Here at Champagne Motors, we talked about building a race car for a long time. We wanted a car that could handle like the A4 without the front end heaviness of the S4. We already built three Audi S4's with 350, 380 and 450 horsepower for the One Lap of America race. We decided to build an A4 with a 1.8 turbo to race competitively. The question was where do we race a car like that?

It costs a lot of money to do any of the series in the U.S., so that option was out. First the SCCA Pro Rally came to mind, however only a few races could be run. Because of time and money, we decided to race the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in Colorado. Nobody in the states had built an Audi for the hill climb since the 1980’s, when Audi dominated the category, which seems odd given that it is where Audi’s American heritage came from.

There we were with a 1997 Audi A4 with a 5 cylinder 2.2L, 20 valve turbocharged powerplant - our Audi’s bitter sweet combination! The first dyno test showed we had around 378 wheel horsepower and 450 hp at the crank with only 17 lbs. of boost and a stock ur S4 head. We decided to take it to Bandimere Raceway to see what it could do.

We had never driven the A4 in the quarter mile, so our first run wasn't great, but it ran a respectable 14.5 seconds. We turned the boost up and ran 13.5 on the second run. Then we turned the anti-lag on and did 12.5 seconds. We left the speedway dropping 2 full seconds off our time.

About a month later there was a VW fest at Bandimere, so we headed back and ran the quarter mile again with better results. With more tuning, Brian ran 11.25 and 11.45 with street tires.

During the winter we have continued to make adjustments and improvements on the car. Hopefully we can achieve between 550-600 horsepower and run low 10's in the quarter mile.

Stay tuned!!! With the Pike's Peak International Hillclimb, quarter-mile times don’t mean much considering the speeds range from 20-100+ mph up the mountain.  It should be a very interesting test of the car’s strength and ability.

Team Iron Butt update :

from Hoppen Motorsport

Once again we like to congratulate Mike and Norm Babcock for another top performance in this years One Lap of America. This years major sponsor was BMW, with BMW products participating and BMW driving instructors driving.

Babcock's Audi S4 was a 2000 model year with lots of miles and track activities competing against well prepared factory supported newer models. The S4 was prepared by Audi Tuner Champagne Motors in Denver and equipped with MTM components.

In spite of missing 2 events due to illness, the Babcock Team Iron Butt finished 3rd in class and came in first place in 8 out of a total of 19 events. They also recorded the fastest time overall on the south course of VIR.

We hope to see the Babcock Team at next years One Lap in a new MTM Audi product to take an overall victory. The Team is focused and well prepared to bring an overall win to all of us.

In closing we hope that all of you will join us to once again congratulate Team Iron Butt for another successful One Lap of America and for a good showing for Champagne Motors, MTM and Audi.

5/10/2008 Final Results Luxury Class