This car has a cult following — for good reason

Sadly, buying an RS3 is a too-expensive proposition, but why not try this experience instead?

Stephen Corby

3 min read

4:30PMNovember 14, 2024.

Updated 7:44PMNovember 14, 2024

Truly, I can’t recommend the RS3 or the Audi Experience enough.

Strangling a steering wheel seems a self-evidently stupid thing to do, even if you don’t like the car you’re driving. But fear will make you do self-evidently stupid things, like walking away from that girl across the dance floor who’s clearly giving you the eye, or not saying yes when you’re offered the chance to bungee jump into a spectacular canyon for free (OK, so those are just me, please fill in your own examples).

Fear is, of course, a constant, carping and crushing companion when you’ve been tempted to tackle a racetrack in a road car, and the more exciting or involving that vehicle is, the more likely you are to attempt to strangle its steering wheel in panic as you surge stupidly beyond speed limits and skill levels.

While this might sound like I’m advising against the activity, I’m actually here to tell you that attending a track day – like the Audi Driving Experience regularly offered all over Australia – is something I wish everyone I have to share the road with would do. That’s because I agree wholeheartedly with Audi’s Chief Driving Instructor (and former Top Gear Australia star) Steve Pizzati, who correctly and depressingly insists that we have the worst driver-training system in the known universe, or at least the western world. As he pointed out, to a room full of nervous non-racing drivers, most of us were given a licence after proving that we were capable of driving at 59km/h and no faster. We were never asked to prove that we could perform an emergency stop, correct a skid or understand the seemingly impenetrable words: “Keep left unless overtaking”.

Inside the Audi RS3.

Furthermore, we were taught to drive in our teenage years by people we knew to be idiots and inferior to us in every way – our parents. Then, after tootling around city streets to pass our driving “test”, we were allowed to drive, from that day, almost twice as fast, at night, in the rain, and on dirt roads.

Here’s my little tip for why we can’t get our appalling road toll down to the levels that countries like Germany (which lets you drive at 300km/h-plus on some public roads) achieve, which I know Pizzati agrees with. It’s not about speed limits, it’s about skill limits, as well as the fact that we don’t re-test every 10 years, nor test properly in the first place.

Pizzati admits that people don’t actually come to his track days to learn; they turn up to “be naughty” and “to thrash our cars the way they’d never treat their own”. But rather cleverly he taps into the reptilian part of the brain that loves an adrenaline hit and sneaks in some medicine with that sugar rush, teaching people to become better drivers in a fun way. This involves learning to swerve and brake at the same time, carving up cones in a slalom test, and controlling lurid slides on a wet skid pan in the world’s fastest station wagon, the Audi RS6.

Every day like this ends with track laps, of course, which is what people are really paying for, and I set out for my first lap session in a supremely fast Audi RS5, following V8 Supercars legend and now driving instructor Steve Johnson. I just had to follow his lines, hit his braking points and not give in to fear. Not only was this easy, it was furious fun.

Pizzati had also spent some time talking up the Audi RS3, a car that will shortly drive into history as one of the greatest hot hatches ever, and one that has a cult following of owners. My second track blast was taken in this raunchy, racy 2.5-litre five-cylinder turbo machine, which makes 294kW, 500Nm and a lot of rasping, crunchy noises. It’s quite likely that I was slower around the circuit in this smaller, sharper machine than I was in the classy RS5, but I have absolutely no doubt that I was enjoying it more.

The Audi RS3 will shortly drive into history as one of the greatest hot hatches ever.

And this is the weird thing about driving around a track. The RS3 felt more alive, more skittish, more likely to skip and slip away from me, but that just made me feel more involved, more invigorated and more inherently connected to both car and road.

Approaching a blindingly fast corner at 200km/h in any car is an experience sure to get your heart kissing the bottom of your tongue, but in the Audi RS3 it had me attempting to strangle the Alcantara-wrapped steering wheel – despite being told time and time again by instructors to breathe and keep your hands loosey goosey – and dancing across throttle and brake pedal like a flamenco fan.

Truly, I can’t recommend the RS3 or the Audi Experience enough, no matter how good a driver you think you are (and yes, I’m talking to every bloke in the country here). Sadly, buying an RS3 is a too-expensive proposition at $95,715, but fortunately you can have a wild old time in one, and a heap of other Audis, from just $1395 at an Audi Driving Experience day. Please go and do one, for me.