Club Arnage

Audi will present it's new car for Le Mans 2006 tomorrow at 12.00 a.m. CET at a press conference in Paris, there's a live video stream announced at http://www.audi.com/r10

From my point of view the big questions are:
1) Open or closed roof LMP ?
2) Diesel or gasoline engine ?

Any guesses?

Closed in V12 diesel I reckon.

I think they already announced V10 Diesel and I am guessing closed top.
Canada Phil

http://www.speedarena.com/gallery/gallery2.php?mode=album&album=/Sportscar/Le%20Mans/2006/Audi%20R10

You can see the new audi here.

Well, that seals it.  All of you need to come over for Sebring now.

Done and done!  ;D

Gorgeous car.

One thing strikes me. On the R8 there was always one or more Ricardo sticker. It's missing on the R10. Does that indicate they also built their own gear box ?

Hmm just had a quick look at the video stream while I was "doing some work" near our broadband connection at work. ;)

It is an open top diesel, I think I heard that it's a 5.5l V12 with 650hp & over 1100 N/M of torque (anyone know what that is in lb/ft??)

Looks similar to an R8 with two rollover hoops though  :(

811 + ft lb
Does walnut and hammer ring any bells?
Rusty

It must be a different gearbox, as the diesel engine, even in race trim, will chuck out twice as much torque as a petrol one, and its usually torque that kills gearboxes (this is from someone putting 180 ft lb through a box originally designed for 60)

The answer may be with the new Bugatti, which has a British 4WD gearbox for the 1,000 bhp motor.  Coincidence

Apparently, it's true and they built their own gear box and (and this is surprising) Xtrac helped them.

The Bugatti Veyron gearbox was built by Ricardo if I'm not wrong.

Yes, from their site

"The gearbox was designed together with the company X-trac, the carbon fibre monocoque was created under the watchful eye of Audi Sport at Dallara."

Its different from the R8 in that there are few body panel.  What you see is mostly chassis.

And it revs to 5,000 rpm

Some more info coming in on here...

http://www.speedarena.com/news/publish/sportscar/article_6324.shtml

No flames from the exhaust during gear change, wind noise louder than engine noise during speed... uh, ah, I don't know what to think of it.

hgb, having read through the link am i correct in thinking its first race will be Le Mans?

Are Audi that confident that it will run straight from the box for 24hrs and win?

It looks like the debut will be at Sebring.
Hope the new Dyson Lola's blow its doors off.
Fax

No visible glowing brake discs either, they are enclosed in a cowling to help cooling. :(
Thank God for the Corvettes, Astons, and the rest of GT1 and 2, they will still keep us awake during the night. :)

My guess would be   YES    - boring

I prefer the sound of V8s, but at 5000 rpm a V12 could be good.

I think at 5000 rpm with twin turbos muffling the exhaust its barely going to make a sound at all.  You'll get more noise from the tires than the engine.  Like I said, technically its an interesting concept, and challenge and its still a hundred times better than Spec 1..er, huh F1.
But this is going to be one boring, souless device.
Fax

and there's the particulate filters in the exhaust.  It'll sound like my generator, with even less smoke.  As you say soulless.

Did you see the A1GP.  Overtaking (and swapping paint) has returned

The program in 06 is going to limited to Sebring and Le Mans. Other races may be added later but not a complete program in either the ALMs or LMEs

Ian Dawson's Taurus Lola is back so the Audi won't be the
only oil burner on the grid in 06. Sebring has been confrimed for them as the money is coming from a US Bio Deisel company.

Don't forget Peugeot will also be around somtime late 06 with there deisel car as well. 07 Le mans is going to be a very strange sounding race.

Sad but true, most of the new cars are going to be the same I think.

However this car may not be the full story, there are strong rumours of a different car the R12 with a petrol V8 engine designed for the ALMs waiting in the wings.

Audi has a histroy of hedging bets, the R8C and the R8R, different concepts, both good.

Weather or not it lights your fire design wise, its sure to generate loads of press coverage which in turn should increase the sponsor pool that the other smaller teams can feed off.

