We drive the stunning R8 V10 plus Coupe at Sepang to find out if it's as good as a Ferrari

SEPANG, MALAYSIA — We’ve driven the R8 V10 plus on the road, but this is CarBuyer’s first track outing with the car. Which suits us just fine, because our review in CB212 said that it was the kind of car whose strengths (and not weaknesses) would be revealed by a racing circuit. With most cars it’s the other way ’round.

First, a quick summary of this ‘plus’ stuff. It basically means a 25bhp hike over the regular V10 model (to 550bhp) and about 30kg in weight savings (that’s why there’s no power seats). Those tweaks mean the performance is genuine supercar stuff, with the Audi vaulting to 100km/h in 3.5 seconds.

There happend to be an RS 6 Avant at Sepang that day, too. If that thing is a monster on the track, the R8 is positively demonic. Compared to the big wagon it has otherworldly reflexes, so the first thing you do after jumping from wagon to coupe is steer the R8 way too early into the apex like an amatuer. Oops.

Although both cars are terrifically fast, the R8 has an entirely different character, the V10 howling magnificently as it fires you down the straights, the intensity of the acceleration rising with the noise. The harder you rev it, the harder it hits, and the harder you want to go. The twin-turbo V8 of the RS 6, on the other hand, is all about heaping great gobs of torque everywhere.

While the RS 6 makes fast laps incredibly easy, the R8 seems to coax you into becoming the best driver you can be. It doesn’t punish clumsiness by spitting you off into the gravel, but it does reward smoothness and accuracy by feeling like a fine tool, the kind you can wield to carve neat lines through bends with millimetric precision.

Get a corner right and it’s lovely, but get it just right and you feel like maybe you should have pursued a career in racing after all.

And here’s an interesting thing: an Audi driver trainer once told me that when you get a quattro car into a four-wheel drift, the stability control system doesn’t do anything to intervene. And it’s true. On the rare occasions I get both ends of the R8 to break loose together, the engine power just keeps coming, letting small, neat slides play out in smoky glory. Man, it feels good.

I’ve driven a Ferrari 458 Italia in anger around Sepang, and it does offer a level of intimacy and stability that the R8 can’t quite match, but it’s close. Extremely close. If you want to find out just how far the R8 V10 plus steps into the neighbourhood of Maranello, take one to Sepang.

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