Autoblog

I agree. Instead of crippling the new technology (R10), why not embrace it and let everyone else do the catching up? This is a great first step to seeing more high performance diesel engines making their way into production cars.

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You're 100% right YAGO BAL, it seems like as soon as a race team solves a problem and starts winning races the powers to be step in and make rule changes to defeat them! don't make the competition bring THEIR equipment up to the winners standards! I've been a NASCAR fan for over 60 years but with the CRAP they're making me watch now; I.E. follow the leader he'll get you to the finish line but don't DARE to try and pass him or you'll be black flagged! Of course the leaders in this case are 90% of the time Jeff Gordon or Jimmie Johnson! I'd like to know what they have to pay NASCAR to sneak their cars through pre race inspection. and another thing; when a pit crew can dictate the winner of a race i throw in my towel, in the old days when we had a yellow caution flag all lap counting stopped till all the cars that wanted to make a pit stop were back on the track and lined up for a restart the lap counting started again! Now one pit man can cause his car to lose a race if he gets bought off with say; $100,000 by not tightening 1 lugnut making his car to have to return to the pit for it to be tightened! Don't you believe for one minute they CAN'T be bought off. They've already had one who sold out for $10,000, he left the overflow can in the hole at the rear of the car for overflow can be kept off the ground and put back in the fuel cans, NASCAR measures every ounce of fuel to be sure know ones slipping in more fuel that they're allowed to have which is one of the GOOD things they do! I'm starting to watch URL and INYCAR races from last week on!

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@Yago Bal

Nonsense. By regulation LMP1 has all the advantages over LMP2. That includes better power to weight, more power overall, more downforce. LMP2 seems dominant today only because Porsche Spyder is a much better race car compared to R10. R10 proved to be an embarrassment, wining only a few races overall this ALMS season (4 IIRC). And honestly, if Audi is to stay in the competition, I hope they'll come up with a better looking car than the one in this render, the old R8C and Speed 8 were so much nicer/interesting.

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They aren't changing the rules: they are intencionally restricting the capabilities of a specific LMP1 car, so that it runs as slow as an LMP2 car: there's no merit for the Porsche cars.

It's like placing F1s and GP2 cars in the same race, and then telling the F1 teams: "Sorry, but we're limiting your engines to 4000 rpm: we want to see more ballance between cars. Sorry for all the money you've spent."

If you follow the European LM series, you'd see the natural difference between LMP1 and LMP2 formulas.

In fact, if you see the actual Le Mans race, you'd know that having a miriad of cars in different categories is part of it's magic... It's a crazy idea but if Le Mans was in the US, I wouldn't be surprised to see someone defending that the LMP1 should be restricted so that the GT2 could give them a fight.

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@ Yago Bal

That's completely false. ACO/IMSA rules, by design, give at least 15% performace advantage to LMP1 class. This difference has increased to allow diesels to run in the competition. R10 did not make the weight, so in order to make it competitive, ACO increased the minimum weight of all prototype cars, including LMP2.

In fact diesels are dominant in the LMP1 class only because the rules make the gasoline powered cars uncompetitive. Diesels are allowed to have higher displacement, higher compression ratio, higher boost. ACO says that they have to do this because gasoline powered engines have rpms twice as high (which doubles the torque at the wheel), which is true, however the higher displacement/ compression ratio/ boost combo gives diesels much more torque than the one allowed for the gasoline engines.

Audi, because they have been the only sponsor/attraction of the series for a long while, want all the possible advantages they can get behind the scene. It would be much better if they would go back to the drawing board and design a competitive race car. Audi should quit whinning, scrap that diesel nonsense, and face Porsche on the race track.

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..and why sould Audi face Porsche on the race track, if Audi races LMP1 and Porsche decided to race LMP2?

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@Yago Bal

I would like to see a serious proof for that 40% efficiency figure you attribute to diesel race engines. It is certainly not true for passenger cars, where diesels have pretty much the same efficiency as gasoline engines, about 30%. It is true that industrial diesels can reach 40% efficiency, but they don't have the weight/dimensions/NVH/pollution restrictions that passenger engines have.

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