See following link - it was on google news section

http://www.motorsport.com/news/article.asp?ID=207111&FS=ALMS-LEMANS

(http://www.motorsport.com/photos/alms/2005/gen/alms-2005-gen-tm-0168.jpg)

Some more from Audi here http://tinyurl.com/d7vga

I have to agree there. Let's wait and see until other manufacturers step in... and they will for sure.  Although this might be a heartless car (and I have to agree there too, no noise, no fire, no glowing. Oh dear, where are we heading to... a political correct LMES ?) which might change the way we will perceive LM there's still one credit for Audi though: They stuck to LM as a manufacturer for the last couple of years and still invest big money. They seem to be first with diseasel technology, so let them have the fruits this year (ehm no, probably next). I very much hope some of the other big manufacurers got the message today and step in. Well done still, Audi.  ;)

Agreed, I was perhaps being a bit harsh calling it souless, just that the R8 has never made me warm & fuzzy all over, its just sort of cold, clinical & efficient.  Full kudos to Audi for not taking the conventional route and going in a different direction, they could've played it safe and just built a better R8.  Also kudos to the ACO and IMSA for allowing different ideas like this within their tech regs.  This is one of the reasons I love sportscar racing in the first place, if I want to watch spec racing I'll watch F1 where they've got a restriction on everything right down to the brolly girls knickers.
Fax

Interesting to see that they'll be giving the R10 to Champion straight away. I thought they may have run it as a works team initially.

the word on the street is that one Joest R10 will be in Champion colors for Sebring, then back to Europe for Le Mans prep.  Champion won't get their own mule until sometime after June (at the earliest).  Take this with a grain of salt.  Sounds unlikely to me.

I must admit I'm a little dissapointed with the reaction to this car.  In my opinion, it could be a barrier-smasher and a wake-up call for those who still believe that diesel is what it was 30 years ago.  (Americans, mostly).  It's a bold step for VWAG and I applaud them for it.  Audi's in it to win it and I doubt if the engine and exhaust notes played important roles in their decision-making process.  I, for one, am greatly excited by this news and will be cheering them on louder than anyone.

Of course, I'm a huge diesel geek, so for what it's worth...  ;D

Audi has no race team (mechanics, trucks, all the infrastructure and setup you need on a race weekend) of it's own, even when acting as a works team in Le Mans, it was actually the Reinhold Joest Team which was contracted to do the job and Audi hired the drivers and filled up the team with engineers, technicians and of course PR people. I think letting the new car race under the "Champion" flag will be pretty much the same, many people from Ingolstadt will be on site in Sebring, so not much difference to an official "works" team

Hi Chop,
I'm kind of at the opposite end of the spectrum, I hope they fall on their faces.  Domination by any one manufacturer is never good for the health of a racing series, the old Can-Am series proved that.  After years of watching R8's run off with races, I'm ready for a change.  If you go to ALMS races, you notice how few spectators you actually see in Audi Sport gear, the only ones I ever see are those geeks who go running around on the track before & after a race waving those annoying little Audi Sport flags.  One gets the impression rightly or wrongly that they go racing for PR and as an engineering excerise, without any real passion for it.  Sort of a "lets keep throwing money at it until vee dominate" philosophy that most others teams can't adopt.  I'll cheer for Rob Dyson Racing to kick their asses because they go racing for all the right reasons.
Fax

Not sure I want them to fall on there faces, but rather hope that Dyson and the others like Zytek and Pesca can raise there game to the Audi/Joest/Champion combos. Hopefully the money can be found by these other teams to do so.

Both Joest and Champion deserve to be at the front of any field and there can be no doubting there commitment to the sport.

My main gripe with the Audi way, is the restricted way the cars are allocated and run. I think it would be better if there are more available and the team could tinker with them in the same way the 962's where.

Clearly this may lead to hordes of them, but in the 80's it did not put others off from trying to come up with alternatives to the 962.

