Audi R10 wins little Le Mans
Despite regulations allowing its competitors to race with 143 lbs. less weight, Audi managed to claim the win this weekend at the Petit Le Mans endurance race at Road Atlanta. Other LM P1 cars from Zytek, Creation and Porsche were actually faster than the Audis thanks to the rules that lightened their load, but the R10's bulletproof durability and lower fuel consumption, combined with error-free driving from Alan McNish and Dindo Capello, carried one of the two Audi cars across the finish line first. The second R10, driven by the Le Mans winning team of Frank Biela, Emanuele Pirro and Marco Werner, was poised to finish alongside or ahead of its counterpart, but contact with a slower GT car pushed the team back to seventh overall and fourth in LM P1. With the win, Audi clinches the Manufacturers' Championship in LM P1, having already won both the Drivers' and Teams' Championship. It's also the seventh straight Petit Le Mans victory for Audi and the tenth straight win at Road Atlanta. That is what they call merciless domination, folks. Watching the diesel-powered R10 mow down its gas-powered competitors all season makes us a little more than excited for the start of the next 24 Hours of Le Mans where Peugeot is preparing to fight fire with fire by fielding its own diesel-powered Le Mans racer, the 908.
[Source: Audi]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
gkz 10:47AM (10/02/2006)
Porsche competes in LMP2 and GT2. They do not compete directly with Audi in LMP1.
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5 watt 11:24AM (10/02/2006)
Although they don’t compete directly for the class win. They are competing for the overall victory. It will be interesting to see if the new Porsche RS can keep up with Audi R10. On a side note watching the GT2 cars go at it in the last hours was a blast.
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Mike 11:25AM (10/02/2006)
gkz,And your point is..............
The Porsche broke early so they had no chance anyway.
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rwdmtparkingonly 12:08PM (10/02/2006)
In both the American and French Lemans races the Audi has no other factory competition in the LMP1 class.
http://www.lemans.org/24heuresdumans/2006/pages/chronos_gb.html
It is impressive that Porsche was going faster even though they are in a slower class.
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gkz 12:26PM (10/02/2006)
Mike -
my point is simply that Porsche is not in LMP1 as the story suggested.
thanks for misinterpreting a simple, straitforward comment and being a jerk about it. i really appreciate it.
back to the topic: during the race Speed had a pretty cool feature where they gave cars with different types of engines extended periods where we could hear the engine isloated from other cars. i believe the examples were the audi diesel, aston v12, porsche v8, panoz v8, and bmw i6. for my money, you can't beat the aston. the audi, amazing car that it is, sounds slightly like a vacuum cleaner.
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Zippy 2:04PM (10/02/2006)
While Porsche was impressive, and continues to be impressive in the newly-designed RS - The Audi diesel is nothing but amazing, following in the footsteps of the R8.
I cannot wait to see how Porsche and Peugeot challenge Audi, and how Audi responds.
A note: I'm not a fan of pushing weight restrictions on Audi. While fostering a more competitive spirit, does it really push the other teams to new levels? Or will they allow Audi to innovate, win, and then count on restrictions to hold Audi back again?
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DPC car videos 2:32PM (10/02/2006)
This team/cars/drivers are incredible.
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Tired_Watcher 3:22PM (10/02/2006)
Yeah the battle between the Panoz and BMW was great! Too bad the BMW pushed the rear too much out and spun out. Can't believe the Petersen Motorsports/White Lightning Porsche car won when it was involved with so much incidents! That was amazing!
Too bad for the Radical which didn't even make two laps! Also too bad for the Corvettes. Damn brake problem slowed them down even more.
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chewy 3:37PM (10/02/2006)
That was a great race. The R10 ofcourse was perfect, the only car without mechanical problems, that is why it won. Over ten hours reliability matters more than outright speed. The great fuel economy of the R10 helps out as well of course. The Porsche Spyders are borderline out of their class. In qualifying they were 2 second quicker than class competition, I think that they are running much more power than prescribed for the class that they are in. Still, they have horrible reliability as witnessed at Petit.
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JS 3:53PM (10/02/2006)
The R10 sounds like:
A) A vaccuum cleaner
B) An airplane engine powering down
C) Nothing...all I can hear are the turbos
D) Whats an R10?
Everytime this car passed by us in corner seven we would all look at each other and shake out heads in amazement at how incredible this machine was. Quiet, fuel "efficient" and impeccable driving make the Audi team unstoppable.
Best Engine Sound goes to the Corvette Team with their distinctive low rumble of American power. Very distinctive compared to the rest of the racers and we always knew it was coming because of that sound. Similar to the Panoz, but a lower pitched rumble overall.
Most insane fire-spitting engine goes to the Mazda as flames as long as 2 feet would come belching out on the downshifts! Im surprised it lasted 309 laps!
Poorest Finished showing goes to team PTG and their M3's. Despite their best efforts it was like watching a 5 year old wanting to play football with the 5th graders. The desire is there but they were outmatched the entire race.
Poorest showing overall goes to the Radical SR9 that crapped out after 6 laps and then packed up all their gear and called it a day.
All in all is was a good day for race fans as there was a flurry of activity at the end once the green flag dropped again!
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