Disappointing for two reasons, but first I need to set the stage.
I went to Bradenton Motorsports dragway and conditions could hardly have been better for Florida: a cool sunny day, temps in low 60s, even a tail wind of 15 mph or so. When I went there a year ago in my chipped 2000 S4, on a warmer day IIRC, I scored a 13.775 quarter -- not great but a record for me and a full .45 seconds better than I had been able to do at Moroso, another Florida track, or at Milan in Michigan; I never got below 14.2 at either of those tracks, despite multiple visits to each. But at Bradenton, I broke below 14 in the S4 on my first run -- with a missed shift! I was so surprised I even asked around to make sure the locals weren't getting unexpectedly fast times, too; they weren't. So, bottom line, I had several reasons to be optimistic today about the prospect of substantially lowering my RS6 times compared to Michigan.
It didn't happen. Eventually it got much WORSE than Michigan, where my best in the RS6 is 13.674.
I did a LITTLE better than that at first, but not much -- with runs of 13.650 and 13.604. All my best RS6 runs, MI and FL, were with ESP off, the tranny in S and about 1/3 tank of Amoco 93 octane. Best RS6 runs also included torque braking, if that's what it's called, tho the beast allows no more than 2500 rpm for that. So, QUESTION NO. 1 is: Why is the improvement with the RS6 only .07, compared to .45 for the 6-spd S4?
On my third run today at Bradenton, I accidentally left the AC on -- and ran 15.126! I can't imagine AC alone would add 1.52 seconds, but that was my time & I could feel the slowness. Who wouldn't?!
Later I kept the AC off, of course, but I still couldn't come close to breaking under 14. The best I got was 14.536 (5th run), still almost a full second slower than what I was getting less than an hour beforehand.
Obviously something went wrong. 60 ft. times for the RS6 were 2.132 on my best Michigan run (13.674), 1.990 on my best Bradenton run (13.604), then 2.019 on the 14.536 5th run at Bradenton -- so my faster 5th launch at Bradenton still resulted in almost a second slower ET compared to Michigan.
Of the six or so racers I talked to today at Bradenton, none had worsening times to compare with mine; in fact most were improving.
So, I thought of these OTHER QUESTIONS:
2. Could having the AC on under stress cause something else to fail?
3. Is it possible that my ESP switch went bad, indicating it's on when it's off -- and off when it's on? (Even if that's the case, tho, having the ESP on in Michigan cost me half a second -- not a second.)
4. Could the tranny somehow get "switched," so that I'm in S when I want D and D when I want S? (On the way home, tho, S held the engine to higher RPMs before shifting, just like it's supposed to do.)
5. Can anyone out there think of anything else that might have cause such a big performance decline?
BTW there was some fun today when a semi truck got to the line, fired up his JET engine & made noise like -- well, a jet engine accelerating at close range! It quit just before he finished. Someone said he burned 100 gallons on each run, so maybe he prepped a little too long. But he still finished under 9 seconds!