Life with Top Gear's Audi R8 V10 Plus: a road trip

Top Gear has an Audi R8 V10 Plus for a few months. More specifically, motoring editor Ollie Marriage has an R8 V10 Plus for a few months.

Ollie cares deeply about his long-term test cars and doesn’t lend them out lightly. Getting the keys to his yellow pride and joy for one of the hottest weekends of Britain’s summer, then, is something to savour.

So what did I do? Not play it cool in the slightest. I did what I hope anyone would do in the circumstances: plan a trip to see family, show off to friends, and enjoy the roads I know and love the best. That meant a trip to England’s north east (where this gallery was shot), a considerable journey from TG’s London base, leading to lots of hours in the R8. Good.

Pictures: Adam Shorrock

My first impressions of the R8, then, are in London. Central London. At rush hour. Just after Ollie has said “be careful with my R8”. Excitable first impressions and cooing over the R8’s elegant interior can wait.

Honestly, why do people use supercars in London? Every errant motorcyclist, lane-changing bus (do they even use their mirrors?) and excitable Uber driver sends my heart rate another 50bpm higher.

Before peeling out of London, the mpg figure is a single digit. This, despite the R8’s twin-clutch gearbox shuffling itself into seventh below 30mph, even with the drivetrain in Dynamic mode. But given the Virtual Cockpit’s temperature gauge touches 35degC at times, it’s perhaps unfair to judge harshly. The air conditioning is working very hard.

Nerves aside, though, and despite the extra 15 minutes of traffic I encounter thanks to my wilful avoidance of width restrictors, it’s still a car that feels very special. Having an engine you see through a glass cover as you walk to the door tends to do that. Even the hidden door handles do their bit to add to the sense of occasion. They take some fumbling to find.

And the extremely childish bark when you fire up the 5.2-litre V10 via a bright red starter button? Anyone not amused by that does not deserve a drive in an R8.

When I was a lad, the word ‘supercar’ was reserved for F40s and Countachs, and this R8 is undeniably more mainstream and accessible. It may not, by the traditional definition of the word, be a supercar. But it takes all the right cues and influences from its forebears, and blurs the line between sports cars and something a step above more than ever before.

Out of town, and my journey transforms into a long motorway stint, and a chance to learn how refined and damn useable the R8 is. It takes all the pain out of driving a supercar (if you’ll allow me to stick with that word).

There’s a fair bit of residual exhaust noise at a cruising speed when you’ve got the sport mode engaged, but it feels like a copout to switch out of it. Just an excuse to crank up the excellent stereo, while any tedium of driving in a straight line is immediately soothed by spying the engine's reflection in the rear-view mirror, or by clicking the left paddle for some frivilous downchanges to knock the V10's orchestra into life.

And the R8 gets a lot of attention at motorway services, with some fresh-faced 17 year-olds – one has passed his test that week – swarming around it and asking for a rundown of its key numbers. They’re made up.

There’s genuine star quality here, even for what equates to a tame and cautious update of a nine-year-old car design. And in the whole six days I run the car, not once does it attract the animosity a similarly priced (and similarly yellow) Porsche 911 Turbo would.

My journey to Sunderland goes by way of the new Renault Megane launch in County Durham. After an overnight stay and a few hours in a sensible diesel hatchback, I opt to revisit the fantastic roads Renault pointed us towards, but in a car with more than five times the power.

The roads around Barnard Castle are familiar from the back of the family Peugeot 309 when I was small, but they’re not ones I’ve ever visited in a 602bhp supercar. Yet it’s a friendly introduction. The R8’s supreme usability continues, and it exhibits no spikiness even on what are very bumpy roads, swathed in all manner of surfaces.

I live in constant fear of the front scuffing, mind, and most of the local laybys are unwelcoming to something so low slung when you feel the need to pull over and Instagram your view (the scenery is superb, by the way).

My next few days are spent on short, urban journeys, one of which is to see my mate Greg. A big car fan, he’s owned some cool stuff in his time, but I haven’t warned him what I’m turning up in. He’s a grown-up, yet he gasps like a little child when I turn up.

As does the actual child who’s playing in the street as we head out. “What’ll it do?” the kid asks. “Two hundred,” I say, misquoting its 205mph top speed. “Show me!” he cries, and I suddenly realise the R8’s snazzy electronic speedo – a fluid number that sits in a traditional rev counter dial – won’t allow that.

My attempts to explain are met with “well do 200 now, so I can see”. It’s a bit painful to let him down. A slightly raucous blip of the throttle ought to make up for it. I turn the car around and when I see his little face, a full 30 seconds later, the joyous expression hasn’t shifted. He’s happy.

We’d planned to head to the pub, and enjoy a couple of soft drinks as the jets of Sunderland Air Show blast over the sea front. After a quick peek at the Red Arrows our night heads for its inevitable conclusion, and we bin the beer garden and head for the A1 in order to head south and back over some of the roads I’d enjoyed the day before.

Greg’s smitten and, in his so-far fruitless search for a new hot hatch, suddenly starts thinking about an RS3. The R8’s halo effect on the Audi range is immortalised before my very eyes. I shatter it by telling him to buy a RenaultSport Megane or Ford Focus RS instead.

After a weekend up north, the long journey south beckons. But I’ve saved the best bit for last – a trip to my favourite stretch of road in the North Yorkshire Moors. Perhaps my favourite stretch of road in England.

Sadly, it’s Sunday, the temperature is in the mid 20s, and this road links numerous towns and villages to the beaches of Whitby and Scarborough, so traffic dictates there is no smooth flow or scintillating pace to enjoy.

But the R8’s party trick of shining brightly at mundane speeds continues. And at one point, a long convoy of supercars – a mixture of Ferraris, Lamborghinis and RS Porsches – streams past, each driver flashing and waving. That they greet Audi’s cut-price alternative to their own cars with cheeriness is another surprise. Does anyone dislike the R8?

After losing track of time in Yorkshire – enjoying the R8 and shooting some of the ace pictures you’ve seen here – I leave for London way later than planned. It means my total time in the R8 over the last six days exceeds an entire day, with 949 miles covered in a whisker over 24 hours, at 18.3mpg (compared to a claimed 23.0). Not bad fuel economy, but it’s made a touch painful by the £80+ fill when you’ve run it down to a quarter of a tank or so.

Handing the car back to Ollie brings relief tinged with regret. Relief his pride and joy is unharmed, and regret it’s not mine to use every day. I’ve had fleeting drives in the previous-generation R8 over the years, but never had a proper attempt at living with one, like I just have this gen2. To serve up such a spectacular experience while remaining so user-friendly is a rare and splendid trick to perform.