We've known Audi of USA to be staffed by largely level-headed, responsible human beings. Yet somehow company officials have handed us the key to a freshly minted 2010 R8 5.2 FSI (that would be the one with the 525-hp V10 bolted behind the seats) and allowed me to drive away with no babysitter, speed or distance restrictions or even a GPS ankle tether. The only real parameter is that we have to have the car to Los Angeles (we presume in one piece, although we note that they didn't say that specifically) in four days.
 
So let's do the math, shall we? That's roughly 96 hours.  Subtract 30 hours for sleep. But with a co-driver, in the mortal of Lead Ed, Ed Hellwig, we could maybe trade-off driving and winnow the cumulative sleep total down to somewhere in the 20s. There would be bathroom breaks (1.5 hours for one of use; 7 hours Ed).  We'll have to eat. So we'd have about 210 hours in the car, not counting random loitering, gawking and spitting in the street.

You might remember that we've done this before, when the V8 version of the Audi R8 debuted. This time we will likely take less BBQ, but we will certainly be covering as many miles of interesting (and not) roads as we can cram in. Some of those might have Christmas Trees at the beginning of them.

Audi didn't specifically say that we couldn't take its $147,200 silver bullet to the racetrack. Heck, the company let us take the creature around Infineon Raceway in Sonoma. We'll depart from there, head to San Francisco to pick up Ed, and from there, well, we don't know. We'll figure that out once we're driving, fast. Join us over the next few days.

First Drive: 2010 Audi R8 5.2 FSI