Audi Sport quietly beats Porsche at own game

The new 640hp RS Q8 performance recently went quicker than the Cayenne GT Turbo at the Nordschleife. But shh...

When Audi retook the compact car Nurburgring lap record with the next generation of RS3, it announced it from the heavens. But when the new RS Q8 - a car which, let’s not forget, is the most powerful series production Audi Sport ever and worth shouting about for various reasons - duly goes top of the SUV leaderboard with a remarkable 7:36.698 time, it does its level best to keep it to itself. (Or at any rate it declined to include the revelation in the press kit sent out ahead of time or deliver a video of Frank Stippler’s new lap.)

Why the difference? Well, because in the case of the RS3, it was BMW’s parade that got rained on. Nicking bragging rights from the M2 was obviously a developmental target and Audi Sport gets to be publicly tickled pink about it. But in the RS Q8’s case, the car it officially dethroned (we assume it is official) is the previous Cayenne GT Turbo. And while that model is now old news in Porsche’s book (in Europe at least), the firm is famously tetchy about being gazumped on the Nordschleife - even when the gazumper is a stablemate and platform sharer.

Probably that makes it worse. As we reported earlier in the week, the new RS Q8 performance variant gets the 640hp stripe of 4.0-litre V8 that Porsche has decided to forgo with the latest and increasingly hybridised Cayenne. Audi Sport cites the additional output as key in going ‘more than two seconds faster than the previous fastest vehicle in the SUV class’ (it politely doesn’t mention the Cayenne by name) alongside the RS-specific tuning of the adaptive air suspension, active anti-roll, all-wheel steering and quattro all-wheel drive system.

"The RS Q8 performance owes its new lap record on the Nordschleife not only to the perfect interplay between the V8 engine and suspension components, but also to the passion of the Audi Sport GmbH team for absolute performance. It also offers first-class suitability for everyday use," said Rolf Michl, the firm’s MD. That last point, of course, suggests what might actually turn out to be the salt in the wound: the old GT Turbo was formidable to drive, yet hard to live with all the time. If the RS Q8 is both quicker at the Nurburgring but also easier going in the real world, its team really can celebrate a market-leading monster SUV. But only quietly it seems.