The Stig Drives the Audi R8 LMS

[Bodhii]

The Stig Drives the Audi R8 LMS in Top Gear's Giant GT3 Test

The 2009 FIA GT3 European Championship got a huge publicity boost yesterday when the May edition of BBC Top Gear Magazine hit the news stands. The front cover of the UK's leading motoring magazine features The Stig standing next to ten of the cars that will compete in this year's championship.

The actual feature takes up an impressive 14-pages in the magazine, with Top Gear's trademark stunning photography by Lee Brimble and Joe Windsor-Williams bringing the pages to life. While The Stig did the driving, it was down to Associate Editor Bill Thomas to translate his thoughts into words for the rest of us to read.

The Top Gear feature took place at Paul Ricard HTTT during the 2-day official Balance of Performance test and Top Gear have expressed their thanks to the ten teams who agreed to take part in the feature and late evening photoshoot. Seeing the results the teams will be pleased that their hard work resulted in some excellent coverage for themselves and the FIA GT3 European Championship. As much as he'd like to, The Stig will not be racing in the FIA GT3 European Championship this year. He wants to make sure the other 80 drivers on the 2009 grid have a chance of winning!

If you want to find out what Top Gear thought of the FIA GT3 cars The Stig drove, get along to your local newsagent and buy a copy of the May edition of Top Gear Magazine. It's on sale now!

However to give you an idea, here is a quote from Bill Thomas' Behind the Scenes column. He said: "We asked and they delivered: All hail the mighty GT3s."

[MikeB]

I don't believe the Stig was allowed to drive the LMS by the 'behemoth' Audi corporation. I bought the British mag and was disappointed to read virtually nothing about the V10 apart from speculation about its performance.

[Bodhii]

Hey thanks for the info. I do know that all of the R8 LMS cars are not owned by Audi, but rather by private race teams. However these race teams work very very closely to Audi, and maybe Audi did have a voice in denying the Stig a chance to test the R8 LMS. It sounded like Top Gear had had everything set up with the car's owners.

I know these private teams are often silently controlled by the auto maker. When the Porsche Cayman first came out, the famous Alzen Race Team raced a Cayman at the '07 24HR NURBURGRING and finished 4th overall in its very 1st big race! Porsche became immediately alarmed that the World had discovered how much better the Cayman was for racing than the 911, and then immediately coerced the Alzen team to quit racing the Cayman completely.