Top Gear’s coolest racing cars: Audi A4 DTM

“You’re always sliding the car, spanking it yet controlling it all the time. Whereas in a sports car, like the R8, if you’re sliding you’re in bad shape. The DTM car is generally getting to oversteer in the race, and as a driver you’re more aware of the overall balance than the sheer speed.”

It’s 2004, and works Audi racing driver – and soon to be record eight-times Le Mans winner – Tom Kristensen is, quite frankly, closer to my gentleman’s area than I’d like. Don’t get me wrong: for my money, Tom is probably the greatest driver never to make it into Formula One (if that even matters), not just because his competition achievements speak for themselves, but also because his Danish wit is drier than a fortnight’s yoga retreat in the Sahara. Right now, though, he’s tightening my four-point race harness in this Audi A4 DTM car, a necessary but intimate part of the pre-test ritual, squishing sensitive anatomical areas into a race seat that almost encases the driver’s entire body and head.

“DTM is obviously a serious championship, but it’s more fun somehow than the others,” Tom continues. “Is it?” I squeak. “There are cars everywhere and a proper rhythm can be hard to find, but it kind of makes me feel younger…”

He’s on his own on that score. I’ve aged 10 years just pondering the prospect of piloting this mad Audi around a circuit. Not just because it’s a ballistically fast, ultra-slidey assault on the senses – all of them, including the eyes – but because we’re at Brno in the Czech Republic, and the rain is absolutely piling down. Prior to the heavy duty precipitation, this brilliant but highly challenging track was wreathed in mist, and the surrounding forest is full of deer, one of which decided to wander across the main straight during a reasonably swift sighting lap.

These mid-Noughties German touring cars really were something to behold. The grids were full of racing prodigies on the way up or ex-Formula One and Sports Cars stars still keen to get their kicks in a massively competitive series that drew mega crowds. Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Opel all fielded increasingly lairy looking cars, of which 2004’s Audi A4 was one of the most successful.

The rules changed for that season to bring back the saloon format, but the truth was that these cars, unlike those contesting the dear old BTCC, had as much to do with their real-world equivalents as Donald Trump does with the average American voter. Steel roof apart, the body panels were carbon fibre, and they clothed a tubular spaceframe chassis complete with carbon fibre safety cell for the driver and carbon fibre crash structures at the front and rear.

There was proper aero, too: Audi startled the rest of the pit-lane in ’04 by adding a series of spectacular winglets all over the rear wheelarches, with equally eye-catching vents on the front. The engine was a normally aspirated 4.0-litre V8, with dry sump lubrication, while a pair of mandatory air restrictors pegged the power output back to around 460bhp. Enough in a car that weighed 1050kg with the driver on-board, trust me. Steering is by servo-assisted rack and pinion, and there’s double wishbone suspension front and rear, using a pushrod spring and damper unit and adjustable gas pressurised dampers.

Because these cars were prototypes pretending to be saloons, they ended up with an extraordinary driving position. The engine sat so far behind the front axle the driver sat both comically low in the chassis, and a long way back. Where you’d expect to find the rear seat, in fact. The wheel was one of those cut-off jobs festooned in buttons; a giant gear selector lever was hand-level to your left, and operated a brutally effective six-speed sequential transmission. A paddle to the right of the wheel triggered brake caliper cooling, and you can also adjust the brake balance. Other things I recall are a starter over-ride switch marked ‘start f***-up’ – more of that Scandinavian wit – and the twin-plate carbon fibre clutch.

I didn’t stall, but the weather meant this was more of an exercise in personal fear than a meaningful track test. Like all racing cars, nothing really works properly until there’s heat into the brakes and tyres, and heat was in short supply that day. You also need to be seriously pushing on some to really feel the effects of the car’s abundant aero, and you can’t do that if you haven’t got grip or proper retardation. On reflection, I’ve probably driven some of the Scalextric cars in my loft faster.

Never mind. It was still a mind-blowing experience. In the hands of the pros, the A4 DTM proved unassailable, and continued to be so for most of the Noughties, as the series and cars evolved. I caught up with Audi Sport’s Technical Director at the time, Dr Martin Mühlmeier, for a greater insight into what made Audi’s DTM car work so well.

“The most important thing,” Mühlmeier says, “is that all the components in the car are balanced and robust – engine, suspension, aero, the set-up. The driveability on our car is pretty good.”

Hmm. Really? “Not too tricky,” Mühlmeier insists, “but not much like a classic, steel-bodied touring car, either. It’s much more agile. Its dynamic behaviour is much closer to a single-seater. But you must still remember the difference in weight. A DTM car weighs 1050kg including the driver, and has 460bhp. An F1 car, for example, weighs half that and has almost twice as much power. An F1 car can also pull cornering loads of up to 5g. A DTM car pulls between 2 and 2.5g…”

Oh yes, a walk in the park.

Year: 2004

Drivers: Tom Kristensen, Martin Tomczyk, Matthias Ekstrom, Christian Abt

Engine: 4.0-litre V8, 460bhp

Weight: 1050kg

Stand-out moment: Nailing the 2004 DTM series against fierce competition from Mercedes

The 2016 DTM season opener is at Hockenheim this weekend.