Is Audi's Dominance Of Le Mans A Good Or Bad Thing?

Those that that make negative comments regarding Audi's dominance of the world's most prestigous endurance race fail to understand the committment, technology , talent, reliability, science, and sheer precision required to run this race considering Audi is participating in other motorsports events such as DTM, GT, and others. Not only is Audi winning, but they are doing so by uping the bar in terms of the technology they develop. Yesterday's win was another historical event - a hybrid vehicle won! Toyota's efforts were good, but its early demise in the race just show you difficult this race can be. Congrats Audi! Looking forward to win number 12!

In racing terms the Toyotas were supposed to be fast, but could not even use that to their advantage. They bring F1 experience as well, yet it did not factor in at all with their reliability, experience and efficiency in the pits.

Great win for Audi, again. I was glad to see that Audi let the team cars compete against each other. It was an amazing race.

Le mans is a shadow of the greatness it once was, manufacturer interest in particular. We are talking about a legendary race once graced by Nissan, Jaguar, Ferrari, Peugeot, Porsche, Mercedes, Renault, Mazda, Ford...many of them competing against each other at once- many of them building customer cars. In the history of Le mans i fail to remember such a weakened field of competitors, easily dominated by the vast sums of money Audi can and have pumped into the sport. The fact Audi haven't sold their recent cars to customer teams also speaks VOLUMES to me.

Is it EASY for Audi? Sadly, yes it is. When the competition is less than fierce, and you have huge amounts of money to spend, you can dominate without too much difficulty. Only Peugeot in recent years have really challenged and to be fair Peugeot built a faster car! The 908 was superior to the Audis for at least 2 years, but in the end the race is not as well covered in the press as it once was and their budget was reduced, eventually culled completely. It should also be noted i think that Peugeot came back with a closed cockpit design. Audi adopted this again very quickly realising it was superior. A slight bit of competition and they lose, and have to radically alter their design concept. Does anyone really think with 3 or 4 really BIG serious manufacturers who also have other motorsport programmes around they would dominate as they have?

You can praise Audi for throwing F1 style money at something like the le mans series, but i am just no longer impressed. I just don't care. How can so many wins mean much when they have so little competition. Would we praise Manchester United for dominating in the Championship? Would be praise Nadal for dominating on clay if the other top 5 players didn't turn up every year? We shouldn't.

Audi should stop messing about in le mans, and throw the expertise gained here and money at F1. I would be infinitely more impressed if they could dominate such a sport in the manner they have.

Pure and simple!!
Like you've said, they have no competition at all!!!

F1 has little relevance these days and is the series biggest problem.

Historically though the top class (LMP1) only has a handful of the above brands mention at any time. (Nissan, Jaguar, Ferrari, Peugeot, Porsche, Mercedes, Renault, Mazda, Ford) So I don't see the odds being that much different overall.

I did find that as the announcers mentioned all of the dynasties in the history of Le Mans Japan was one of the few that had yet to make a significant mark.

Nissan and Toyota had great efforts and no doubt with do better. Just give them time, they have the tools. Next years rules change will make it really interesting.

F1 is a complete waste of money for an automaker who wants to establish a link between their racing cars and production cars. Audi learned from rally racing and the Quattro, that any form of racing that develops technolgies that can filter down directly or indirectly into their production cars is the only kind worth pursuing. Endurance racing requirements are currently the most relevant to those desired of production cars: reliability and fuel efficiency. Even drag racing would be better than F1. At least you could incorporate some elements of your design language into the race cars.

Audi/VW haven't done F1 because it has had little to no relevance to road cars during the time that they have done Le Mans during which Audi had the FSI turbo and the TDI, E-Tron quattro introduced and raced.

LM P1 had 13 entries:

4 Audis
4 Toyotas
2 Hondas
3 Judds

How much competition did you expect?

"4 Audis
4 Toyotas
2 Hondas
3 Judds

How much competition did you expect?"

There were 4 factory back Audis, 2 factory backed Toyotas, and the rest were private teams. So the realistic odds are 50/50, audi or toyota, but Audi had more factory cars entered, so it was still more in thre favor.

"Audi/VW haven't done F1 because it has had little to no relevance to road cars during the time that they have done Le Mans during which Audi had the FSI turbo and the TDI, E-Tron Quattro introduced and raced."

Le Mans is just a marketing tool. There is no trickle down from the race track to the road. Other car makers have higher performance diesel motors (BMW), and more efficient hybrids(Toyota)than audi without being present in le mans.

Also wasn’t the R18's hybrid system developed by Williams....the F1 team?

Le Mans to road transfer isn't perfect but it's much more useful. Audi was selling direct injected turbos a few years before anyone else. BMW has a diesel with more horsepower on paper but based on the SQ5 numbers I don't see Audi being too far behind at all. Not to mention the V12 TDI that no one else has and there will be an updated V8 TDI with 400+ horsepower. The flywheel isn't relevant but the electric motor quattro is a new concept where racing could help develop a better performance version.

