Positive test day for Audi at Le Mans

 At Le Mans, Audi thoroughly prepared for the 24-hour race to be held in two weeks from now. On the official test day for the most important endurance race of the year, the three Audi R18 e-tron quattro cars completed detailed programs and reeled off 288 laps. On June 13 and 14, Audi will be battling for its 14th victory in the Le Mans 24 Hours at La Sarthe.

Still, we can be sat­is­fied with our work be­cause our R18 e-tron quat­tro cars were run­ning im­pec­ca­bly.

Dr. Wolf­gang Ull­rich

Au­di’s en­gi­neers and race dri­vers con­cen­trated on set­ting up the three hy­brid sports cars for a cir­cuit that can only be dri­ven on twice a year – on the test day and dur­ing the week of the race. The work was cen­tered on set­tings for kine­mat­ics, dampers and aero­dy­nam­ics. In ad­di­tion, the dri­vers tested var­i­ous types of tires. In the morn­ing, Audi Sport Team Joest man­aged to work out a solid ba­sic set-up on a dry track be­fore rain set in.

Sig­nif­i­cantly vary­ing pre­cip­i­ta­tion con­stantly changed the con­di­tions dur­ing the eight-hour test day. “Ob­vi­ously, some­thing like this is less than per­fect but we knew the weather fore­cast and these con­di­tions can of course be rel­e­vant for the race,” said Head of Audi Mo­tor­sport Dr. Wolf­gang Ull­rich. “Still, we can be sat­is­fied with our work be­cause our R18 e-tron quat­tro cars were run­ning im­pec­ca­bly.”

The Audi dri­vers were al­ready the busiest of all squads in the morn­ing. Mar­cel Fässler/​An­dré Lot­terer/​Benoît Tréluyer (CH/​D/​F), Lu­cas di Grassi/​Loïc Du­val/​Oliver Jarvis (BR/​F/​GB) and Fil­ipe Al­bu­querque/​Marco Bo­nanomi/​René Rast (P/​I/​D) clocked a to­tal of 1,935.318 kilo­me­ters in the first half of the test. By the end of the day, this num­ber had in­creased to 3,925.152 kilo­me­ters. “That there were al­most no in­ter­rup­tions is a pos­i­tive. As a re­sult, all our dri­vers spent a lot of time on track and fa­mil­iar­ized them­selves with the cir­cuit in dif­fer­ent con­di­tions,” says Chris Reinke, Head of LMP.

The fastest Audi dri­ver was Marco Bo­nanomi, who needed 3m 22.307s for one lap in the morn­ing. In the ag­gre­gated re­sults of both prac­tice ses­sions, Al­bu­querque/​Bo­nanomi/​Rast fin­ished the test day in third place, Fässler/​Lot­terer/​Tréluyer took fifth place and di Grassi/​Du­val/​Jarvis achieved sixth po­si­tion. The next few days, Audi Sport Team Joest will be prepar­ing the three race cars at Le Mans for the race week that will be­gin with scru­ti­neer­ing on June 7.

Audi