Stig's special trick

Mobility
“thrilling experience” for the venerable
rally legend. The difference, that is,
between a combustion engine with
quattro drive, which is controlled
through the transmission and
differential, and the electric quattro
drive with four motors. “It’s incredible
how the technology has developed, so
that you can have a driving experience
that comes extremely close to that of
driving the original quattro,” he said.
Blomqvist jerks the steering
wheel to the right and brakes
with his left foot.
Blomqvist became famous not only
as a rally driver, but also for braking
with his left foot. In the early 1980s
the Swede mastered like virtually no
other driver the trick of braking with
the left foot while simultaneously
applying the gas with the right. This
allowed him to maintain high revs
and keep the engine’s output up,
although he was braking. In addition
to many victories, this special trick
brought Blomqvist the World Rally
Championship in 1984 and the runnerup
title the following year.
Now he tries this trick out in the
Audi e-tron Silvretta on the snowcovered
test track in Munich. He’s too
much of an old pro to not at least give
it a shot. He jerks the steering wheel
to the right, brakes with his left foot
and applies the accelerator with his
right. Now the butt instinct informs
the driver that the Audi e-tron Silvretta
wants to break loose each millisecond.
But it doesn’t. “It won’t work,” said
Blomqvist. “The ESP can’t be switched
off. Those spectacular drifts aren’t
possible.”
Blomqvist stops at a charging
station, climbs out of the Audi e-tron
Silvretta and insists on plugging
the electric cable himself into the
plug behind the side window, with
utmost care. “That will be the biggest
adjustment,” he said, looking into the
distance. “Filling up is just faster than
charging up. But who knows what Audi
will think of by the time electric cars
start series production”
After a 20-minute stop for electricity,
Blomqvist wants to go at it again. Alone.
In peace. Just the Audi e-tron Silvretta
and him. On an open area and without
limits. Blomqvist swings himself into
the driver’s seat. Again he puts on the
reading glasses, and again the searching
look. Then snow swirls into the air.
The Audi races away, traveling down
the track at high speed. But without
the usual sound.
Watch Stig Blomqvist
in the e-tron Silvretta at:
www.audi.com/ar2010/silvretta
Torque vectoring
Perfect torque
Torque is the most highly prized
force in a car. It’s what moves
us forward. The higher the value
in Newton meters, the more
powerfully the car can move at
a specific number of revs.
Torque can also come into
play at inopportune moments
when we drive too quickly in a
curve or a highway exit. In these
cases, the path we are taking can
quickly deviate from that which
we should take. To keep that
from happening, Audi drivers get
help from both the electronic
stabilization program (ESP) and
from torque vectoring.
While ESP keeps the car on the
right track while braking, torque
vectoring takes the opposite
approach: It distributes torque
to each wheel electronically,
thereby preventing wheel
spin. Faster than a blink of the
eye, power is distributed to
the front and rear wheels via
multi-plate clutches on the
individual wheels, in such a way
that the Audi stays on track.
This is true both when actively
applying the accelerator or when
simply allowing the car to coast
downhill.
Legendary racer:
Stig Blomqvist continues
to be an ambassador for
Audi quattro.
85