. Although those who tried to view the live stream yesterday were left wanting after the servers crashed, the RS 7 piloted driving concept completed a Hockenheimring lap in just over two minutes.

Although well short of the 1:13:78 lap record set by Kimi Räikkönen in the 2004 German Grand Prix, the two-minute-plus lap time was close to the 2 minute 10 second time predicted by the Audi team.

The 560 hp (418 kW) car employed specially corrected GPS signals transmitted to the car via Wi-Fi, with redundancy provided by high-frequency radio, while 3D cameras in the car filmed the track and a computer program compared the images against graphical information stored on board. Audi says this allowed the car to orient itself on the track to within centimeters and allow it to drive with high precision and take the optimum driving line.