Lightning Lap 2016: Audi TTS

Class: LL2

Lap time: 3:07.7

Base price: $52,825

As-tested price: $57,525

292 hp • 3223 lb • 11.0 lb/hp

Tires: Pirelli P Zero, 255/30R-20 (92Y)

The TTS’s 3:07.7 run marks the quickest we’ve ever hustled Volkswagen’s versatile Modularer Querbaukasten (MQB) platform around Grand West. That was expected. We weren’t, however, expecting the margin to be quite so large. The TTS lops 3.6 seconds from the lap time of last year’s S3, a car that uses the same 292-hp turbocharged four-cylinder, six-speed dual-clutch transmission, and all-wheel-drive system.

The TTS’s advantages are few but meaningful. It runs on stickier Pirelli P Zero tires with a 255 section width compared with the S3’s 235-section Continental ContiSportContact 5P rubber. And it keeps those tires in contact with the pavement with magnetorheological dampers, which are bolted to a car that weighs 223 pounds less than the S3 sedan thanks to more aluminum in its unibody.

As the least powerful car in this year’s event, though, the TTS serves as the caboose through three of our five sectors. It claws ahead in the pack only through the infield, where a quick time is made by maintaining speed through linked bends rather than accelerating out of corners. There, the TTS outran three larger, heavier, and less precise-handling cars that couldn’t be helped by prodigious power: the Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, the Jaguar F-type Project 7, and the Lexus GS F.

Like its MQB-platform cousins, the TTS is so stable as to be slightly aloof. The Ford Focus RS shares several fundamental simi­larities with the TTS’s layout, and yet driving the two back to back is the difference between playing tackle football and pinochle. The raucous Ford invites the driver to hammer the throttle and balance the chassis in a subtle, tightly controlled drift. The buttoned-up Audi demands clean driving and never threatens to so much as wiggle its butt. It delivers more front-end grip than an S3, a VW GTI, or a Golf R, yet it still requires a steady hand and a patient right foot to keep understeer at a distance. Frankly, the TTS is too unflappable to teach the nuances of car control, but its predictability makes it the perfect set of training wheels for track virgins.