Hi Nordic,
I don't necessarily think its a question of Zytek or Dyson raising their game as much as it is a case of how much can they afford to spend.
Its like a small market baseball team competing with a team from New York or Chicago.  Audi can simply out-spend the little guy.
Roger Penske once said that money = speed, how fast do you want to go?
Fax

I think this is definitely and primarily a marketing exercise by Audi to sell more diesel cars outside of Germany.

What always struck me as strange was that Audi never used their victories at Le Mans in any of their advertising campaigns at least not here in the home market. A high profile entry into the world's biggest and best motorsport event with a diesel powered car is going to look very good on Eurosport etc. and should clock up lots more sales for their TDI range abroad.

I agree with many of the comments here, that Audi were always really clinical in their approach and lacked the soul and passion of teams like Pescarolo who were in it for the 15 minutes of glory on Sunday after the race. The R10 is certainly not going to win any new fans at Arnage corner on Saturday night - it'll be there and gone around the corner before anyone knows it's there! Nor can I imagine the tribunes on the start finish straight full of fans wearing "powered by diesel" Audi gear.

The news that Peugeot is also planning a diesel entry is also a worry - in the long term LM could become a diesel dominated event which would reduce its appeal for the true fans and eventually it would become a curiosity event instead of a real race.

Oh dear, maybe I'm too old for all this......but I can't imagine going to LM and not being woken on Sunday morning with the crackling and banging of lots of backfiring engines rattling through my poor hungover head...

Did somebody almost mention Schumaker without a donation to the swear box?

Hopefully Penske will be able to talk Porsche into spending a bit more on a big brother for the LMP2 car to take the fight to Audi.

Both Zytek and Dyson have proved that they have fast cars and drivers, they just need to keep the things running till the end of the race.
The new Lola is going to be a sweet car, and with the right engine choice I am sure it will be the car to beat for 06.

The fact that it will be pretty quite compared to petrol cars is not a worry to me, it could be pretty awesome to have the thing whistle by with only the wind and tyre noise.

I'm rather cold to the whole new Audi project.  I, like others, was pleased with the arrival of the R8C and R8R and the first one (maybe two) years that they won in the R8.
However, Audi's domination of LMP900 / LMP1 got rather tiresome after their n'th race win.

That's not to say that I don't applaud their continuing commitment to sportscar racing when other big name manufacturers (Mercedes, Toyota, Nissan etc) have given up and gone away to play in another arena.

I, for one, will try to maintain a bit of Anglo French entente cordial in June and will be routing for the Pescarolo team.  After their hard work over the last few years, they deserve an overall / LMP1 win.

Here's a pretty good article that also addresses most  Americans' ignorance of diesel power.

http://www.speedtv.com/commentary/21219/

Steve, there're still loads of British teams around, no need to get the white flag out.  ;D Sorry, that was harsh. I'll still scream for Rollcentre.  8) Sorry, sorry everyone.

There was a bit of alcohol involvedin this message though, I just came back from the christmas market.  :)

Sounds good.  Today is my last sober day of 2005.

And whats this about Americans being ignorant.

I still have a soft spot for the dalmatian cars! (whose little girl was it that christened the Domes with that name?)
I didn't like the over Orangey look of this year's cars though.(Sorry Paddy but they did look more specacular in checks)  And the Pescas too.

I have to say that the Bentleys though petrolly fuelled were a hell of a lot quieter than almost everything  else on the circuit in 2003, weren't they.

And of course there should ALWAYS be a couple of Astons...

Diesel racecars? No ta.

 :(

Written by an American no less!

Ignorant Americans?  One name, GEORGE WALKER BUSH!
Pretty much says it all.
Most Americans still think of rattling, smokey mid-80's VW Rabbits (Golfs to you guys) when they think of a German diesel.
Fax

This new idea from BMW sounds a little interesting. I wonder if we'll see this at Le Mans any time soon what with the upcoming invasion of diesels making fuel economy more important??

http://www.gizmag.co.uk/go/4936/

Me too Steve got the t-shirt and the hat last year

I lied  hic

Sorry but even at my age. Sabine round Nurburgring in a Transit is about all the diesel I can take.

hic, sorry ? 

Hic - one is boring and the other is a sexual fantasy, and she's still under 10:30, with some effort on my part.