Interesting Article re: Audi's Race Technology and Production Cars
David Booth
National Post
Friday, December 23, 2005
The first U.S. automobile race was held on Nov. 28, 1895 in Chicago. Six cars lined up on a snowy Thanksgiving day at 10 a.m. with the now modest goal of covering 80 kilometres under their own steam.
The roads were little more than dirt cart paths, the cars little more than buggies without horses and the motors so anemic they couldn't power a modern Weedwacker. But almost assuredly, there were huge male egos involved and the desire -- nay, the absolute need -- to know who had the fastest horseless carriage in town. Some things never change, I guess, other than the speed of the toys.
An American entry, the Duryea, won the race, its time of seven hours, 53 minutes about two hours ahead of the only other finisher. The Duryea's average speed was a smidgen over seven miles per hour and the Chicago Times-Herald, the sponsor of the race, reported that all the participants froze their tushies off (my words, not the Times-Herald's).
Two important developments stemmed from this and other early races. Being the land of free enterprise, it didn't take long for the Duryea brothers, Charles and Frank, to sell 13 replicas of their winning car, making them America's first "mass" automobile manufacturer.
More importantly to the rest of us who just drive our cars to and from work, racing became the primary arena for automobile development. Pneumatic tires, fuel injection, double overhead camshafts and even disc brakes were developed because some engineer from Hieronymus Mueller & Co wanted to stick it to his arch-rival with the Hispano-Suiza J12.
It appears that somewhere along the way many companies have forgotten that the second of those two justifications for racing is more laudable than the first. One doesn't need to look further than the pinnacle of motor racing -- Formula One -- to see how out of touch some competitions and the people who participate in them have become. Oh, sure, one can rail against the obscene sums of money being spent on Formula One these days. Or that the racing is so boring that it appears more like a sped-up version of the Macy's parade than a competition. But the true travesty of modern Formula One racing is that none of the technologies developed to make those cars go faster will make production cars better.
What makes those open-cockpit Ferraris and McLarens so fast are things such as pneumatic valves that let the engine spin to an incredible 18,000 rpm and aerodynamic downforce so forceful that, at speed, a Formula One racer could be driven upside down without falling. Both are incredible achievements. Neither will ever be used on a production car, at least one I can afford.
In contrast, let's look at Le Mans endurance racing and Audi's latest entry. Audi, already the reigning champion of the prestigious French event, recently announced that its latest racer, the R10, will be diesel-powered. Yes, you read that right -- a race car that hits way more than 320 kilometres an hour will be powered by an oil-burner.
Though it initially seems like an odd choice, Audi's reasoning is actually quite sound. The majority of the cars it sells in its home market are diesel-powered, up to and including the top-of-the-line A8 with its 326-horsepower, 4.2-litre TDI V8. Europeans pay an incredibly high price for fuel and even the affluent are conscious of fuel consumption.
Audi's motivation for the R10, therefore, is simple. It wants to make the diesel cars it sells to the public better, and what better forum for development is there than racing?
According to Audi, "This is a decisive reason why Audi continues its involvement with Sports-Prototype racing. Audi successfully positions itself as the premium segment's most sporting manufacturer, whereby the motorsport involvement plays a far greater role than just a marketing instrument. For more than 25 years, the motorsport success of Audi AG has been based on ground-breaking developments, which established themselves later in production."
It's worth noting that the FSI direct-injection system that made the R10's predecessor, the R8, so dominant at Le Mans is now available in the company's 2.0T and 3.2L V6 engines.
One of the advantages the diesel-powered R10 should have over its competition is fuel economy, a major boon when you're racing for 24 hours straight and races are won and lost by how much time is spent in the pits. Passenger car diesels routinely get 20% better fuel economy than their gasoline-fuelled competitors. The R10, spending much of its time at full throttle, will have less of an advantage, but it will still prove worthwhile.
Of course, the new R10 produces a lot more horsepower than any production diesel. Audi claims a whopping 550 hp from the 5.5L, twin-turbocharged V12 engine. And, if that's not enough to convince you that a diesel-powered race car has a chance to win Le Mans, consider this: The R10's 811 pound-feet of torque required that Audi retrofit stronger transmissions to its F1-spec dynamometer.
Audi, it would seem, is one of the few manufacturers that hasn't forgotten why early engineers got involved in racing --testing and advancing their technologies for future production. I'll be paying a lot more interest to Le Mans this year than Formula One.
Some Rulers Are Immortalized In Marble Others,
In Carbon Fiber.{Hard Core Audi Fan}Ich Fahr Omnibus!
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