Double anniversary for Audi in Long Beach
After having revolutionized rallying with quattro four-wheel drive at the beginning of the 1980s, Audi swapped to circuit racing in 1988. On 16 April 1988, Hurley Haywood and Hans-Joachim Stuck started in a brace of production based Audi 200 quattro cars in the opening race of the North American Trans-Am series. Hurley Haywood’s second place on Audi’s racing début made the competition sit up and take notice. However, it was just a foretaste of what would follow: Audi won eight of the 13 Trans-Am races during the 1988 season and the championship convincingly in the end. The following year the Trans-Am series organizers unceremoniously banned the superior quattro drive.
The winning streak in the Trans-Am series, which continued the following year with the Audi 90 quattro in the IMSA GTO Championship and later in touring car racing in Europe, typifies the successful motorsport involvement of AUDI AG which is repeatedly coupled with the use of ground breaking technology. quattro drive, which is available today for every Audi model, is just one example of this. Proof of the direct technology transfer between motorsport and production is also the combination of turbo-charging and direct injection (TFSI), which was unbeaten in the 24 Hours of Le Mans between 2001 and 2005 and is today found in numerous Audi production models. TFSI enables the cubic capacity of spark ignition engines to be reduced ("downsizing") which in turn lowers CO2 emissions. In this way, Audi extracts an impressive 272 hp from a mere two-liter, four-cylinder power plant fitted in the new TTS.
Now in its third year, Audi continues to grab the headlines in motorsport with the R10 TDI. The first and only diesel sportscar to date to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans is a rolling test laboratory with which the Audi engineers collect know-how for the next generation TDI engines. The over 650 hp prototype is unbeaten in the LM P1 class of the American Le Mans Series. Long Beach is the 25th race for the R10 TDI – as a result Audi celebrates two anniversaries at the same time in California.
The temporary race track in Long Beach, which staged Formula 1 races between 1977 and 1983, is regarded as the mother of all contemporary street circuits and is an extreme challenge for the diesel sportscar that was originally developed for the high-speed circuit of Le Mans. The average speed over a single lap at Le Mans is almost 240 kph, at Long Beach in contrast, only around 160 kph. The tight hairpin in Long Beach, one of the slowest corners to be encountered in motorsport, is particularly difficult for the world’s fastest sportscar.
On the first weekend in April, German duo Lucas Luhr and Marco Werner proved with their spectacular win in St Petersburg (Florida) that it is also possible to win with the R10 TDI around a street circuit. In the process they were once again able to exploit one of the greatest advantages of TDI Technology: the competitors with their conventional spark ignition engines have little to offer against the enormous torque, in excess of 1,100 Newton meters produced by the V12 TDI engine, especially when accelerating.
Lucas Luhr and Marco Werner arrive in Long Beach as leaders in the LM P1 class. The second R10 TDI is driven by Frank Biela and Emanuele Pirro. The race starts on Saturday (19 April) at 4:10 p.m. local time (1:10 a.m. Sunday morning German time). Audi PR