Audi details race- winning diesel

New engine technology means better road cars

By PH Staff / Tuesday, 28 March 2006 / Loading comments

Audi R10 at Sebring

Audi has released more information about the remarkable diesel engine that powered its 641bhp R10 TDI into first place at the American 'Le Mans' at Sebring a couple of weekends ago. The 24-hour race saw the first race victory in a major event for a diesel-powered car.

Audi sees the win as helping to publicise its diesel powered road cars of course, and claims that the technology lessons learned will make their way into them. Half of all road-going Audi sales are diesel-powered.

The 5.5-litre V12 powering the R10 TDI is, said Audi, the world’s first purpose-built diesel racing engine and the first Audi TDI to be built around an all-aluminium block -- a new departure that could very easily become a production reality. It features common rail fuel injection technology developed from the system used by V6 and V8 TDI engines in road-going A4, A6 and A8 models, and with the help of two Garrett turbochargers delivers a formidable 811lb-ft of torque. This prodigious output exerts more force on the five-speed sequential transmission than a Formula 1 engine does.

Regulations set by the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, organisers of the annual Le Mans 24-hour endurance race for which the R10 TDI has been principally created, stipulate that engine speeds must remain within the realms of production car performance, so the V12 TDI has a power band set between 3,000 and 5,000rpm. As a result, said Audi, power delivery is far more ‘real world’ than in many high-revving, highly strung race engines, meaning that there is far more scope for transferral of the technology needed to achieve it into a production TDI.