Avalon Motorsports wins 2004 Eurotuner GP

After weeks of preparation, our 2002 Audi S4 bested a dozen other highly prepared European street and race cars in the course of events held over June 1-3,2004. The first event was the dyno, held at K&N Engineering in Riverside,CA. Our car's dyno result was 406 whp/402 ft/lbs tq with less than ideal ,96 degree ambient temps ! Evosport's awesome C32 AMG bested our result with over 411 whp. Coming in third was TJM (Dahlback) motorsports A4 with 396 hp (approx).

The second event, held on Wednesday, was the drag strip at California Speedway in Fontana,CA at an elevation of approximately 1200 feet above sea level. Once again, all the participants faced wilting heat with temps hovering around 100 degrees for most of the day ! We were pitted against Bahn Brenner's built Corrado, Stasis Engineering's A4 Touring Car ,TJM Motorsport's awesome A4T ( 2.0 liter ?....over 400 ft/lbs of tq. at the dyno), Achtuning's modified Rs4(with an overnight software change), ABD Racing's beautiful supercharged 2004 Golf R32 , the EvosportC32 AMG and several others. The battle for the best time was waged all afternoon between the C32, RS4 and our S4. We all watched the drama as the Bahn Brenner Corrado repeatedly tried to break the13 second barrier and then we attempted to break into the 11's by removing seats and cooling the intercoolers. A strong headwind of 100 degree desert-like wind foiled all our attempts. In the end, the S4 prevailed with a time of 12.1 seconds (91 mph 1/8th !!). The RS4 was a close second at 12.3 and the C32 was third at 12.8 ( approx).

Yesterday, the third and final,deciding event was held at Willow Springs Raceway on the 'Streets of Willow' road course. The morning was devoted to testing and tuning if necessary. In our case, we used several minutes to make quick adjustments to the Stasis Motorsports Ohlin suspension. On the dragstrip we had softened the front setting on the shock bodies and the high speed rebound in the remote reservoirs to make the car stiffer in the rear. Before lapping at Willow, we simply stiffened the fronts and rears to get back to our 'road course' setup. Each car was given a four lap trial, with the first lap as a warm up, the second and third laps timed, and the last lap used as a cool down run. The road course offered up a chance to pit drivers skill and tuning skill head to head.......several teams TJM,evosport,Achtuning,Stasis and ours used professional drivers in their car. Ultimately the afternnon boiled down to a battle between Paul Lambert of Stasis Engineering who did double duty driving their own A4 touring car and our S4 fully equipped with Stasis' full lineup of high performance suspension and brake products versus Gary Sheehan (Grand Am/USTCC racer) in Achtuning's quick RS4.

The professionally prepared Stasis A4 Touring Car with 200ish whp and weight below 2500 lbs prevailed with Paul Lambert's excellent racing skill and a time of 1:29xx, the RS4 from Achtuning/AMS finished second with a 1:30xx. Our S4 finished a close third with a time of 1:31xx. ABD Racing's excellent supercharged R32 finished in fourth with a time of 1:33xx. Evosport made a heroic effort to win, but the C32 AMG could not put all it's power down in the tight road course, and finished with a 1:38xx. TJM's fast A4 was withdrawn after practicing due to technical problems. Eurosport Accessories race prepared super light Rabbit driven by their excellent driver threatened, but could not overcome the high hosepower cars from Audi.

Unlike many, if not all of the other cars that were trailered to and from all of the events, the S4 was street driven from Colorado to participate in the Eurotuner GP and driven on race wheels from event to event. On the dyno and drag strip, the car was run on VP103 race fuel with a "race program", however we did use a 91 octane "street program" at Streets of Willow because of the heat .

We cannot express our thanks enough for the countless hours spent preparing the S4 for the event. First we thank all those people who put their hands on the car:

Dax Raub and Don - 3R Racing
Jeff Moss - Torque-Factory
Paul Lambert and Nick - Stasis Engineering
Gary Sheehan - Sheehan Motorsport
Steve Ruiz - Stoptech
Trevor Spear, Emery Geiger, Evan Stinson -Avalon Motorsports
Jack McGee
Ari M.

We also wish to thank those sponsors and others that contributed with parts that were necessary to make our S4 the all around champion performer that it is:

Dunlop Tires *Dunlop SuperSport Race tires*
STaSIS *Alcon brakes, Stasis Motorsport suspension*
GIAC *software*
AWE Tuning *fueling kit*
Evolution Motorsports *intake*
UUC *VM3 exhaust*