Audi in motorsport in the pre quattro era

[Holger Merten]

Everybody is talking about the great success of Audi with the quattro in the rally-championship between 1981 and 1987. But Audi already raced before: In the late sixties and the seventies Audi was engaged in rally sport, and touring car sport. For example in 1973 an Audi 100 Coupé S started in Spa 24 h in the Division one. It was the Audi France car at Spa 1973 of Dupré/Boucher. A 41st starting position meant that it wasn't really competitive. But it finished a creditable 12th however.

The car was homologated in group 1 (5000 cars/year) in 1971. So who does know more? Here is a picture of that car in front of the old Audi R&D Dept.

http://www.bart.nl/~brun/audiclass.jpg

Later on Audi France started in Spa with the Audi 80 GT/GTE and Audi was engaged in Touring car sport with the Audi 80 GTE with Hans Joachim Nowak (Audi Engineer racing for years for Audi and part of the quattro motor sport team.) and Harald Ertl in the European championship. Here is Heralds Audi-Team card with autogramm. It's the 1977 "Grosser Preis der Tourenwagen" on the Nürburgring with his co-driver was Hans Joachim Nowak.