I love cars. I love to watch motor racing. Growing up in Hong Kong, the Macau Guia Circuit was the closest race track for me. Many F1 drivers got their feet wet racing in Macau in their quest to become an F1 driver. Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher, Sabastian Vettel, just to name a few. I also got to watch Le Mans 24 hours at a very young age. I adored the styling of a Porsche 906 Carrera and the Lotus 23b. With this addiction, I watched the Le Mans race just about every single year. I raced the circuit on my Playstation about 1000 times, I know every turn. It was also from Le Mans, I got to learn about a car company that was well-known, but was not very successful in sales at the time and there wasn’t really a supercar in the lineup. After they had won Le Mans 8 times in 10 years starting from 2000, they really got my attention. And the very first Audi race car that started this saga was the mighty R8.
With the same name, Audi introduced the road going R8 in 2006. The press loved it, TopGear’s Jeremy Clarkson called it “Perfection”. Personally, I was not very keen with the side blades. It’s too plain, it doesn’t do anything for me. Until………the V10 was born and the side blades are extended because of additional cooling is required to cool that big V10 in the middle. Now, I am very gaga about the car.
Up until now, I have been a BMW person, owning about 8 different models. Autocrossing my E36 M3 has been my biggest passion in my life! I learned that one can pay about 2 grand and fly yourself to a track named Infineon in California, then you can drive an R8 V10 for a day! Sign me up. I showed up in a BMW performance center jacket and was picked on immediately! After insisting on driving both the 6 speed and the R-tronic, I had the time of my life! These R8 V10s perform faultlessly on the track!
Two weeks later, I flew myself to Phoenix to look at an R8 V8. It had all the right options but didn’t have the V10 engine. I came back to Houston the next day and contemplated on what should be my next car.
Long story short, in 2014, I spotted this Silver R8 V10 in Huntsville, Alabama, and it had all the right options. All the carbon fiber bit options, the white gauge package and even the illuminated door sill. And it was the gated 6 speed. Two weeks later the car showed up in an enclosed hauler behind the Costco store on I-10. I finally got my dream machine in my hand!
It’s been more than two years since I took delivery of this beautiful machine! It took me a while to realize that I actually own something this beautiful, technologically advanced and admired by all walks of life. I wasted no time and put this baby on all the Texas tracks – MSR Houston, TWS and the unbelievable F1 track in Austin Texas. This R8 and the track are made for each other!
Since this is a supercar, you don’t drive your supercar everyday unless you are Elon Musk. He drove his McLaren F1 to the ground. I will only drive it when it’s not wet outside and if I am going to a restaurant, I will make sure that I will have a supercar parking spot. What this car gives you any time you are in it, is that it makes you feel so special, and nothing else matters in this world. All the switches and controls are right there at your finger tips and in their optimum place. As Jeremy Clarkson has said, “It’s perfect”.
Since the chance of Audi building another 6 speed manual R8 is next to zero, I am holding on to this dream machine to eternity. I do not think that I would ever get tired of looking at it, sitting in it, detailing it and best of all, driving it.
So, there you have it. This has been one heck of an experience for me. The funny thing was, it took me a long while to answer this question – are you ready for a supercar? At the end, it was an affirmative yes and I have never looked back.