[arpad_m]

Originally Posted by mlee

The issue you are having is your foot is still on the accelerator.

Even the slightest little bit will cause it not to activate.

One thing I used to do was use the accelerator to activate... I would hold the left paddle down and then release the gas pedal when I was ready. It would drop from 10th gear to 3rd at 80 mph

As mentioned you are so close to redline at this point that once you go WOT you have to be ready to shift very quick or slap the shifter quickly back to auto and keep going. Definitely takes a lot of practice and you can screw up a good roll run pretty quick with this method.

So that's why simply holding it down it wasn't working for me either. I could, however, downshift once (to activate M mode) and then hold down the paddle for the lowest gear downshift even while keeping the accelerator steady.

I will definitely try this "activation trick" once she comes out of hibernation, just to see if it is more usable on the A8, thanks mlee