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Autoblog's adventures at the Nurburgring 24-Hour race [spoilers]

The brand-new Audi R8 LMS, said to share 50 percent of its components with the street-legal R8 shown off at Geneva, has won its very first race at the 2015 Nurburgring 24-Hours. The No. 28 car driven by Christopher Mies, Edward Sandstrom, Nico Muller, and Laurens Vanthoor for the Audi Sport WRT team out of Belgium finished only 40.279 seconds ahead of the No. 25 BMW Sport Team Marc VDS Z4 GT3 in second place, for the smallest winning gap since the race began in 1970. Those two cars traded the lead throughout Sunday morning and were less than a minute away from one another for the last two hours. They were part of a total 35 lead changes during the entire race – a record for the event – and both did 156 laps. Third place went to the No. 44 Falken Tire Porsche 997 GT3, one lap down. The Audis did what they always do: lurked close to the front, stayed out of trouble, then pounced when everyone else faltered. For the opening stretches the BMW Z4 teams owned it, running 1-2-3 for a while, but all of them hit trouble. When morning came and the race got over its yellow-flag fever, the No. 28 Audi was in front and stayed there. It was the third Nurburgring 24-Hour win for Audi in four years, the brand's first win only coming in 2012. Last year's winner, the Phoenix Audi team that set a race record by doing 159 laps, had both of its cars retire. One hit an oil patch about 12 hours in, spun and was hit by another car behind, taking on too much damage to continue. The other retired with engine issues. Other Notes Three cars crashed out of the race while leading, after the rains that weren't supposed to happen, happened about 90 minutes in. The No. 20 Schubert BMW Z4 led the first 50 minutes of the race, hopped a crest at Pflanzgarten, landed in a pool of water, and hit the wall on the 30th lap. Then the No. 30 Frikadelli Porsche, with a driver team that included ex-'Ring Taxi driver Sabine Schmitz, hit the No. 31 Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 on the approach to Carrousel and crashed out. Then the No. 1 Phoenix Audi, last year's winning car, took the lead but hit the wall after that oil patch near Pflanzgarten and was out of the race. Aston Martin celebrated a class win in the SP8 category with the No. 49 Vantage GT4 N430. This being the tenth anniversary of the Vantage running the Nurburgring-24, this year's car was painted in the same colors as the racecar from ten years ago.

AMS Alpha 10 Audi R8 First Drive [w/video]

Horsepower is a relative number. Compared to the 1,500 hp in the last AMS car we drove, the face-melting Alpha 12 GT-R, 900 seems pretty tame. But by any rational standard that's a crazy amount of power, the kind that's hard to grasp in practical terms. When AMS Performance called us and offered a test in the 921-hp Alpha 10 Audi R8, saying yes was easy. Figuring out how to demonstrate that much thrust was the tricky part. Our solution was to head to the drag strip. What better way to show off the wicked alterations wrought by AMS president Martin Musial and his team than a video showing the car do the Star Trek warp speed effect through the quarter mile? AMS has a history of building quick drag strip cars, like the aforementioned GT-R and a series of Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions. Vice president Arne Toman even owns the world's fastest Hearse. We should have taken the broken scoreboard at Milan Dragway as an omen. Wiped out by a lightning strike, both displays have since been replaced. Before our test both Musial and Toman explained that the Alpha 10 R8 wasn't built with drag racing in mind. But, being good sports, both met us at the track in southeast Michigan, unloaded the R8 from its trailer, and let us run through the timing lights over and over. The best time that day was 11.0 seconds at 136 mph, uncorrected. One of the many amazing things about the Alpha 10 Audi R8 is that it's essentially a bolt-on system. That's fast, but not what you'd expect for 786 horsepower at the wheels. And, honestly, we're not disappointed. First, a 4,200-rpm rev limiter was set too low to launch on the sticky drag strip. Put another way, that drag strip time is almost a street start. For what it's worth, Musial and Toman didn't seem concerned about the numbers. Like we said, they present the Alpha 10 as an all-around performance car, and we believe them. Now, if you go to AMS with the drag strip in mind, Musial and his staff can program whatever launch rpm you desire. (You're on your own for clutch replacements.) A reflash of the engine controller is part of the Alpha 10 package. Drop off a stock R8 V10 at AMS (or any of its 70-plus dealers), and they'll pull out the suitcase-shaped muffler that sits behind the engine. A pair of turbochargers, small mufflers, and two heat exchangers attach to the stock exhaust system mounts, while a giant water-to-air intercooler sits on top of the engine.

Volkswagen Group's Vision 2030 strategy could bring revolution to the brands

One would expect a corporate plan called "Vision 2030," looking 11 years ahead through wildly tumultuous times, to involve great change and numerous forks in numerous roads. According to Automobile's breakdown of Volkswagen's path forward, though, the plans contain some lurid potential surprises. The ultimate aim is return on investment, and that means ruthless reorganization of a conglomerate with eight primary car brands, two car sub-brands, and Ducati motorcycles. The first two Vision 2030 cornerstones Automobile mentions are near boilerplate: Production network restructuring, and "streamlining of key technologies." The latter two are the ones that could upend what we know as the Volkswagen Group: focusing on the Group's core brands — meaning Audi, Porsche, and VW — and transitioning to EVs, autonomy, and other mobility solutions. Based on the report, a quote from Audi's CTO referring to the Audi brand could cover how the Group plans to handle all of its brands: "We need to find a sustainable solution for the indefinite transition period until EVs eventually take over." The boutique divisions adjacent to carmaking, Ducati and Italdesign, look likely to be spun off. For the halo car brands — Bentley, Bugatti, and Lamborghini — apparently shareholders want double-digit returns on investment, and the trio doesn't have long to hit the target. One eyebrow raiser is when the report states, "Bugatti is tipped to be gifted to [ex-VW Group Chairman] Ferdinand Piech." Piech fathered the Veyron during his tenure at VW, and it was thought he commissioned the La Voiture Noire, but he's lately stepped so far back from VW that he sold all his shares in the Group. Automobile quoted a senior strategist as saying of money-losing Bentley, "Why invest on a backward-looking enterprise when you can support a trendsetter? A proud history and excellent craftmanship alone don't cut it anymore." We guess no one at Ferrari, McLaren, or even Porsche got that memo. Bentley is reportedly close to being put in time out, and if brand CEO Adrian Hallmark can't right the Crewe ship, the hush-hush Plan B is to prop the Flying B up enough to lure a buyer. As for Lamborghini, caught between two masters at Audi and Porsche, even record-breaking numbers at the Italian supercar maker barely staved off sacrilege. It's said that VW brand CEO Herbert Diess considered putting a 5.0-liter Porsche V8 into the Aventador successor.