GTP Cool Wall - Audi R10 TDI

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tornado
  • 54 comments
  • 5,458 views

Audi R10

  • Sub-Zero

    Votes: 49 52.1%
  • Cool

    Votes: 17 18.1%
  • Uncool

    Votes: 18 19.1%
  • Seriously Uncool

    Votes: 10 10.6%

  • Total voters
    94
  • Poll closed .
I'm really, really having a hard time on this. Going a different rout and succeeding? Epic. But! It's an Audi and no one likes an uncontested winner. Counting the R8 (And the Bently Speed 8 that used the same chassis), Audi has dominated LeMans for almost the last ten years alone. Seriously Uncool. I think I'm going to average out with Uncool, despite my love for the diesel tech.


Cheers,
Jetboy
 
These race cars are pretty boring additions to the cool wall. There's not much many of us can do to provide insightful opinions beyond "garsh it's fast".
 
Sub-Zero, Instant classic and autosport legend.

It spoke for itself at Le Mans, winning every year since its premiere, and was the first diesel car to win there. I think the drivers and the team could careless how it smells or sounds, its designed to win races and that it does well.

With that being said I can't possibly think of any negatives..., Besides it being an Audi, but props to them for innovation, success and thinking forward.
 
Last edited:
It's a LM-Prototype. Therefore, uncool*.
It's a diesel race car. Therefore, seriously uncool - the "fuel of Satan" has no place in motorsport imo.


I don't care how good it is as a racecar, it's still a diesel LMP and can never be even remotely cool.


*only GT1/GT2 cars can ever be cool
 
*Sigh*



Just because they're winning, it doesn't mean they prefer it to a petrol. If you race for Audi or SEAT or one of those manufacturers that invests a large amount of money into making a quick diesel race car, do you really think that drivers are going to speak out and say "well, I hate how it drives really but who gives a damn? I'm winning"? No, they're going to toe the party line, back the technology and enjoy the spoils if they come their way.

If you go back far enough though you'll find plenty of drivers who weren't keen on how the cars drove but mysteriously shut up when they started winning. They didn't change their minds, they just started getting paid a hell of a lot more...

Bottom line - you'll struggle to find many racing drivers who'd be too enthusiastic if more and more of their cars started becoming diesels...

So it would be uncool 'cuz it's a diesel but since it's suddenly a winner it's okay to say yeah it's cool. Only because they are toeing the party line and they saying to themselves yeah it still sucks because it's a diesel. Still pretty hard to believe a driver saying that after winning in a car they help develope into a winner even thou they dislike it at the begining would still say that. I think they would say yeah, that's pretty cool we turned this diesel into a winner, be proud of it and not think it's uncool anymore.

It's more of the unknown going into it in the begining that they would think a diesel to be uncool because they wouldn't have known it would be a winner. Same as an Electric race cars I'm sure a lot of drivers would dread racing one because of all the unknown shortfalls that it would have. But if it turned out to be a winner through all the hard work it would certainly change thier minds and say yeah that's cool.

Same premise of turning a uncool car to a cool car. I'm sure thier are a lot of cars with that same senario. You could also go the other way around by taking a cool car and slapping some ugly body kit and making it uncool.

Point being if it's uncool for some reason it can be at least cool enough if it's a winner at the end.
 
:odd: N/A - it's a racing car not a road car. It can't be owned by the general public, so you can't apply the same logic.
 
Winning does not necessarily make something cool.
👍 That's just like saying it's cool because it's fast, which isn't the point of the Cool Wall.

Come on guys. It's a DIESEL. Diesel = not cool. Diesel in motorsport = ridiculously uncool. The thing's so seriously uncool we need a "Blast Furnace" category to put this thing in... not to mention the fact it's a Le Mans car, and since when are they (Prototypes) cool?

@Cracker: interesting logic. :lol:
 
👍 That's just like saying it's cool because it's fast, which isn't the point of the Cool Wall.

Come on guys. It's a DIESEL. Diesel = not cool. Diesel in motorsport = ridiculously uncool. The thing's so seriously uncool we need a "Blast Furnace" category to put this thing in... not to mention the fact it's a Le Mans car, and since when are they (Prototypes) cool?

@Cracker: interesting logic. :lol:
Diesel doesn't make this car uncool, this car makes diesel cool. Sub Zero.
I think you should have gone back & read Dragonistic's post, then. This isn't 10 years ago, we are in an age where the general idea of diesel being loud, slow, & obnoxious is no longer true for every diesel-powered car.
 
But the car isn't cool anyway, regardless of fuel.

It's not cool with diesel (which is very uncool by itself), and it still wouldn't be cool with a petrol engine (read: Le Mans Audi R8 - not a cool car). Nothing to do with diesels being loud, smoky and slow 10 years ago. Diesel isn't cool, neither is the car even with the engine taken out of consideration. Ergo, seriously uncool.
 
Last edited:
Nothing wrong with diesel per-se... it's a great fuel for commercial vehicles and passenger cars. In passenger cars it gives much better performance (acceleration and economy) than a comparable petrol engine.

But it's not the right fuel for a sports car or a racing car... diesel engines have a short usable rev band, poor throttle response and make a rubbish noise.
 
Nothing wrong with diesel per-se... it's a great fuel for commercial vehicles and passenger cars. In passenger cars it gives much better performance (acceleration and economy) than a comparable petrol engine.
If that was directed at me, bear in mind I'm not trying to imply uncool = bad ;)
 
Not trying to stir things, but you got a source for this? I'm quite interested in what these drivers actually have to say about the shift to diesel.

