Garage Built Wonder

Garage Built Wonder!

I’ve been working on Audi cars for all of my adult life. In 2015 I had an opportunity to be a part of a dream project involving an Audi; of building a perfect track tool that would deliver in the region of 1000hp per ton and make a statement world-wide. Sami Sivonen has been a competitor Time Attack racing since 2011. He has won the Finnish Championship in the Clubman class twice with an Audi TTRS (2011-2012) Won the European Time Attack Masters FWD class at Zandvoort with a Seat Leon, and once again a Finnish title running in the Time Attack Unlimited class in 2014. After three seasons with the Leon, it was apparent to the team that a FWD car is not competitive enough against AWD and RWD cars on twisty tracks of the Scandanavian North. Hence Sami decided to build a car that would give no excuses and losing to anyone on the planet would not be the cars fault. An Audi TTRS was considered, so was an S5 and an RS4, but when he found an unregistered R8 from Germany, the plans changed very quickly. The R8 powerplant is a 4.2 liter V8, with a dry sump lubrication system and typical for Audi, an over engineered driveline would give a good chance for 4-digit horsepower figures, which was Sami’s plan from day one. Even though nobody mentions it a lot, the fastest TA cars in Finland, Sweden, the UK not to mention WTAC are already closing to 1000hp mark. So to be competitive down the road the magical 1000 hp had to be our goal. Taking it from a track toy to track weapon As we noted the car was unregistered, as it has been built as a track toy from new. This not only meant it had very low mileage, and it already had a rollcage installed, it was also affordable, being more than a third cheaper than second cheapest on the market. So after a bit if negotiating Sami became the proud owner of Scandanavia’s only Time Attack Unlimited class Audi R8. In an effort to see what we had bought we

took the car to the track as it was. We tested at Alastaro in September 2015. Immediately after that shakedown run Sami started to strip it down, and the proper build itself started in January 2016. After long nights in Sami’s Garage, we rolled the car out, to dyno on 20th of July, and straight from rollers the team haeded to the Motopark Festival, in Pieksämäki. Keeping in mind that this A8 build is not a professional project, but a project built and maintained by Yours Truly, a part time journalist and part time race engineer, Sami, a sausage salesman, Mervi, a barber, Kalle, a Harvester pilot, and Mikko, a measurement device specialist. We built it in Sami’s garage. Just the five of us. I took what Sami had bought and modified the overall design, and we built it together. Obviously some parts were outsourced and numerous experts were consulted, but it still was built in Sami’s shed. Due to that, as one can imagine, the maiden voyage was not completely problem free, but the day was a raving success, when Sami cruised to the win and the chequered flag in 5 lap sprint race. Not bad considering he started from the back of the grid, and had only completed nine laps prior to the race. Two original parts The build was rather comprehensive. Only two components stayed intact, those being the steering column and steering rack. Neither of those are still located in original location, but they have not been modified either. Engine was swapped from 4.2 V8 to Lamborghini 5.0 V10 after a lucky coincidence with purchasing a second hand Holinger gearbox from Australia. Turned out the price included an engine from Reiter – built Gallardo GT3 and it had already been rebuilt with forged internals by Developro in Australia. The 5.0 turned out to be very powerful engine, and it even allowed Sami to pull a wheelie in 3rd gear at 100mph, and accelerating from 124 to 154mph in 1.8 seconds. Formula 1 turbo era acceleration levels come to Time Attack! In scheduled maintenance after the season’s end in 2016 we unfortunately found a crack in the block and some damage in the crankshaft, hence we had to decide whether to repair it or replace it with another type of engine. The 5.2 liter Huracan/ R8 engine is a lot beefier as a base, so we chose to purchase one of those, and rebuild it to spec required for our required power levels. As expected, the new engine turned out more reliable, and ran without a hiccup all of the 2017 season, including the extremes of testing in the chilly north, and a pre-race test day in 37 celsius in Sydney prior to the

World Time Attack Challenge. On to 1.5 Khp The old engine produced 1220whp, and bit over 1000lbft of torque on 20psi boost. We tried higher boost, but the car wouldn’t stay on the dyno rollers. Looking at fuel consumption and acceleration rate, 1500 crank hp was a safe assumption. The new engine made the same on 1.2bar, and we ran on 1.45 on track. Many said it is pointless to have this much power. However, Sami says the car puts the power to the ground perfectly. It doesn’t wiggle or wobble, just slingshots itself to speeds unimaginable for a tin top car. For example from 120 to 150mph in less than 5 seconds. In Sydney, we clocked 6.1 seconds from 124 to 188mph, from which first two seconds it is still held back by traction control, and at 170mph I dial 5psi boost off, to prevent it from going too fast on Brabham straight. However, Sami joined the exclusive +300kph club, shooting over the magical

