Hey all, been a lurker for years but rarely post. I've had several Audis and always considered them the absolute pinnacle of fun-to-drive daily drivers that are unmatched in the balance of comfort/luxury and capability. This current 2021 RS5 SportBack I have is the best example to date and I absolutely love it.

But all that said, I've never picked an Audi as a track toy, and reserved that experience for other, more focused cars (personally, a VA STI, F82 M4, 981 Boxster GTS and 991.2 911 Carrera S).

But with all the supply chain madness driving the market insane, it looks like I'm looking at the real prospect of warm weather without a track-focused car in my garage, and am getting antsy. I'm apparently next in line at my local dealership for a 992 911 GTS allocation, but the EARLIEST that car will be delivered is probably late summer; by the time break in is done I'll be swapping to all seasons... I even considered trading the RS5 in on a BMW M2 CS but didn't fall in love with it when I test drove one, and they were asking about $10k over MSRP so I took a hard pass.

So while I didn't intend to take the RS5 on a track, it's getting more tempting. I'm thinking at least an autocross or three, maybe an HPDE. I know there are folks that do these things in their RS5s; in fact one could argue that the RS line is comparable to the BMW M line at least from a marketing perspective.

How good are these cars on the track? I'm not interested in modifying the car in any way, as I'll most likely be trading it in on the 911 and don't want to deal with parts-swapping or excessive wear and tear. One thing I noted about the M4 is how quickly the stock steel brakes got cooked. I had to stop mid-day because I was already noticing fade and vibrations, and the dealer ended up replacing the pads and rotors under warranty a week later (I've heard the newer M cars have a new brake compound that is far more resilient). I don't want to deal with that in this car, so will probably skip the HPDE... but I am genuinely wondering how capable these cars would be at autocross, a venue that's typically dominated by smaller, agile sports cars like Caymans and M2s.

I have noticed plenty of RS3s at events though but they seem generally to be pretty heavily modified. One guy had his RS7 at an autocross but it looked out of place and he didn't do that well.

Just curious how people are actually using these cars.