Unfortunately I'm unable to provide direct quotes, so if you wish to treat them as heresay you can do. They're just things I've heard from reading magazines like Autosport for most of my life. I do know that the WTCC driver Andy Priaulx dislikes diesel race cars with a passion, I have a couple of magazines recently where a columnist rode passenger with him over a few laps at a press day and he told them as much.

So it would be uncool 'cuz it's a diesel but since it's suddenly a winner it's okay to say yeah it's cool. Only because they are toeing the party line and they saying to themselves yeah it still sucks because it's a diesel. Still pretty hard to believe a driver saying that after winning in a car they help develope into a winner even thou they dislike it at the begining would still say that. I think they would say yeah, that's pretty cool we turned this diesel into a winner, be proud of it and not think it's uncool anymore.

You're quite naive. Is a driver who is winning races really going to say that he doesn't like the characteristics of the car he's winning in? Of course not. And just because the car is winning it doesn't mean that it's cool. It's a diesel race car, so it's uncool, it just happens to be successful.

It's more of the unknown going into it in the begining that they would think a diesel to be uncool because they wouldn't have known it would be a winner. Same as an Electric race cars I'm sure a lot of drivers would dread racing one because of all the unknown shortfalls that it would have. But if it turned out to be a winner through all the hard work it would certainly change thier minds and say yeah that's cool.

You're mistaking "good" for "cool". The two do not mean the same thing. Could an electric race car win against internal combustion ones? Perhaps, in the future. Would it be cool? I don't know about you, but as a spectator a load of silent cars zipping around the track would have nowhere near the spectacle of noisy, popping and cracking petrol race cars. I like electric cars, but they'd have to be pretty special to be more interesting race cars than petrol ones.

Same premise of turning a uncool car to a cool car. I'm sure thier are a lot of cars with that same senario. You could also go the other way around by taking a cool car and slapping some ugly body kit and making it uncool.

How is that in any way relevant to this discussion?

Point being if it's uncool for some reason it can be at least cool enough if it's a winner at the end.

Winning isn't necessarily cool. Schumacher winning umpteen titles wasn't cool. It was actually pretty boring. Staggeringly impressive, but quite boring. Same goes for a ruthless, quiet Audi race car.
 
If that was directed at me, bear in mind I'm not trying to imply uncool = bad ;)

No, not aimed at you.. in fact I think we're agreeing :)

Aimed at all who are saying this car is cool/sub-zero because it's diesel.

As has been said by others, I struggle to think of purpose built racing cars as being cool no matter what fuel they run on. And personally, I don't think racing cars are what the coolwall should be about.

Oh, and I'm not one that thinks all Audi's are uncool just because they are Audi... Audi makes some great cars... eg; R8 & R10 road cars & RS4.
 
The thing is that.. Audi made real good cars like Stotty stated up there thus in my opinion they're cool. But there is just something I don't understand. The price is kicking up on the Everest Mountain, reliability, warranty and some that really made Audi cars uncool. But the thing that made me like Audi is design, quality, feel and you know...
 
The thing is that.. Audi made real good cars like Stotty stated up there thus in my opinion they're cool. But there is just something I don't understand. The price is kicking up on the Everest Mountain, reliability, warranty and some that really made Audi cars uncool. But the thing that made me like Audi is design, quality, feel and you know...

I agree, but none of those really apply on a purpose-built race car. The R10 is pretty ugly judged by most standards, and unlike with a production Audi if you took away the badge you wouldn't know it was an Audi, it could be any LMP car. Similarly, production quality is a long way from race car utility. I wouldn't imagine the cockpit of an LMP car being the most pleasant space to spend time (though of course, it doesn't need to be pleasant, like a road car does).

Likening the R10 to any road Audi is no different from likening a Ferrari F1 car to an F430. The money is coming from the same place but other than that the similarities are severely limited.
 
There are a hundred Le Mans cars I can think of that are cooler. So, uncool.

I agree with the sentiments that race cars should be loud and raw, though I somewhat disagree that they are such a bad thing for racing. I think they have a place, variety is good especially nowadays with such strict engine regulations in most categories.
However, balancing their advantage is quite tricky and they haven't helped make the competition interesting at Le Mans, only recently has Peugeot caught up and to some extent got lucky thanks to Audi's blunder with the R15.

Slowly the petrol Aston Martins and Lola are catching up, once they do we should have an epic battle.

Anyway, yes, uncool. The car looks ugly, never liked the livery and diesels have somewhat ruined the interest in Le Mans for the past decade. There are far better Le Mans cars out there, even without going into Group C.
 
This isn't 10 years ago, we are in an age where the general idea of diesel being loud, slow, & obnoxious is no longer true for every diesel-powered car.

This is true, some people don't realise it though, good point.
 
It's an Audi that defies the rule that all Audis are driven by c0cks. Add on the fact that it's a diesel, plus the fact that it looks cool, and I give it a Sub-Zero.
 
Don't know which way to go for this so I've settled it with a simple decision.

NEUTRAL
 
It's an R10.

It takes advantage of a loophole that gives a bigger engine and better turbos than all its competitors.

Which makes it faster in a straight line.

The extra weight of the iron-block engine makes it rubbish in the corners.

The FIA had to increase the minimum weight for LMPs to even make it competitive.

Then they froze the rulebook for a few years to ensure it dominated... to force other teams to switch to "eco-friendly" diesel.

The R10 is not so much a technical tour de force as a political movement. And any time politics interferes with the actual racing, that's seriously uncool.

But it's not the car's fault... so the car is merely uncool.

(I love diesels, but not the R10.)

(and I love winning cars... the Mazda 787B took advantage of another loophole, but not by forcing rules on other cars... and it's petite. Petite I can dig. Cumbersome, not.)
 
Last edited:
this car won Le Mans 3 times, and it made diesel cool. Sub Zero
 
Back