Walter Röhrl's short guest appearance in the Trans-Am Series

After the end of Audi’s engagement in rallying in 1988 Walter Röhrl had to find a new cockpit to race in. With Audi’s entry into the Trans-AM Series in the same year to promote their cars on the American market, Röhrl became one of the company’s drivers alongside Hurley Haywood and Hans-Joachim Stuck. Before the beginning of the season, the other teams didn’t believe Audi would be competitive with their rather clumsy looking 200 quattro Trans-Am.

But already the second race of the season proved the opposite. In Dallas, Hurley Haywood was able to achieve Audi’s first victory in Trans-Am racing. The other teams had to accept that the 200 quattro was extremely fast.

In the training for the third race of the year in Sears Point, it was raining heavily, what kept most cars in the pits all the time. But one guy decided to entertain the spectators a bit. Walter Röhrl took his Audi and went for some wet laps around the track.

Röhrl showed some nice drifts around the corners and the spectators had something to look at while getting soppingly wet. That was some serious car control he’d shown to the bystanders. When he returned to the pits afterwards, he got standing ovations by the audience. In the race, the Audis weren’t lucky and Willy T. Ribbs took the victory in his Camaro.

The most spectacular race was the fifth of the season. In Niagara Falls, Röhrl was completely in his element. The weather was hot and very humid and the track was bumpy and narrow with crash barriers directly alongside the track. Absolutely perfect conditions for someone who is used to drive on gravel roads through Finnish forests. In the training Röhrl was able to drive 3 seconds faster per lap than the complete rest of the field. The other drivers started calling him crazy and said that he won’t be able to drive like that for the complete 2 hours of the race, because he’d definitely crash into the barriers.

They were right to a certain degree. In the race happened so many accidents, that most parts of the track were covered with fragments of the cars. But Röhrl wasn’t one of the people crashing. He was able to swerve around the debris and that while going much faster than everyone else. In the end, Röhrl won the race while having lapped every single car on the track at least once. The American teams were very upset after the race.

"I am not interested in winning by one second. There are people who say: 'that was a really tough fight, I won by one second!' I want to win by 10 minutes. That makes me happy!" - Walter Röhrl

Although only competing in 6 races (he shared the car with Hans-Joachim Stuck, so Stuck was driving in the other races), Röhrl was able to win a second time at the last race of the season in St. Petersburg, Florida. Haywood won 2 races, Stuck took 4 victories and with the aforementioned two wins by Röhrl, Audi was able to win the constructors championship. All in all, Audi won 8 out of 13 races with Hurley Haywood becoming the champion.

After the season, the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) banned All-wheel-drive and non-american engines from competing in the Trans-Am Series for having an unfair advantage and so Audi had to move over to the IMSA GT Series.

Despite that inglorious end of Audi’s engagement in the Trans-Am Series, Walter Röhrl became a much respected track driver. At that time, he was one of the best if not the best driver the world had ever seen and even today he’s responsible for the track performance of Porsche’s new models. So he definitely hasn’t forgotten how to drive fast.

I want to end my short lesson of racing history with my favourite quote by Walter Röhrl:

"The best drivers have dead flies on the side windows."