When Audi Went Circuit Racing - Audi 90 IMSA GTO

Audi may never have raced in F1 before, but its no stranger to circuit racing. What happened when it first traded the rally stages of Group B for the race track?

Audi’s motorsports exploits are as successful as they are varied. The brand made a name for itself with four titles in the WRC using its mighty Quattro all-wheel-drive system and has since leant itself to pretty much every motorsport discipline under the sun, including the world of sportscar racing.

With its debut in Formula One rapidly approaching, it seems appropriate to look back at the first time Audi took to the track, and just how fruitful its early campaigns were.

In 1988, fresh from dominating the Pikes Peak hill climb with three consecutive records, Audi entered the Trans Am series with the 200 Quattro. On paper, it seemed at a disadvantage to the rear-driven, naturally-aspirated V8 muscle cars normally seen on the Trans Am grid, but Audi had a few aces hidden under the 200 Quattro’s comically large wheelarches.

It paired Audi's Quattro all-wheel drive system with modern developments like a Torsen limited-slip diff and torque vectoring units. The 200 Quattro used the brand's iconic 2.1-litre Inline-5 engine, with a huge turbocharger bolted on for good measure.

With racing legends Hurley Haywood and Hans-Joachim Stuck behind the wheel, the 200 Quattro Trans Ams, run by Group 44, dominated the 1988 season. It took eight victories in 13 races, sealing both the manufacturers’ title and the drivers’ championship for Haywood. Audi’s foray into tarmac racing was a clear success, and it seemed only logical that it would return to do it all again in 1989.

Not quite. Trans Am’s governing body wasn’t as much of a fan of Audi’s dominance as the Audi bosses back in Ingolstadt, and after multiple attempts to slow the pair of 200 Quattros down, it completely banned all-wheel-drive vehicles from competing after 1988. Audi’s Quattro brand, and the competitive edge it gave in racing, had to find a new home. Fast.

IMSA's GTO class seemed the perfect fit for Audi’s winning formula. Its 1989 challenger would be (very loosely) based on the Audi 90 saloon car; it shared a handful of design cues and the production car’s roof, as stipulated in the IMSA rulebook. Otherwise, it was a purpose-built racer using largely the same design which had worked for Audi in the past.

Audi's debut IMSA race in Miami was a disaster, with both 90 IMSA GTOs retiring.

The silhouetted Audi 90 body was built onto a bespoke steel tubular space-frame chassis. Extensive wind-tunnel testing saw the addition of a rear wing and a full-width front air dam. A complicated double-wishbone suspension setup, coil springs, and massive ventilated brake discs all round meant it could handle the precise North American circuits.

While it had no performance benefit, the Audi 90 IMSA GTO’s cool factor cannot be denied. The body was aggressive, charismatic and fit perfectly into the boxy design language of the late eighties. Oh, and we can’t forget the turbo fan wheels, nor the exhaust which jutted carelessly out of the passenger door. Add the ear-splitting warble of a five-cylinder engine and the heady whooshes of the turbo blow-off valve, and the IMSA GTO became a racing icon before it even turned a wheel on track.

The 90 GTO was still in development by the start of the 1989 IMSA season, so Audi decided not to participate in the Daytona 24 Hours and the Sebring 12 Hours, which sat first and third in the calendar, respectively. Instead, Audi’s turbocharged beast would debut in round two, in Miami.

The 90 GTO’s first race wasn’t just a test for the car, but also its team; Audi was running the IMSA programme entirely in-house instead of relying on the expertise of Group 44, as it had in Trans Am. Championship winners Haywood and Stuck were retained as full-time drivers. They would be joined by Scott Goodyear and legendary WRC driver Walter Röhrl for endurance events.

With everything in place, Audi’s first race in Miami didn’t exactly go as planned. Neither car finished the 45-minute sprint race – one car crashed and the other retired with gearbox issues.

It was the fourth round at Summit Point where the 90 GTO really came into its stride. Audi were the class of the field, finishing the race with a 1-2 finish, claiming the first victory for an all-wheel-drive car in the IMSA GTO category.

This would mark the beginning of a period of dominance by the 90 GTO and, more specifically, by Hans-Joachim Stuck. The German consistently trounced his rear-driven GTO rivals, taking seven victories overall across 13 races. All the while, he maintained his role as a factory driver for Porsche in its 962.

Hans-Joachim Stuck nearly won the 1989 IMSA GTO title with the Audi 90 IMSA GTO.

Speaking in a documentary in-period, Stuck said: “I did a week of testing in the South of France with Porsche and with Audi. I did the first two days with Audi, and then I go and get into my works 962. I did 10 laps and then I came back and said to my engineer ‘I have very bad traction.’ He said: ‘go back to your sh*t Audi.’

“You learn so quick to adapt to the sort of traction you have, and when you drive a two-wheel-driven car you lose it… you miss something.

“You don’t only have four-wheel-drive. You also have turbocharged engines. You can go around the corner as you wanted to, but if you go on the power too early, you have to lift off and then maybe you’re history.”

Stuck’s advantage in Audi’s GTO contender would only go so far – despite a streak of impressive results, he missed out on championship glory. Pete Halmser in his Mercury Cougar XR-7 would take both the manufacturers’ and drivers’ titles.

If Audi had participated in IMSA’s early rounds at Sebring and Daytona, it would have had a genuine chance at taking IMSA’s first championship for an all-wheel-drive car, all in the team’s debut season. In just two years, Audi had solidified itself as a serious contender in US sportscar racing; it had put itself firmly in the running for championships across two different racing series, and made more established competition look over their shoulders a bit more often.

Hans-Joachim Stuck would win the 1990 DTM Championship with the Audi V8 Quattro.

But it wasn’t going to last. Audi’s bosses in Germany decided to take the brand’s forward momentum in racing and move it a little closer to home; for 1990, Audi would contest the DTM championship with its V8 Quattro.

An unfortunate biproduct of this was a pause on Audi’s racing programme in the US, and the end of the 5-cylinder scream of the 90 IMSA GTO. The brutish machine was mothballed, never to race again. Disappointingly, it never had another shot at an IMSA championship. It had made its mark and disappeared as quickly as it arrived.

Don’t feel too bad for Audi’s short-lived prodigy though, because it still makes an appearance at heritage motorsport events now and again. Most recently, it popped up at Audi’s F1 launch event, with Hans-Joachim Stuck behind the wheel once again.

Stuck would lead Audi’s DTM effort, taking both drivers’ and manufacturers’ titles on debut. Frank Biela would repeat this feat in 1991. Audi’s next challenge would be at Le Mans in the 2000s, and you don’t need me to tell you how that went.

Audi has a habit of hitting the ground running when it enters a new championship, both on and off road. Can it repeat the same feat in F1? Only time will tell.

While it never won a championship, Audi's 90 IMSA GTO is one of its most legendary race cars.

Photo credit: Audi Media Centre

This article was originally published on The Sportscar Database's social media.