ABG comes up a winner in Wave 3 of the Audi Mileage Marathon

I'd like to say we had our winning technique down from day one. But the truth is, my partner (Don Buffamanti of Autospies) and I didn't exactly have spectacular results on the first two drives. This is because a.) he's kind of a leadfoot and b.) he drove quickly on my behalf on day two because I was feeling seriously under the weather. Luckily for us, the other A3 we were competing against, driven by Lauren Fix and Royal Ford, happened upon some serious technical difficulties that gave us the edge, despite a faulty navigation system that led us for 20 miles on a dirt road (above, also here and here). I should note that the technical difficulties were not at all lucky for Fix and Ford, but they had a good attitude about the whole thing by the time dinner rolled around.

In any case, our numbers were 42.2 mpg and 56 mph for day two and 43.2 mpg and 54.9 overall (official numbers were not given for day three but the dashboard display showed 46.4 mpg when we got to Las Vegas - and that's including the 20 miles we spent on that dirt road; we were up around 48 before that little incident).

In the other vehicle classes, the winning numbers were solid for Wave Three:

• Q5: 36.8 mpg / 52.8 mph
• Q7: 29.5 mpg / 52.4 mph
• A4: 36.7 mpg / 49.3 mph (the best mpg rating was 37.7, but this team had a lower average speed and thus did not win the leg)

That's two for three for the Autoblog/AutoblogGreen crew. Let's see how the rest of our team drive on the way to California.

Our travel and lodging for this media event was provided by the manufacturer.