09.06.2015Audi wants the 14th Le Mans victory - tests satisfying

In the FIA World Endurance Championship short WEC - for the first time 4 carmakers fight for  overall success in 2015 . Audi wants to win the title for the third time after 2012 and 2013. The 24 Hours of Le Mans will be the highlight of the season; at the 83rd edition of the race,  the brand with the four rings will try to bring home the 14th victory since 2000. At the official test day for the most important endurance race of the year, 3 Audi R18 e-tron quattro completed detailed programs and reeled off 288 laps. The engineers and racers of Audi are focused on the hybrid sports cars that can only be driven on the test day and during the race week.

Weather disrupts tests, but provides insights

It's always a gamble because the experience from previous years  only helps limited with new developments. The focus of the work on the test day just over 2 weeks ago were the settings of kinematics, dampers and aerodynamics. In addition, the pilots tested different tire specifications. First the Audi technicians found a good basic setup before it began raining in the afternoon  and made it difficult to work; the conditions on the track were changing constantly. Audi-Motorsport Boss Dr. Wolfgang Ulrich: "Of course, it is not optimal, but we knew the weather forecast and these conditions can of course be relevant to the race."

Still, Dr. Ulrich expressed his satisfaction with the work, because the lessons learned from the rain of course  if it rains on race day. The R18 e-tron quattro, ran perfectly according to the Audi motorsport director. In the morning of the test day, the Audi teams reeled off a total of 1935.318 km. The driver pairings Marcel Fässler, André Lotterer and Benoît Treluyer (CH / D / F) / Lucas di Grassi, Loïc Duval, Oliver Jarvis (BR / F / GB) and Filipe Albuquerque and Marco Bonanomi and René Rast (P / I / D) added up to 3925.152 km until the evening. "It is positive that there was hardly any interruptions. So  all our drivers spent a lot of time on the track and  and made themselfes familiar with the track under different circumstances," said Chris Reinke, head of LMP.

Audi Team Joest uses a 3 R18 e-tron quattro

The fastest Audi driver was Marco Bonanomi with 3.22,307 minutes on a dry morning. Audi Sport Team Joest is preparing the 3 factory race cars within the next few days in Le Mans, for the race weekend which begins on  June 7th with scrutineering. The further timetable: On Wednesday June 10th there are 4 hours of free training. Immediately afterwards, at 10 pm , the first round of qualifying will start. On Thursday Session # 2 and # 3 are to follow; 2 hours each. The 45-minute warm-up will begin on Saturday at 9am ; the race will be started at 4pm . Experiences that the modelcar has made, brought by  Spark from last year's winner: the Audi R18 e-tron 2014 from Lotterer, Fassler and Treluyer is available in scale of 1:18 - the perfect stage for  the new edition of the classic. Take a look back: On may 15th 2015 we introduced the model in detail here on the blog.