Audi R10 - Le Mans 24 Hours
Date: Sunday, June 18, 2006 @ 19:53:32 BST
Author: audioc
Topic: Audi in Motorsport
Audi rewrote motorsport history when Frank Biela, Emanuele Pirro and Marco Werner scored a diesel-powered sportscar’s first-ever victory in the Le Mans 24 Hours today (SUN).

Scotland’s Allan McNish (36), driving a similar Audi R10 TDI along with Dindo Capello (Italy) - who had celebrated his 42nd birthday on Saturday - and seven-time Le Mans winner, Tom Kristensen (Denmark), finished third in the twice-around-the-clock marathon after delays.

The diesel-powered Audis, making their Le Mans début, led every one of the record 380 lap distance in front of a sun-drenched 235,000 record crowd.

The Biela (Germany)/Pirro (Italy)/Werner (Germany) Audi, which had started from the front row alongside the pole-sitting McNish Audi, finished four laps ahead of the second-placed Pescarolo with the McNish car a further nine laps adrift. The winning Audi, which ran faultlessly apart from losing 9mins when a gear cluster was replaced, completed 3,222.4-miles at an average speed of almost 134mph in the race which saw over half the 50-car field retire.

1998 Le Mans race winner McNish led for most of the opening three hours until a number of time-consuming pit stops effectively ruled out the Dumfries-born driver’s Audi R10 TDI from victory.

“After 3½ hours we changed the right bank of injectors which lost us 21 minutes and dropped us down to 16th place,” commented McNish who has now finished second (2000) and third twice (2005 & ’06) for Audi at Le Mans.

“I drove again from around 10.30pm until 1am and the car was really good and by 2am we’d pulled back to third place.

“But we lost another 11mins shortly afterwards for repairs when Dindo and a backmarker touched causing left rear suspension damage, a further 19mins later for additional repairs from that same contact and another 15mins when we changed a turbo prior to when I drove again at 8am on Sunday morning. I took over the car again 2.35pm and drove to the finish at 5pm which was a pretty special feeling.

“Although we’d lost all of this time and were effectively out of contention, our pride and professionalism remained unaffected so all three of us drove as hard and fast as possible. The Audi was well balanced and very fast for much of the time, it was just a shame we lost so much time with niggling problems.

“It was an ambitious project and Audi never takes these things lightly but coming to Le Mans you can expect a problem or two and that’s what happened to our car – as it did for me in the Audi R8’s first Le Mans race in 2000.

“But we overcame these setbacks in true Audi style and got on to the podium which was a fantastic team result. The winning Audi had almost a trouble-free run and that’s the way motor racing goes.”

Audi had previously won the annual French race on five occasions (2000-2, ’04 & ’05) after making its Le Mans début in 1999. For Biela (41) and Pirro (44), this latest success brought both their fourth Le Mans triumphs with Werner (40) adding to last year’s victory.

OVERALL RESULTS:

1. Frank Biela/Emanuele Pirro/Marco Werner (Audi R10 TDI) 380 laps
2. Franck Montagny/Eric Helary/Sebastien Loeb (Pescarolo Judd) 376 laps
3. Rinaldo Capello/Tom Kristensen/Allan McNish (Audi R10 TDI) 367 laps
4. Oliver Gavin/Olivier Beretta/Jan Magnussen (Corvette C6.R) 355 laps
5. Emmanuel Collard/Nic Minassian/Erik Comas (Pescarolo Judd) 352 laps
6. Tomas Enge/Darren Turner/Andrea Piccini (Aston Martin DBR9) 350 laps

This article comes from Audifans.net
http://www.audifans.net

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