AUDI AG is one step ahead of the opposition yet again: The inventor of ‘TDI’ will fight, as the world’s first automobile manufacturer, for overall victory with a diesel engine at the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans. The new Audi R10 is powered by a completely new 5.5-litre, twelve-cylinder bi-turbo TDI engine which is extremely economical and quiet.
The Le Mans Prototype, with over 650 hp and more than 1100 Newton metres of torque, significantly exceeds the power produced by the majority of previous Audi racing cars – including that of its victorious R8 predecessor.
Audi ventures into previously unexplored diesel-engine terrain with the V12 power plant manufactured completely from aluminium. The enormous torque of over 1100 Newton metres not only makes extreme demands of the R10 transmission system – as even the Formula 1 specification engine dynamometers at Audi Sport had to be reequipped with special gearboxes capable of withstanding the unusual forces.