Cockpit. Pilot. Throttle. G-forces. Aero. Wings. There’s a reason why racing cars and fighter jets share so much in common. They’re both built for extreme performance – to be able to go as fast and turn as tight as possible, outmaneuvering the competition and winning the fight for which they’re built. Like the Audi R18 E-Tron Quattro and the Eurofighter Typhoon.
For the latest issue of its Encounter technology magazine, Audi brought its victorious hybrid Le Mans prototype together with Europe’s cutting-edge multirole fighter jet, manufactured by the Eurofighter GmbH consortium based in Hallgermoos, Bavaria at the edge of the Munich International Airport – just an hour’s drive down the A9 autobahn from Ingolstadt where Audi is based.
They didn’t just bring the machinery, though: they also brought together the prime pilots of each vehicle. It was a chance for three-time Le Mans winner André Lotterer to meet the Typhoon’s chief test pilot Geri Krähenbühl. Both are highly trained and at the height of their respective fields, and despite an eighteen-year age gap and wildly different backgrounds, share even more in common than the vehicles they’ve committed their careers to pushing to the edges of their respective designs.
Scope out the photos from their encounter in the gallery below, and read the full interviews with both on the Audi Illustrated website.
PHOTOS
