Sebring, Fla. • History will record that Audi won the 60th anniversary of the 12 Hours of Sebring endurance race, counting as the first event of the new FIA World Endurance Racing Championship (WEC). Tom Kristensen, Dindo Capello and Allan McNish literally steamrolled the competition and scored a 10th win for the German automaker in convincing fashion at the Florida race track, with a four-lap lead over their teammates Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas and Loïc Duval, also running an R18 TDI.
For the veteran drivers, victory was sweet as Kristensen recorded a sixth career win at Sebring, while Capello scored his fifth win and McNish his fourth win at the Florida event, which is known as the prelude to the crown jewel of endurance racing, the famed 24 Hours of Le Mans. With Peugeot having pulled out of endurance racing and Toyota not quite ready to enter the fray, Audi simply was the class of the field.
A whispering giant is the best way to describe the R18 TDI race car as its turbo-diesel engine is incredibly silent, even as the car rushes past at more than 322 kilometres an hour. In fact, it’s so eerily quiet that a sort of cognitive dissonance occurs within you as you watch the car streak by and you realize that you hear the sound of air rushing around the car and the tires rolling on the ground more than the exhaust note of the turbocharged 510-horsepower diesel V6.
Before the race, five-time Le Mans winner and Audi brand ambassador Emanuele Pirro described running an Audi prototype at Sebring: “As a driver, you can really enjoy the first five minutes of the 12 Hours of Sebring because you are running up front at speed by yourself. After the first five minutes, you realize that what is ahead of you is 11 hours and 55 minutes of overtaking slower cars …”
With 63 cars competing in both the WEC and the ALMS (American Le Mans Series) at Sebring this year, traffic was indeed a problem for the drivers of the faster prototypes as they came up on cars such as the Chevrolet Corvettes, Porsche GT3s and Ferrari 458 Italias from the GT categories. Staying out of trouble and keeping the lead was the challenge awaiting the Audi squad.
According to race winner Allan McNish: “The car was running well, but traffic was a real challenge and the temperatures around noon — when I was sitting in the cockpit for a long time — were pretty high. It was tough clinching victory here.
“Everyone on the team and at home at Audi can be proud of this. It’s great that we won the anniversary race and the WEC opener here. But we’re already looking forward to the next race when we’ll have something in our hands that production development will benefit from yet again as well — a hybrid vehicle.”
That hybrid vehicle is the R18 e-tron quattro, which was not entered in the 12-hour race. But it was tested at Sebring during the week following the event in preparation for its debut in the second round of the WEC, which will be held at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium May 5. Two R18 e-tron quattro race cars will also be entered at the 24 Hours of Le Mans alongside two R18 TDI Ultras, so named because Audi will pare down the weight of the “conventional” race cars for the famed endurance classic.
The R18 e-tron quattro features what Audi calls its next-generation all-wheel-drive technology, where the rear wheels are powered by the internal-combustion engine and the front wheels by electric power. Here’s how it works: Under braking, kinetic energy is recovered on the front axle and is fed into an electric flywheel accumulator before being retrieved under acceleration. The electric drive — acting on the front wheels alone — and the conventional power delivered to the rear wheels by the turbocharged V6 means the two systems will complement one another in a new form of all-wheel-drive technology, which Audi is keen to develop with an eye to series production in the future.
Audi will not be the only manufacturer to race a hybrid at Le Mans this year, as Toyota makes a return to endurance racing with its new TS030 gasoline-hybrid race car. Nissan will also be fielding a very unconventional race car called the DeltaWing, which will be powered by a small 1.6-litre 300-hp four-cylinder engine.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans will once again be the race to watch as major manufacturers attempt to break new ground in endurance racing.
