Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing Races Turbo Audi S6, a V8 Sedan Gets a Stingy Lesson, or Two

Usually, quarter-mile dragstrips are used for digs – both vehicles start from zero mph and accelerate the best they can to extract the fastest elapsed times and highest trap speeds. However, the racetrack is sometimes turned into an impromptu roll racing venue, and the vehicles mimic real-life situations when they need to accelerate from a fixed cruising speed. Or, at least, that's the theory, in short.

No worries; there are lots of great quarter-mile dragstrips that love to play with both scenarios. Bradenton Motorsports Park in Bradenton, Florida, founded in 1974, is "one of the nation's premier drag racing facilities!" On the other hand, during a recent Street Heat event, it also turned into a rolling track for fans of this type of racing.

The good folks over at the racing-focused ImportRace channel on YouTube love drags as much as anyone else, but sometimes they also enjoy some feisty rolls. Just recently, they posted a video of a C8 Chevy Corvette Z06 ducking it out – on three separate occasions – with a Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing. The family feud ended with the Blackwing getting rolled three times – but it still looked gorgeous and sounded even better doing it.

Now, if you want another instance of the CT5-V Blackwing, a lighter-colored unit got into a roll brawl with an older Audi S6 (probably the C7 generation) fitted with the 4.0-liter bi-turbo V8 engine. Naturally, you would think the latter has no chance against the Blackwing as the OEM tune gives the German sedan 'just' 444 horsepower against the American saloon's mighty 6.2-liter supercharged V8 packing 668 horsepower.

Alas, when racing is involved, one should always expect the unexpected, which is also the case here – at least two times out of three. So, the first skirmish goes down the route everyone would expect – the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing wins the brawl. However, the difference was marginal, hinting that something was definitely amiss with the Audi sedan. As such, the next two races were actually won by the S6. Interesting, right?

By the way, Cadillac recently announced that the CT5 series was its best-selling nameplate worldwide in 2023 and proceeded to announce the updated 2025 CT5-V and CT5-V Blackwing with enhanced styling and a massive cockpit upgrade featuring a 33-inch infotainment display. The bad news is that Caddy didn't upgrade the Blackwing powerplant to Escalade-V's level, so we're 'stuck' at 668 horsepower instead of jumping to 682 ponies. Also, the company announced that its CT5-V Blackwing will be available in 'extremely limited' quantities starting this summer.