- 51
- The Tri-State Area
"The brand with the four rings will be entering the 2016 motorsport season with the most powerful and efficient race car Audi has ever built. The new Audi R18 celebrated its world premiere on the occasion of the Audi Sport Finale at the Audi Training Center Munich on Saturday.
"Audi Sport has fundamentally re-designed the Audi R18 for the 2016 season. The LMP1 race car that competes in the Le Mans 24 Hours and in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) features innovative aerodynamics, represents the next stage in lightweight design and has a modified hybrid system with lithium-ion batteries for energy storage, plus an efficiency-optimized TDI engine.
"'With our new Audi R18, we’re setting a clear signal: Audi continues to put the pedal to the metal in motorsport, deliberately relying on TDI – the world’s most successful automotive efficiency technology – at Le Mans,' says Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich.
"In the 2016 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) that will start at Silverstone (Great Britain) on April 17, Audi Sport Team Joest will be fielding two new Audi R18 cars. In the interest of maximum cost efficiency, Audi and its Group sister brand Porsche, have both agreed to each compete in the Le Mans 24 Hours, the WEC season’s pinnacle event, with only two instead of the most recent three cars."
(via Audi)
Or... at least that was the plan. After a rigorous winter testing schedule that included a week at Sebring with both driver pairings, Audi made significant revisions to the R18 TDI - dropping the "e-tron" name that had been part of the R18's branding since 2012 - with the eventual 2016 vehicle almost (and thankfully!) unrecognisable compared to this concept model.
The two shared significant technologies, of course, including that four-litre, hybrid-assisted (up to 6MJ from the 2015's 4MJ) V6 TDI which reportedly used a third less fuel than the original 2011 R18 despite delivering over 1000hp. Sadly the car wasn't able to bring the title back to Ingolstadt, after suffering its first Le Mans defeat in 2015, and after finishing second in WEC that season too Audi would withdraw from top-class endurance racing.
(suggestion originally posted by a banned member who kicked off when this wasn't marked as "Done" as they didn't comprehend that this isn't the actual 2016 car that's actually in GT Sport; got to love angry, self-proclaimed car guys who don't know cars)
