Awed of the Ring: Part One

The Nürburgring. The Green Hell. A track so long and so demanding that Jackie Stewart described it as "the most challenging race circuit in the world". When a normally phlegmatic Scot starts talking in these terms, you know he's talking about some pretty special tarmac. Having made it to the grand old age of 29 without having visited this motoring Mecca, I decided it was time to challenge the TT and (perhaps more severely) test my driving skill, so set about planning a visit.

My companion for the trip was to be an old friend and fellow petrolhead, Paul. Paul is a brave fellow. He owns a TVR Chimaera; indeed, he not only owns one, he uses it as a daily driver and it's worth noting that his TVR has "had a bit of work done" - straight-through exhausts, ported and polished cylinder heads, carbon-fibre plenum, throttle bodies, wilder camshaft, and a completely new, bespoke electronic ignition system - which has the potential to turn an already quick car into a ballistic device.

The drive down in convoy to Germany was pleasingly uneventful, if rather rainy, and as we passed through Luxembourg I started to get excited. The autobahn network, last European refuge of the full-bore Speed Addict, was only a few miles away. As soon as you get past the "Wilkommen in Deutschland" sign, the traffic starts to accelerate. So - in the interests of science of course - I dropped into fifth and pinned the throttle pedal to the floor. This is, arguably, what the TT was built for; it's certainly what it was re-mapped for. A slight squat as the boost builds, and then it fairly belts for the horizon. Although traffic and weather conditions prevented me from getting all the way to the car's top speed, I can confirm that at 145 mph the TT is as solid, stable and planted as it is at 60.

Before we got to the 'Ring, we stopped to fill up. As in the UK, most German petrol stations stock "super-grade" unleaded fuel. The best we can get here, though, without paying a fiver a litre, is either Shell Optimax (98.6 octane) or Tesco super unleaded (99 octane). In Germany, the equivalent of Optimax - called V-Power - is 100 octane. [Since this report was written, Shell have started selling V-Power here but it is 99 octane in the UK- ed] Most engines aren't programmed to take advantage of this, because standard computer mapping has to be able to cope with all grades of petrol, and a wide range of temperatures. Running an aggressive map with poor-quality petrol on a hot day will lead to an interesting selection of under-bonnet noises and a close working relationship with a local garage. Don't ask me how I know this...

Anyway - why am I interested in V-Power? The tuning software I use (Revo Technik) is flexible. You can choose to run more aggressive boost and timing profiles for enhanced performance, if conditions (and petrol grades) permit. If you have a VW-group 1.8 turbo engine, and a laptop, there is software available which allows you to plug the laptop into the car and see what's going on in there, in glorious, geek-heaven detail. You will no doubt be shocked to learn that I have a laptop, and the necessary software. All I needed was a willing passenger to operate it. You can see where I'm going here.

We stopped at a service station, plugged in the laptop, and got ready to squeeze the last few ponies out of the TT's already over-worked engine. Paul sat gamely through a brief tutorial on the computer software, and we started out. A couple of control runs first, to see what the engine was doing before I start fiddling about with it. There is a curious, savage joy to ragging a car as fast as it will go up and down a dead-straight, unlimited motorway. Believe it or not, it also gets dull after a while. Nevertheless, it was a worthwhile exercise - having established that everything under the bonnet was working as it should, I set about turning the boost and timing maps to their most aggressive settings. Audi's engine computer being the clever beastie it is, asking too much of it won't immediately reduce the engine to a pile of cooling slag; the ECU will detect things going wrong, and knock the timing back or reduce boost to keep the engine running at its best. You can see this happening on a laptop, and it's this correction activity I was interested in.

This V-Power is good stuff. With everything maxed-out, Spinal-Tap-style, we pounded up and down the same stretch of motorway several times. And the computer said "yes". So potent is this petrol that I could run the TT right to the edge of the tuned map without the ECU correcting anything. If there's any more power to come from this engine, it ain't happening today. Performance-wise, there's quite a noticeable difference. Boost becomes available earlier, and peaks faster and off-boost the engine feels much more responsive and aggressive. Those (vitally important) last few horses having been located and harnessed, it was time for us to stop mucking about, and meet the 'Ring…