Audizine.com is the largest Audi forum on the planet and for someone like me a serious part of the whole car thing.  The depth of knowledge available would allow anyone with zero prior auto smarts to learn just about anything about these cars, or so I’ve heard.  Spend enough time on the forums reading, learning and then contributing and you’ll not only come away with a grip of know-how, but likely meet some cool, like minded people in the process.  Lots of fun too. 

The AZ founder just happens to live in Santa Clara so fortunately for some of us, the 10th anniversary was held at Infineon Raceway just over in Sonoma. 

Started out early in the AM leaving Hippieville, just me and Dustin… cause we’re the only guys with Audi’s in West County who are into this stuff.

We met up with a few other fellas about 30 min south and gathered up for a mini-meet of sorts before heading over 37 to the raceway.  The blue S4 on the end there was in reeeeally nice shape.  But alas it was an auto and the guy was actually itching to sell it, but thankfully for another Audi.

The drive over was pretty fun.  Needless to say you get that many of us in the same area and there’s bound to be some minor shenanigans.  Nothing too serious, we were in Marin. 

However, speaking of serious, some of the guys that came up from Arizona ran into a few hazards along the way… like an uncontained freeway-fire.  One of them snapped this pic before gunning it through the flames.

Our drive was far more scenic. 

Cheeseburgers lumbered over to Dustin’s car and for a sec there it looked like he was gonna kick him out before we even got to go in.

 

We filed in and parked and before we knew it, there were a LOT of Audi’s there.  

We got there kinda early and it was great cause we got to watch them all streaming in.

Hey wait, that’s me (dead center, in the empty slot).

How can you not love this??  The new S5’s are soooo butter.

Apparently Dustin lost a hose or something on the drive over and was trying to be sneaky about seeing what it was.  Not so sneaky D. 

There was such a wide variety of Audi’s at this event that every where you turned was something different, unique or downright sexy.  Old and new alike, I’ve never seen anything like it.  While the newer Audi’s are certainly the best eye-candy, the older ones that have been built up or maintained or even restored were the most fetching.

The white A4 with the black wheels and lower trim was actually driven down from Canada.  The guy was super cool and obviously fully dedicated to the cause as his car was arguably one of the cleanest there.  He also put together a nice video which is further down.

And the Blue one that looks like it was painted in a garage?  Well, it was.  And it was totally one of my fave’s.  The guy is a really avid snowboarder from Tahoe and he actually uses his car to it’s fullest (all wheel drive super snow trekker).  After it started getting dinged up, he just went the other direction with it - minimalist functional. 

And here’s a quick vid that one of the guys from the South Bay put together.

 

Track Time

Towards the end of the afternoon, we were all directed towards the opposite side of the lot to file in for the parade lap.  They were staging cars in groups of 40 or so and it provided a nice change to get a better look at all the cars around us.

This is my buddy Mike, who out of no where volunteered to ride shotgun and be my camera man.

And I got a really solid pic outta this too.  Really happy with the new wheels. 

Dustin was, well… not so happy.

Cause while we were standing there a giant pterodactyl flew right over us and dropped this on his car.

Me with Jace and Kirk sittin in his A4 lookin hard.  Thankfully there were talented photogs there to snap pics like this to make us look cool.

 

From here we were staged and lined up on the track entrance.  

Mike and Cristina in the B5 S4 ahead of me. Awesome peeps, had a lot of fun clownin around with them all day.

Beautiful Audi’s poised for a safe and low speed turn around the track.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited.  And so was everyone else.

So excited that I’m going to post this 8min video of me going around the track.  I was under the impression that we only got one lap but they actually gave us two which was such an awesome surprise.  “Well, I guess that’s it-oh, we get to go again??  Yay!”  Like the roller coaster operator just let your car keep going for a 2nd round.

While we weren’t able to really get up to any potentially hazardous speeds, there were more than a few times when we spaced ourselves enough to have some fun.  If your volume is up, you can kinda hear the engines… and maybe some tire squealing.  Don’t know where that was coming from.  This was a parade lap and that is certainly inappropriate.  

The 2nd lap starts around 5:25, probably a bit more invigorating than the 1st.  Yes, I’m well aware some will find this boring to watch but it certainly wasn’t in the car.  The video really doesn’t do this justice.

Man, I can’t wait to do that again.

Side note, those giant red StopTech brakes I have?  They’re actually track level brakes (meaning on the street they’re stop on a dime every single time).  So while I was out on the track it was awesome to have zero brake fade or loss of braking after a few hard corners.  Gave me the ability to have a lot more fun. 

Such a beautiful day!

Last but certainly not least, the guy who drove all the way from Canada (J Ozzie) was cool enough to take a grip of footage for his whole trip, drive back and immediately start cutting this up.  He put together a pretty damn fine recap video.  Do check it out (I’m sure he would prefer in 720).  Shot of me around 5:40.

Hopefully I’ll be able to make another get together like this one in the near future, but I doubt anyting is gonna top this for some time.