Audi R10 TDI to take on Le Mans 2009

Posted by Cetane_100 on January 20, 2009

While Audi will contest the 24 Hours of Le Mans as part of its factory commitment with the new R15 TDI in 2009, Dr Colin Kolles is planning to buy two Audi R10 TDI cars for his racing team. The privately fielded prototypes are planned to return to the venues of their greatest exploits in 2009: to the European-based Le Mans Series and to the 24-hour race at Le Mans, in which the Audi R10 TDI has not been beaten so far.

Since the 2006 season Audi has been cooperating with Dr Colin Kolles, who has entered two Audi A4 DTM cars in the DTM since that time. Now, the team owner based in Greding near Ingolstadt wants to extend his motorsport involvement to the sportscar area on his own initiative. The team plans to contest the 24-hour race at Le Mans on 13 and 14 June 2009 as well as the five rounds of the European-based Le Mans Series.

Audi Sport will sell two R10 TDI vehicles to Dr Kolles for this purpose and complement the agreement by a service package encompassing support for the private racing commitments by members of Audi Sport’s technical staff.

“We welcome the fact that Dr Kolles decided to take on this commitment and wants to purchase two Audi R10 TDI cars,” said Head of Audi Motorsport Dr Wolfgang Ullrich. “While on the factory side of the house we are concentrating on the development and fielding of the new R15 TDI sportscar as well as on the DTM, we are pleased to see that the R10 TDI will be privately entered in future and that racing vehicles of the Audi brand will continue to be represented in the Le Mans Series. That is why we agreed to the sale of the cars. However, our involvement will be strictly limited to providing support under the terms of the service agreement.”

In the 2006, 2007 and 2008 racing years, the Audi R10 TDI clinched as many as 22 overall victories in 38 worldwide entries. At the 24 Hours of Le Mans as well as in the final LM P1 classification of the American Le Mans Series during that time frame the Audi R10 TDI remained unbeaten and last year won the LM P1 class of the European-based Le Mans Series as well.

Diffrence between big diesel engines and race car engines

Posted by Cetane_100 on January 3, 2009

A 11 liter diesel engine has a long stroke. That means that the piston is traveling a relatively long distance up and down in its cylinder on each cycle. A racing engine, on the other hand, has a short stroke. The piston in a racing engine has a large diameter for the engine size, and it goes up and down a relatively short distance on each cycle. This means that a race car engine can run much faster -up to 22,000 rpm in the F1 engines until limited by regulation to 18′000 rpm, 15,000 rpm in a Champ Car engine — but has relatively little torque. A large diesel engine usually cannot get above 2,000 RPM, but has huge torque because of the long stroke. The torque is what lets your engine pull a huge load up a hill.

Why does an engine with huge torque and low maximum RPM get a low horsepower rating? We know that one horsepower is equal to 33,000 foot-pounds of work per minute. By this measure, one horse can raise 33 pounds 1,000 vertical feet in a minute, or 330 pounds 100 feet in a minute, or 3,300 pounds 10 feet in a minute, and so on. What an engine naturally produces, however, is torque. Think about one piston in a gasoline engine. When the gasoline ignites, it pushes on the piston, and the piston exerts pressure on the crankshaft, causing it to turn. The crankshaft feels some number of foot-pounds of torque in the process. There are three variables that affect torque:

• The size of the piston face
• The amount of pressure that the ignited fuel applies to the face of the piston
• The distance the piston travels on each stroke (therefore the diameter of the crankshaft). The bigger the diameter of the crankshaft, the bigger the lever arm and therefore the more torque.

There is a direct relationship between horsepower and torque. You can convert torque to horsepower with the following equation:

HP = Torque * RPM / 5,252

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