LE MANS PREVIEW: AUDI DIESELS AIM FOR VICTORY

Audi won the "12 Hours of Sebring" endurance sports car race, held March 18 at the Sebring, Florida Airport, with their 12-cylinder turbo-diesel engine. Drivers Rinaldo Capello, Tom Kristensen and Allan McNish completed 349 laps in their Audi P1-class R10 TDI POWER closed-wheel race car, four laps more than the second-placing car, a Lola B05/40/AER-powered P2-class racer (interestingly, piloted in part by the coming event's only female driver, Frenchwoman and equestrian Liz Halliday). With Le Mans-style endurance sports car racing barely a blip on the radar screens of even most racing fans in the USA, it's hard to say how Audi's win at Sebring in March and potential victory at next weekend's "24 Hours of Le Mans" might affect American's knowledge of and desire for diesel-powered vehicles. More than 50% of all vehicles on the road in Europe are diesel-powered. The best-selling car in the UK is a diesel-powered Honda model. But when Mazda won the "24 Hours of Le Mans" in 1991 with their four-rotor 787B rotary engine-powered super-exotic race car, they barely trumpeted that fact outside of Japan. Americans didn't know about it at all. Will Audi follow the Mazda template of what a car company should do when they win Le Mans using a surprising type of engine? (Photo: Audi R10 diesel-powered race cars look pretty for the camera).

Diesel engines, with their need for a less-expensive fuel than gasoline, their ability to provide, with minimal maintenance, over 1 million miles of service, their huge amount of low-end take-off and towing torque and, with turbochargers and superchargers (sometimes both) fitted to the engine, V8 gasoline engine-type cruising abilities, lowered emissions, both visible and invisible, lowered engine noise and their deserved reputation for a low occurrence of breakdowns, have a lot to offer, especially to American drivers.

DaimlerChrysler, at the start of June, announced they would be selling a diesel-powered version of their Grand Cherokee, but discontinuing a Liberty diesel-powered model though buyer demand far outstripped DCX's production abilities.

As long as auto manufacturers are unable to sell diesel-powered cars and light trucks in states such as California and New York, two states which account for a huge percentage of every car-makers' sales in the USA, and states which ban diesel sales through state laws, no car company will make a big commitment to diesels being sold in any large numbers in the USA. Even those diesel Jeep models will see many, if not most, of their sales in Europe, South America and Asia. (Photo: At Tokyo Motor Show, 2005,  TDI R10 street version of Audi's "Prototype 1"-class race car).

Here's some of what the AUDI AG Press Department has to say about the upcoming (next weekend, June 17-18) race this year at the famed Sarthe Circuit:

As the world’s first automobile manufacturer, AUDI AG aims to take overall victory at the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans with a diesel sportscar. The first important milestone in this ambitious project was Saturday 18 March: Audi won the 12-hour race at Sebring (US state of Florida) with one of a pair of R10 sports prototypes.

The Audi R10 is powered by a V12 TDI engine producing almost 650 hp and which has more than 1100 Newton metre torque available. It follows in the tire tracks of the Audi R8, which is the most successful Le Mans Prototype ever with 61 victories form 77 races to date. (Photo: Liz Halliday in Lola sports car; she'll be only woman in Le Mans line-up).