Audi R10 TDi delivers glowing plug for diesel power with Twelve Hours of Sebring victory
After pasting up a new track record during qualifying, Audi's diesel-powered Audi R10 TDi racers went on to torque their way to first place in the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring on Saturday.
The No. 2 Audi of Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Rinaldo Capello won the first race in on the 2006 American Le Mans Series schedule by three laps, besting the No. 37 Lola of Intersport Racing. This, despite starting the race from pit lane in 34th position after a heat exchanger failed.
The No. 2 car took the lead over their Audi teammates in the No. 1 machine around a third of the way through the race, after the latter was forced to retire with overheating issues.
This is reportedly the first time an oil-burner has claimed victory in a major American auto race.
[Sources: Backstretch Motorsports, RaceExpress]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Phil L. 8:18AM (3/19/2006)
Awesome race; can't wait to see how the R10 does at LeMans.
I only had the chance to check in on Speed's coverage occasionally during the day, but it always seemed like something was going on. It was great to see people still racing in the last half hour.
Favorite moment: Sometime during the middle of the day, two Corvettes pitted together, creating a pit crew race. But then the first car out of the pits spun out just a few turns later, allowing the second car to slip past. Excellent racing; everyone pushing the whole time.
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Mike from Scarborough 9:49AM (3/19/2006)
Wow...what a moster car...What torque man!!!and yes even good fuel economy...I hope VW will bring more TDI's Includind the 6 and 8Cyl here in 2008.
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USAFMech 10:00AM (3/19/2006)
Great title, Autoblog. Great race. Congrats to Tom K.
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Bob Maxwell 11:47AM (3/19/2006)
Face it, diesel power has been the prime mover in this country since it was introduced. Truck engines, turbocharged and supercharged with roller cams with super high compression, electronic-free ignition reliability and mega-torque have been moving the freight ever since relegating gasoline truck engines and coal-fired railroad engines to museums decades ago. My 1980 Diesel Rabbit consistently got me 57 MPG in town and up to 72 MPH highway with never even a tuneup until it finally rusted out at 250,000 miles. Bring on Diesel!
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bernie 12:06PM (3/19/2006)
This is an amazing engineering achievement - on a par with anything I've seen in my lifetime in motorsports. Maybe the 426 hemi comes close, but to take an engine known for its beast of burdern" qualities and to win a race like Sebring is truly unbelievable.
Does anybody have the fuel economy data? I caught an hour or so on Speed channel and the thing was brutally fast, never puffed any smoke and looked like it was on rails (the last part a credit to the highly underrated drivers and a super chassis).
This could change the automobile universe in a significant way if the team keeps winning. Major kudos to the Audi team!
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Proud Japanese 1:57PM (3/19/2006)
>This could change the automobile universe in a significant way if the team keeps winning.
50% of cars sold in Europe are diesel. America is just lagging behind as usual.
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Phil L. 3:26PM (3/19/2006)
You won't likely find precise data about the R10's fuel usage, at least yet: During the coverage, Speed commentators theorized that some of the Audi's unusually-timed pit stops were purely for the purpose of preventing competing teams for being able to calculate the R10's mileage...
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Horst G H Pelka 7:58PM (3/19/2006)
That's what I call GERMAN engeniering, hats off to Autounion. Maybe this engine could be used in their Bentley to?
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nothing... 12:11AM (3/20/2006)
Would you be as amazed if one of last years F1 V10s running unrestricted beat out this years F1 V8s? No, you wouldn't?
Well, then why are you amazed here? The R10 V8 is about 50% larger than the R8 V8 was, the R10 V8 runs 2.94bar of boost (47psi), the R8 was allowed only 1.6bar (22psi) in its final year (in which it still won LeMans). The non-Diesel LMP1 cars are restricted to not only smaller displacements than the R10, but are not allowed any supercharging (including turbocharging) at all. Finally, the R10 V8 weighs twice as much as the R8 V8.
Audi has shown that given sufficiently skewed rules, a Diesel car can beat a gas car. This is only anything of note in a series where there are such skewed rules. In real life, you aren't subject to those rules.
It will be interesting to find out what the fuel economy is on the R10. Given that race cars run almost exclusively at WOT (wide open throttle), the Diesel doesn't hold the usual advantage in respect to pumping losses. Then again, the R8 was a GDI (lean burn) after the first two years of its existence, and so also didn't close the throttle plate to reduce power, so it didn't suffer from pumping losses either in normal operation.
Honestly, I'm a bit more impressed with Diesels in the Dakar Rally. They are used exclusively in the big trucks and are starting to invade the "production-based" regular-sized truck classes.
50% of cars sold in Europe are Diesels because fuel taxes have traditionally favored Diesels there (at times by a large margin). Pricing in the US more closely reflects that a barrel of oil produces over 19 gallons of gas but only 10 gallons of Diesel fuel.
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ZoomZoomin' 1:30AM (3/20/2006)
One slightly annoying part of the coverage was the recurring diesel promiotions that the commentators would give. They kept re-iterating a list of pro-diesel talking points that really had little connection to racing. I'm not anti-diesel, but hearing such blatant (or at best, thinly-veiled) attempts to promote a message is annoying no matter what.
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chewy 2:13AM (3/20/2006)
While the rules do favor diesels, it is still an amazing achievement. The boost preasure is actually aroind 29 psi. The race car will bring improved diesels to road cars exactly as the R8 brought FSI to current Audisl.
