Love my RS6 'cept for one thing: It's quite a bit slower than advertised from launch.
I'd been driving a chipped 2000 S4 6-spd for two years when my RS6 arrived, and I thought right away that it was no faster than the older car from launch. So last Friday I went to a local dragway where the best I've done on my S4 was a 14.2 quarter. My best run in the RS6 was 14.137 -- just a notch faster than the S4 but a full second or more slower than most of the times reported in car magazine road tests or comparisons. (My car already had nearly 8000 miles on it at the dragway, due to a just-completed trip, so "newness" should not be much of a factor; right?)
The elapsed time slip seems to indicate the problem is at the start: while I got to 60 ft. in 2.0 secs in the S4, it took 2.34 secs on my best run in the RS6. Others have written that a difference of .3 to 60 ft. results in a much bigger difference at the end of the quarter -- perhaps a full second IIRC.
For now I'm giving the car the benefit of the doubt until I develop a better technique. Currently I depress the pedal rapidly to the floor, but I don 't "stomp" it because that seems to make lag worse. On one of my runs I held the brake while depressing the accelerator some but not much -- to about 2000 rpm I think. I hesitate to press down further because I don't want to damage the car.
Any suggestions? Do the guys at the car mags rev up much higher before releasing the brake? Is such a practice harmful? What else could I try to come closer to the better results obtained by others?
(Please, no lectures on how the RS6 was not built to drag race. I don't plan to visit the track often, but I knew of no other way to confirm my suspicions that it's not much faster than my chipped S4 -- and quite a bit slower at launch.)