Hard out of the starting gate, I accelerated into second through a long, uphill, right sweeper, just touching the rev limiter before jumping hard on the brakes, trusting the ABS, as we turned into a left-hand 90. Then still climbing, it was across a long, off-camber left-right-left ess that could be taken flat but felt better when you breathed the throttle in the middle. The left-hand 90 cresting the hill was tricky to get right, but nothing compared to the off-camber, downhill, decreasing-radius hairpin that came after a right-hander and a short chute. The computer worked overtime keeping me on the road, and it was interesting to feel the individual wheels start to put power down as the steering wheel unwound, though a little frustrating that the computer wouldn't allow much throttle-induced oversteer to help rotate the car and match output to available traction. Pushing the pedal harder didn't help; I tried (is it childish to take your kind host's expensive car and use all 420 hp to do an oops-sorry-about-that, light-em-all-up, smoky burnout donut or two, then pass it off as a clumsy but honest mistake?). Another short chute led to a right-hander and a downhill run through a tricky lane-change chicane and into a double left-hander--the one place I killed a couple of cones demonstrating that, even with ABS, you can't cheat physics--before heading uphill to a pair of right-hand turns, the first difficult to carry speed through, the second a devilish 120 degrees or so when you expect 90 and back to a cool-down area and the start gate.
I had planned my trip back to Dulles in the S5, figuring a bit of luxury would strike the right note on DC's infamous 495 ring road. The potential for traffic would make an Angeleno blanch and I was a bit dismayed to be handed the key to an R8. But the staff was excited, so I tried not to let my disappointment show. My fears turned out to be unfounded, as Audi's little racecar was docile in traffic with decent sight lines and, despite the intimate quarters, never felt crowded. The trip was a pleasure, with lots of admiring looks, waving kids and other drivers maneuvering for a better view, plus the occasional second- or third-gear blast when the mercifully light traffic opened up. The lady manning the tollbooth at the Dulles airport exit has now seen more R8s than anyone outside the factory is ever likely to see, given Audi's anticipated production numbers. Both the RS4 and S5 are great machines, but it was the R8 that left me wishing our time together hadn't been so brief.