Diesel powered Audi on the pole for the 12 hours at Sebring!....

[Dixie Dawg]

http://www.thatsracin.com/mld/thatsracin/14123259.htm



The Associated Press

SEBRING, Fla. - Alan McNish took the pole for the 12 Hours of Sebring, averaging 125. 882 mph with a lap of 1 minute, 45. 83 seconds Thursday in his LMP 1 Class diesel-powered Audi R10 TDI Power.



McNish broke the class record for qualifying and Audi became the first team to qualify a diesel car on the pole for an American Le Mans Series race.



"The engineers at Audi have really developed this engine and car over the last few months and they can be proud of what they achieved," McNish said. "The car is perfectly balanced as a driver could ever want. That had to be the best lap in an Audi in my entire career. "



McNish will team with Rinaldo Capello and veteran Tom Kristensen for Saturday's opening race in the American Le Mans Series.



Frank Biela, McNish's Audi teammate, qualified second, averaging 123. 723 mph with a lap of 1 minute, 47. 67 seconds. He will team with Emanuele Pirro and Marco Werner.

 

[EMD-Run8]

I'm watching the race now. The car is VERY impressive! It has that wonderful V12 sound and so far is running 1-2! In fact, the leader spun (too much of that 800 ft lbs of torque!), lost 18 seconds and didn't even come close to losing his position. What's really interesting is that Audi seems to have made the car too quiet. The drivers have to rely on their instruments above 3rd gear because they can no longer hear the engine! I heard it said that the head man for the car wanted it that way I guess to overstate the civility and cleanliness of the engine. You CAN hear it with the in-car camera/audio but it is very muted. But hey!-----pretty is as pretty does and right now it looks like Audi is making diesel history and kickin' serious butt!!

 

[Champane Flight]

I think

I guess this is a V-12. . I thought it was the V-10, simular to the one in the Toureg. .

 

[MHoverson]

Watching the TDI AUDI at Sebring was really interesting. No smoke when accelerating and very quite when it went by at full tilt. The drivers claim that they couldn't hear the engine after third gear when accelerating. V12, 5. 5 liter, 650 hp and 850 lb. ft of torque, wow. They do have to be careful not to push to hard with the right foot coming out of corners.

The team won't say what kind of fuel mileage they were getting. They kept coming in for fuel even when they didn't have to just to keep everyone guessing.

I can't wait to see how it does at Le Mans.

 

[rhino_50]

Just way to cool watching the diesel out run everything else.

 

[Champane Flight]

ULSD is on its way...

Ultra low sulfer diesel is on its way. The no smoke thing is a result of computers and ultra low sulfer fuels. Put a few gallons of high sulfer in that thing, it would probably smoke the field out. . :-laf

 

[Tomeygun]

Just way to cool watching the diesel out run everything else.

Ohh yeah!



http://www.audi.com/audi/com/en1/experience/motorsport/Audi_R10_TDI/v12_tdi_engine.html

 

[RustyJC]

Ultra low sulfer diesel is on its way. The no smoke thing is a result of computers and ultra low sulfer fuels. Put a few gallons of high sulfer in that thing, it would probably smoke the field out. . :-laf

Two reasons (among many) that they didn't smoke:



1. The fuel was man-made using Shell's natural-gas-to-diesel process, so it had no sulfur whatsoever.



2. The Audis are running particulate traps.



Rusty

 

[Tilesetter Too]

Just got back from Sebring, race was great, the Audi was awesome. I really liked seeing the diesel win. If they keep dominating the circut, maybe diesel will really start to get noticed.

 

[JHerr]

Tilesetter, can you tell that the Audi is a diesel from the exhaust note? Does it smell like a diesel? And most importantly, does Audi have any TDI shirts or hats for sale?



My brother and I are planning on going to Lime Rock in July. Is it worth attending?

 

[tractorface]

Shh Don't tell the big HP guys about this

What does "specifically the most powerful diesel engine in the world" mean???

 

[jwgary]

I would assume that they are talking about volume specific horsepower. That means that this engine at 118. 18 hp/l has the highest hp/l rating of any engine. That doesn't sound to be true with some of the other numbers I have seen on this site. Perhaps it is power to weight ratio since the whole thing is aluminum.