Audi and Peugeot diesel sportscars set to battle in Le Mans 24 Hour

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Peugeot's 908 HDi FAP

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June 15, 2007 Since the invention of the automobile, winning on Sunday has meant selling lots of cars on Monday and beyond and this weekend’s running of the fabled Le Mans 24 hour race looks set to influence a lot of sales over the coming decade. It all started when Audi began strategising for a nationwide Diesel road car offensive in the USA and the increasingly popular American Le Mans Series was seen as the perfect platform. Watch the race progress here, and read on for the background on this exciting encounter.

Audi had a great starting point in building the new diesel-engined race car. Its R8 race car introduced in 2000 was the most successful sports car in history, winning five of six Le Mans 24 hour races it entered, plus 50 victories in the American Le Mans Series plus numerous other endurance race wins.

The R10 TDI uses a purpose-built, all-aluminium, 5.5-litre, twelve-cylinder bi-turbo TDI power unit producing over 650 bhp - significantly more than the 550 bhp of its R8 predecessor. Most significantly, it produces more than 1100 Newton metres of torque, a figure that required the race department to build a new dynamometer, not to mention a five-speed gearbox capable of handling this brutal output. The usable power band lies between 3000 and 5000 rpm, an unusually low rev range for a racing engine and one which enables drivers to change gear far less often than in the R8 because of the TDI engine’s meaty torque curve.

The resultant car was the first of a new breed of race machinery with the advantages of TDI technology - superior efficiency, lower fuel consumption, enormous torque and exceptional power . Unlike the roadgoing diesels we all know, the R10 TDI can only be recognised acoustically as a diesel-powered sportscar during the warming-up process or in pit lane.

The R10 is equipped with a pair of diesel particle filters for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, so the customary flashes of flame from the exhaust, which are created by unburned petrol in spark-ignition engines, are missing. One of the diesel engine’s biggest advantages is the low fuel consumption, especially at part-throttle and overrun. However, when compared to more classic circuits which demand a higher ratio of part throttle, the lower specific consumption will hardly be noticeable at Le Mans because the quota of full-throttle is almost 75 percent.

The R10 TDI posted phenomenal results in its 2006 debut season of racing, going undefeated until April 2007 in the American Le Mans Series competition and winning Le Mans in a canter. It would have been reasonable to expect that Audi would rule the roost with the R10 for several years with such a head start on the competition.

Announced in June 2005, Peugeot’s Le Mans programme did not really get underway until the last WRC competition was over in November 2005. After that, the Peugeot Sport team reorganised to produce a mock-up of its own V12 HDi FAP engine in June 2006, followed by a mock-up of the 908 HDi FAP at the Paris Motor Show in September 2006, unveiling the 908 near Paris in January of this year.

Until the end of 2005, Peugeot Sport concentrated on identifying its main technical options and fine-tuning the technical team for the new programme. The pace then hotted up to cope with the very short lead-times. In early March 2006, the concept of a closed car was settled on, with the single-cylinder engine simultaneously being put through its paces on the test bench. In April, the mock-up of the 908 underwent the first wind-tunnel test.

The design of the shell was finalised in July, with assembly of the first V12 HDi FAP engine in September. This had its first test bench start-up the day after the 908 HDi FAP was presented at the Paris Motor Show. As soon as the shell arrived in mid-December, the assembly of the first car began for a burn-in on 31 December 2006.

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