I certainly haven't seen a high revving NA engine from Renault or Mercedes. I also remember an article about Ferrari buying Audi FSI engines to study them before they made a direct injected engine.

"The flywheel isn't relevant but the electric motor quattro is a new concept where racing could help develop a better performance version."

Porsche has been racing the 911 GT3R hybrid for a few years now which uses the same concept as the R18 is now using. Also the Porsche 918 and BMW I8 will be awd hybrids, which have been around in concept form for a few years now.

The Peugeots were indeed faster but have lost 4 out of 5 times against Audi due to bad reliability, bad race strategy (specially in the rain). I would not call this record superior than Audi's.

vproject... I see your ignorance regarding racing and Le Mans.

"BMW has a diesel with more horsepower on paper but based on the SQ5 numbers I don't see Audi being too far behind at all."

The SQ5's engine is on par with the 3.0 found in BMW's xdrive35D which also produces 313hp, but the X3 is more efficent at 6.1L/100Km compared to the Q5's 7.1L/100km.

And BMW's 3.0 tri turbo is in a different league all together, with 376hp, and 545lb-ft.

The last great le mans races for the P1 class were in the late 90's. You had Porsche, Mercedes, Nissan, Toyota, Audi, BMW, and Panoz all battling for the overall win with factory efforts.

Now the GT class is the one to watch.

Over the last few years Audi has dispatched the Panoz, Porsche, Acura, Peugeot, and now the supposed king of hybrid Toyota, even when they bring their latest and best technology, and years of experience in F1 (another failure btw).

LM24 is not only about winning, it is about reliability and fuel efficiency, two aspects which Audi has dominated and set new benchmarks in with its diesels and now hybrids.

I wonder what you people would comment if it was Toyota who won. Laughable how many people ENVY Audi. If its sooooo easy to win then why hasn't BMW, MB, Porsche or Ferrari jumped in to beat Audi?

Someone even mentioned Audi has not sold its cars to customer teams... LOL... talk about misinformed. The R8 is one of the winningest car since it entered production only a few years ago and many many teams now drive the R8, asw ell as the A5, A4, and TT.

Racing tech takes a few years to flow down to production cars. From the TDI racing engines Audi is now starting production of performance diesels with its new SQ5 TDI. Proof once again, that LM24 is the best platform to filter down racing technology to production cars.

If the organizers had let Audi full advantage of its quattro technology rather than limit it, Toyota would not even figure as a challenger. Same could be said for all other racing series in which an Audi quattro would rule due to technology advantage.

Savor that! So much for Toyota reliability and hybrid leadership.

"If its sooooo easy to win then why hasn't BMW, MB, Porsche or Ferrari jumped in to beat Audi?"

It’s hard to justify the price of building a highly customized prototype for one or two races a year. There are many other series that make more sence. Even the Gt class offers better racing in cars customers can identify as being similar to cars they can buy in a showroom. While demonstrating future technology, like Porsche did with the GT3R Hybrid racecar.

Even F1 makes more sense. Even though the price of entry is fairly high, the cars race in over a dozen countries around the world, giving the manufactures much more exposure. And the ability for fans to see the cars up-close all over the world (Asia, middle east, north/south America, Europe) Le mans has 3 or 4 races where the R18 races and that’s limited to American and Europe.

I was waiting 2 see how Autospies readers could POSSIBLY spin this
story into something negative about Audi, and as usual they didn't
disappoint. In the years 2 come it's going 2 be interesting seeing
them find incredulous arguments against one of the most awe-inspiring
automotive stories in this or any other century.

It really is getting into serious psychotic territory.

These idiots actually said the 24hr Race Tech does not filter down to road cars. I guess they never heard of the V12 TDI. { Most Powerful Production Diesel Engine }

Im not even going to mention all the other race tech that VW/Audi has fitted to their road cars.

The v12 TDI is just a big 6.0 producing 500hp. Other than its large size and torque number its not that impressive. The new 3.0d from BMW makes 380hp from a 3.0 that’s over 120hp per liter which is in the same league as many high performance turbo gas motors.

The key word there for your BMW engine is "NEW"

How old is the V12 from Audi ?

What was the BHP per Liter of the best/most powerful Diesel Engine BMW had available at the time Audi Launched the V12 TDI engine ?

There is no denying that you clowns will rather die than admit to anything positive about AUDI / VW.

The V12 TDI is a nice engine. I’m not denying that.

Since you asked... the V12 TDI debut in 2008, and has 82hp/liter

The BMW Diesel 3.0 I6 (M57TU2D30)debut in 2007 with 282 hp 430 lb. Which equals 95hp/liter.

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Was the power and ability of Babe Ruth bad for baseball?

Was the highly successful and brilliant guidance of glorious leader Barry obama bad for the U.S.?

Audi worked hard to achieve a commanding position and they deserve it. LeMans is far better for it. Don't penalize the winner. That is just sour grapes and a case of strong jealousy.