - abandoned) just in the last 10 years.  

Let's not forget the monumental budget dollars Audi AG spent on rallying in Group 4/B.  Truckloads of tires per venue, helicopter service and spare parts chase entries all cost Audisport bucketloads of money.

The unfortunate part of it all, was that the front heavy chassis only had the 'quattro' advantage until Puegeot popped the Mi16.  The Ford S200 (for which Blomqvist was to drive G-B in '86) was next to take quattro from the pinnacle.

No question in my mind that with the intense competition in '85 Audisport was desparate for wins, pretty much at any cost.  I believe we have a very narrow glimpse at the turbo options Audisport may have used over those years.

Trying to pull it back into my library 20 years later is a passion and a challenge of frustration.

Scott Justusson
QSHIPQ Performance Tuning


 


In a message dated 10/20/2004 10:45:28 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Jimmy Pribble <Jimmy at texasbankers.com> writes:

>I'm not sure how any of us can "definitively" know which turbos Audi
>used on any given car for any given race or rally.  Certainly, some of
>the configurations are known, but as has been pointed out, Audi could
>choose any trip-K turbo configuration the driver wanted...and they did.
>I have an Automobile Magazine article about the S1 in which Mikkola was
>testing
>the car for a specific rally.  After a wild first ride (awesome write-up),
>Mikkola gets out of the car and complains that it has too much power for the
>broken slate surface.  The wheels are just spinning. The engineer walks over
>to a container full of turbos, selects a different one, and they install
>it on the car.  After a second drive, Mikkola reports being very pleased.
>The car was down on power, but he could use it all.
>So, what else was in the container?  Were they all K27?  K26?  Bigger,
>smaller?
>Can we say for sure?  I'm not sure that we can.  Also, Audi was so not tied
>to any
>one turbo that they swapped the turbo before they bothered just giving
>Mikkola 
>different programming.   Admittedly, back then it was probably faster to
>just change
>the turbo.  Still.  Anyway, while there might have been "favorite"
>configurations,
>Audi could have used a different turbo for every rally.  Just because we
>know
>of some configurations, I suggest we can't know them all,
>at least not enough to base decisions about our own cars, because "that's
>what the
>factory did."  Besides, there is the matter of comparing apples to oranges x
>infinity.
>
>Of course, I could be wrong.  ;-)  
>
>Jimmy "Wears a W.W.A.D. (What Would Audi Do?) bracelet" Pribble
>
>
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