Over the last 2 months the R8 hasn’t missed a beat. It has continued to impress on all fronts, proving to be a genuinely useable everyday car while never disappointing when the pace picks up, and believe me it often does. Unfortunately anyone spending much time on Dubai roads would have noticed the dozens of new speed cameras that have popped up all over the place. Coming in different shapes and sizes they are becoming harder and harder to spot these days. Last weekend I found myself awake at an uncharacteristically early hour of the day and decided to take the R8 for a spin taking advantage of an increasingly rare low traffic opportunity. Let’s just say that my right foot stayed pinned on the throttle longer than it should have and it was at this moment while travelling, errrr... rather rapidly along Al Khail road that I came across the latest model of law enforcement technology. As I had never seen one of these (shaped like a column with cameras behind tinted glass) before, it took a while to realize what it was, at which point it was too late. I got that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that you get when you know you’ve been caught doing something very naughty. My only hope is that it was not set up yet, as a few days later there was an email doing the rounds showing police officers looking very smug as they installed their new toy.  So far I haven’t heard anything, and as they say no news is good news. I hope so for the sake of my Audi, otherwise a week in impound would be the punishment. Fingers crossed.

A few days later while returning from Abu Dhabi the oil level warning light illuminated in the dash in front of me, I was nearly home so I parked up for the night. In the morning I checked under the car to see if there was an oil leak, but the floor was clean so I drove down the road to the Audi service centre to get it looked at. They didn’t appear at all surprised saying it was very common for R8’s to consume  an excessive amount of oil while covering their first few thousand kilometres, particularly if driven hard. So thankfully no need to be concerned, and 10 minutes and 2 Litres of oil later everything was back in order.

Back on the road, the R8 continues to entertain. There is a particular corner on my way to work that I look forward to on my route every day. It is a blind bend that arrives after a relatively long straight meaning you arrive well into triple figures, and at first it appears that you are able to stay flat on the throttle all the way through, but suddenly the radius decreases and the road ahead simultaneously tightens up and falls away necessitating a lift of the throttle that sheds speed, but also unloads the rear tyres and swings the rear of the car round. In the R8 this results in a delicious perfectly balanced slide as you wind on the opposite lock and hold it sideways for as long as you dare. Eventually my nerve does run out as the run-off area consists of a sandy ditch, but nevertheless it puts a big cheesy grin on my face every time, often accompanied in my mind by a gleeful “Wheeee!!!”, although sometimes I find myself saying it out loud. Childish I know, but I just can’t help myself.