2020 Audi RS Q8 First Ride: On the Nurburgring in Audi's Upcoming Near-600-HP SUV

The record-setting RS Q8 is as fast as an Acura NSX around the Green Hell

Audi Sport development driver Frank Stippler has lost count of the number of laps he's done around the Nürburgring Nordschleife over the past 20 years. So I'm pretty relaxed as he dances the big Audi through the succession of right-left wriggles at Hatzenbach with lightning-quick dabs of opposite lock and a deft two-step on the gas and brake pedals. "It's slippery today," he says cheerfully. Uh, yeah, I'd noticed. We're barely a half mile into the 12.9-mile lap, and this is already shaping up to be quite a ride, not the least because we're in the fastest production SUV to have ever lapped the infamous Green Hell.

I can't tell you a lot about the 2020 Audi RS Q8 we're riding in; full technical details won't be released for a couple of weeks. But it's safe to say that as the halo SUV in Audi's rapidly expanding RS lineup, its 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8—the same engine under the hood of the redesigned RS6 Avant—won't have less than the 591 hp and 590 lb-ft of torque. A quick inspection before we rolled out of the VW Group's anonymous Nürburgring test and development center, discreetly tucked away from the glittering performance palaces of Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin, revealed it to be running on 295/35 Pirelli P Zero tires mounted on giant 23-inch alloy wheels, behind which appeared to be the same massive carbon-ceramic brakes available as an option on Audi's hottest wagon.

Apart from the removal of the rear seats to allow the installation of a full rollcage and the fitment of sport seats up front that allow for a proper six-point racing harness, this particular RS Q8 is absolutely bone stock, Audi Sport boss Julius Seebach insists. And just a few weeks back, in Stippler's obviously capable hands, it lapped the Nordschleife in 7:42.235.

Let's unpack that number. Against Nordschleife production vehicle lap times set by respected German magazine Sport Auto—and allowing a 5-second correction for the fact that Sport Auto times are, for safety reasons, not set on a full flying lap, but one that is 656 feet shorter—this big, tall, 5,291-pound SUV was about as quick around the Nordschleife as an Acura NSX, and only about 7 seconds off the pace of an Audi R8.

The RS Q8 averaged a fraction over 100 mph on a track with 73 turns and almost 1,000 feet of elevation change, spending more than 80 percent of the lap at full throttle. Onboard telemetry shows it to have been airborne at 160 mph at the jump on the entry to the fearsome Schwedenkreuz corner, pulling 1.6 g of lateral acceleration through the steeply banked Karussell, and the inside rear wheel braking traction at 180 mph as it swept flat out through the left-hand kink under the bridge at Antoniusbuche, at the end of the Döttinger Höhe straight. It hit 186.4 mph before Stippler mashed the brakes for the chicane at Hohenrain and the right-hand curve onto the start-finish straight.

Because of the slippery conditions, Stippler is today driving the big Audi in Comfort mode with the stability control switched off, the softer suspension settings and more neutral 40:60 front-to-rear torque split helping better balance it through corners. "If we were in Dynamic mode, it would be instant oversteer everywhere," he says. Even so, the RS Q8 feels impressively flat, which, as Seebach later confirms, is a function of the optional 48-volt active anti-roll bar system the RS Q8 shares with other high-end SUVs built on the VW Group's versatile MLB architecture, such as the Bentley Bentayga, Lamborghini Urus, and Porsche Cayenne. The RS Q8 also gets rear-wheel steering and an active sport differential that allows torque vectoring, helping provide agility through the tight corners and stability through the fast ones.

The Nordschleife plays a key role in the development of every Audi RS model. Such are the stresses this fast, challenging ribbon of tarmac puts on engine, transmission, suspension, chassis, and brakes, Audi Sport engineers say, that 100 laps can equal a lifetime's workload for a vehicle out in the real world. In addition to hundreds of laps of development work, the RS Q8 has also completed 11,000 miles of durability testing around the Green Hell. Setting a lap record was not a target at the beginning of the development program, suspension development chief Roland Waschkau says. "But when we realized how quick the RS Q8 was, we decided to go for it."