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David 4:29AM (3/20/2006)
Umm...actualy you got that backwards(9). You get alot more Diesel from a barrel of oil than Gasoline, also the refining process to produce diesel consumes far less energy. Where you got those numbers is the refineries priority of oil to fuel conversion.
Ultimately even though the R10 may or may not be more economical to its petrol counterparts(I'm willing to bet it is even under WOT), Its a better performing machine thus far over its predicessor and rivals. Thats all that matters in the end, the rule breaking prototypes are all that have kept ALMs alive and interesting.
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amp 9:58AM (3/20/2006)
My favorite moment of the race was on the last lap, when Speed cut to the in-car camera in the #3 'vette while it was trying to chase down the #007 Aston. The R10 had just taken the victory, and they were setting off fireworks. You could see the fireworks off to the left of the 'vette as it and the Aston were barreling down the straight, fighting for the last GT1 podium spot.
Im a little disappointed in the LMP2 Porsche Spyders. I was expecting a going-away victory in their class, and a possibility of an over-all victory if the R10s ran in to trouble. I guess that shows why they run the races.
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nothing... 11:51AM (3/20/2006)
David, I don't see where you got that boost pressure number. I got mine off the net, you can search for "r10 boost pressure" and find the 2.94 number yourself. Perhaps they mentioned it on the broadcast of the race? Due to a brain freeze, I only got to see the last two hours of the race, so I would have missed it.
I think you're a bit off on the distillation stuff. How you think you can get more per volume of Diesel (a longer, paraffin-style polymer) than gas (shorter chains) from the same source is beyond me. Perhaps you're right about more energy in the Diesel, but people aren't measuring car efficiency in kilometers/Joule or oil yield in Joules per barrel. They measure both by volume (gallons or liters).
As to the more energy, yes, you put in more energy to crack hydrocarbon chains to get more gas. But that's just because they're shifting towards more gas. If you wanted to shift towards more Diesel you'd have to not just do less cracking, but put in energy to polymerize more chains to get more Diesel yield. In the end, I don't know if the energy required to do either of these matters too much compared to transport and drilling/extracting costs anyway, do they?
Either way, the primary thing to think about is that barring any huge manipulation of the density of the products through polymerization or cracking, you will get some amount of Diesel and some amount of gasoline from a barrel of oil. It is a good idea to use the gas (in cars) instead of throwing it away or converting it. There isn't a lot of other demand for gasoline outside of cars. Conversely, Diesel fuel is the same thing as fuel oil, which is used to heat homes and in industrial processes. So that distillate already has another use.
Why should we switch cars away from a distillate that has no other common use and thus have to throw away or convert that distillate to something else?
On a similar note, when Ford first released their E85 cars 10 years ago I wondered why we wouldn't do the same thing as Brazil. That is, make all our cars work on multiple fuels. That allows us to balance demand between different fuels based upon what we have available. If we had interchangeable alternatives, we could work towards using what comes from the oil in the proper proportions without lots of conversions simply by increasing or decreasing the amount of ethanol in the fuels to keep the gas demand at the proper level.
Finally, to the guy above complaining about the coverage. I have to say, I only saw two hours, and I found it ridiculous. I knew Audi was doing this for marketing, but I was surprised to hear how much marketing they were getting. Blabbing about "water clear" fuel, how putting on particulate filters was "PC", etc. I wish they had spent half as much time talking about how for the last two years Dyson had been giving Audi fits with car using a 2.0L 4-cylinder engine. Now that's technology.
Finally, on another note, the entry list for Le Mans this year is still very poor. It doesn't look like a good year. It'll be nice to see such varied cars and teams out there (the Lamborghini Owners Club of Japan will certainly be ecstatic to be there) but there isn't going to be much competition in LMP1. LMP2 looks like they will do okay with the customer Lolas, but the lack of the Porsche RS Spyders is a drag. GT1 and GT2 will probably be good fights.
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carsareus 5:13PM (3/20/2006)
Actually, zoomzoomin, I was amazed at how the speed channel kept saying how much play the audi was getting because of the diesel, but when it was apparent that audi was going to win - like in the last hour - speed channel all of a sudden started talking about diesel and what V-Power and GTL was.
There's a pretty informative article at
http://www.carlist.com/autonews/2006/autonews_260.html
talking about GTL, CTL and BTL
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Greg Faulkner 4:17PM (3/25/2006)
Although I find racing diesels mildly interesting, considering that not many people would even concieve that diesels could be used for auto racing. The most impressive thing for me, however, is that my 2006 Jetta TDI with 177 lbs of torque has not got me under 40 mpg, even burning B20. I don't see any nonhybrid gassers jumping up to compete with those numbers in America. So, whether or not diesels will ever be a player in the racing world still must be determined, but they certainly have shown their value in the non-racing arena.
Preferiencial tax treatment for diesels is not the only reason for their market share for diesels going from 4% to almost 50% in ten years in Europe. Rather, it is America's anti-diesel regulatory stance that has kept common sense out of our market. Tax or no tax, 80 mpg sounds like a convincing reason for a diesel.
Diesels Rule!
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FritzX 3:04AM (4/02/2006)
The Audi TDI success would be even more impressive, if the car would'nt be filled with Diesel fuel, but with "American made" peanut-, soya- or corn- BioDiesel.
Imagine the faces of the "oil sheiks" of Saudi Arabia, loosing their biggest market...
BTW.: This is not a joke, BioDiesel powered racing cars are already on the track in the US: http://forums.tdiclub.com/
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