number on every single session he was out with the car. Not bad for a garage built racecar! Testing with The Pros In 2017 we had to reshape the suspension geometry to match the small spec tyres we had to use in WTAC. Car is originally been designed to run GT3 size slicks, which are significantly bigger. It was a bigger task than I had expected, so I hired a colleague of mine from BTCC times, Toby Phillips to help me out on that one. We also drafted Phil Keen as a coach and a test driver. After a brief run, Phil managed to break the Botniaring tin top track record on 2 years old endurance Avons, by almost 3.5 seconds, in his jeans and a T-shirt! After four days of testing and prepping Sami managed to break tin top track record at the Alastaro track as well, on Yokohama 050 semi slicks. Not a bad achievement either, when e.g. Carrera cup full pro racers are roughly half a second slower in qualifying, and nice 13.5 seconds faster than on full supersoft slicks in the condition it came from Germany two years earlier. The Journey to Sydney So, after we had it all sorted, we shipped the car with by air freight to Sydney. As we live here in the far North, the season only really starts in mid-May. If shipped by container and sea, we would have been required to pack the car and send it in late June, which would have not allowed us, a bunch of five amateurs, to test and develop the car properly before the WTAC. Hence the decision to use DHL and fly the R8 to Oz. Luckily they sponsored us, so some members of the team still have both kidneys. The car arrived in Sydney in a crazy 9 days after shipping! After going through the Australian customs procedure and a 72 hour bio quarantine, we were ready to go testing. Sami’s first full laps were around 1:36, which is 10 seconds off the pace. But no worries, John “Boz” Boston came to help, and with his expertise and coaching, they massaged almost 5 seconds off Sami’s lap times, and things started to look a lot better. Most importantly the car ran perfect and we had no issues with it what so ever. Some of our competition were a bit more unfortunate with six out of the eleven cars in Pro-Am having technical failures of a level of not being able to clock a full lap. A pity. But WTAC week is cruel. To finish first, first you have to finish. WTAC WTAC is the most esteemed and fastest time attack event in the world. By a gap of unimaginable distance. Hence Sami’s laptimes – although running track records in Finland, were five seconds off Rob Nguyen’s and Mighty Mouse’s times. With help of Boz, we managed to encourage Sami to push it below 1:30, clocking a very low 1:29 in the second session of Saturday. It had been a breathtaking game between Will Au-Yeung and Sami, where Sami took the lead on Friday morning, Will and Rob taking on the afternoon sessions of Friday, Sami taking the second place back on Saturday morning, and Will then reclaiming silver on last session before shootout. Rob and his tiny CRX weigh a stunning 560kg less than our R8 which is indeed a huge difference. Not to mention Sami, being sausage salesman, and Rob being an ex F3 and F3000 pilot, there is a difference in experience behind the wheel as well. And from the blind spot, Canadian Will Au-Yeung drove by with his stunning Civic. Steering a 1430kg (3150lb) R8 through turn one at well over 180mph is a big thing to ask a shopkeeper. Also the Yokohama tyres we had to use did not like us. The last three corners of the lap, the tread temperature is above 125C, and the rubber turns to mush. Aftermath For us, this was a perfect campaign. We not only finished every single session with a timed lap, we had zero technical issues. This is a good place to start working on V2. Very little needs to be done for the car, except some weight loss. More work is on

Sami, and his driving. The future will tell how we manage to challenge the lap record in WTAC, but Sami has already announced, he will be full on it, in 2019! PS: Remember to check out our extremely awesome mini video series “R8 1:1 Journey to Sydney” from Youtube

Driver/owner: Sami Sivonen Race Engineer: Jyrki Repo 1st Tech: Kalle Tyrkkö Tech: Mervi Pirkkala CAD –designs and tech: Mikko Ahola Crew: Jesse Repo Antti “El Puerco” Lankinen Audi R8 1:1 Audi R8 Coupe 2007 5.2l V10 turbo Holinger LG6 – paddleshift gearbox 2 x Garrett GTX 3576 turbo Motec M1 engine/power management and datalogging less than 1kg / hp 100-200kph 3,0 sec 200-250kph 1,8 sec

The 2018 season opened in Botniaring, 9th of June. Botnia is the fastest track in the country, and the time attack drivers in general like the track a lot. So does Sami, and as a result of the first warm up, he was 2.5 seconds faster than than the tin top track record, and over 1.5 seconds fastest overall, including the open wheelers. In the qualifying he made it official, and broke the overall track record by 1.2 seconds. Off season upgrades cooled the engine intake down enough for the car to pack a bit more punch than last year, resulting numbers of e.g. 2.8 seconds 100-200km/h and 4.8 seconds from 120 to 250. In the superlap, Sami was going for an easy win, but in the 220km/h chicane the car’s rear end got loose and he ended up airborne, traveling backwards well over 200km/h. A potentially dangerous situation took Sami and the car 148 meters off the track into a ditch. While

S&S Sivonen Oy Racingline DHL VeraVia Specma Flying Brewery Finjector.com Buffalo foods RWD-Toys.fi FIN-turbo Poppamies Lihatukku Tamminen TT-Speed Navetta Racing

K-Market Hermanni Turbosmart Harding Performance

More info: https://www.facebook.com/R8Sivonen/ Questions, comments: Jyrki.Peter.Repo (ät) gmail.com a few hundred pics of the build in my album: https://ylipaine.kuvat.fi/kuvat/R8/

looking very serious, Sami had no injuries whatsoever, and the hardest impact didn’t result more than 10G forces in to his body. In the video, one can see the final crash against gravel bank, the speed was 30 km/h. Car looked really sad, but in the initial inspection looks like suffered surprisingly minor damage. While writing this, the engine and gearbox are still to be removed from the vehicle to be examined, but if they suffered no damage, the car will be back on track in Radalle.com Motopark Festival, 20-22 July, 2018

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