In 2006, the Audi R10 TDI became the first diesel-powered car to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Its V12 TDI engine made more than 650 hp and more than 1,100 Nm of torque, which works out to roughly 811 lb-ft. Frank Biela, Emanuele Pirro and Marco Werner drove the winning car, number 8.

That win came with a distance record, too. The car covered more laps than any winner on the current circuit layout, according to Audi.

The car came together fast, too. Audi says the first roll-out happened just 200 days before the race.

Why a diesel prototype was different

Audi calls the R10 TDI the first diesel sports prototype ever built by a car manufacturer. That claim appears in the Audi MediaCenter’s flashback on the 2006 race.

Like most diesels, it made its pull low in the rev range. In fact, Audi’s race-week fact sheet gives a gear-shift point of 5,000 rpm, which the company calls unusually low for a race engine. The same document describes the V12 TDI as having an aluminium cylinder block.

Audi did not publish the displacement in either release. However, the trade magazine FenderBender described it in March 2006 as a 90-degree, 5.5-liter V12 with twin turbos and Turbo Direct Injection. The Wikipedia entry on the R10 TDI gives the same 5.5-liter figure.

The Audi R10 TDI before Le Mans

The car rolled out for the first time on November 29 at Misano in Italy, according to Audi’s Le Mans fact sheet. Before the race, it covered 30,000 test kilometers. On top of that, its engines ran for 1,500 hours on test benches.

Audi calls the Sebring 12 Hours in March 2006 the “dress rehearsal.” FenderBender reported that one of the two R10s won that race, while the other retired early with overheating. Wikipedia adds that the winning car led every lap.

Sebring also taught the team a lesson. Ralf Jüttner, team director of Audi Sport Team Joest, saw there how complex an engine change can be. As a result, Audi kept the same engine in the car for practice, qualifying and the full 24 hours at Le Mans.

Le Mans 2006 by the numbers

The winning number 8 car was chassis 102, the same car Biela, Pirro and Werner had used at Sebring. It completed 380 laps, or 5,187 km. Audi says that was one lap more than the 2004 distance record on the current circuit layout.

Its average speed over the 24 hours was 215.409 km/h. Including practice, qualifying, warm-up and formation laps, the engine ran 469 laps, or 6,402 km, during Le Mans week.

Fuel strategy mattered as well. Audi says the car refueled roughly every 14 laps and used about 41 liters of Shell V-Power Diesel per 100 km. Tom Kristensen, in the sister car, became the first driver to complete 16 laps on one tank.

The race was not trouble-free, though. The winners made 27 pit stops, including two unscheduled ones. One was a gear-cluster change that took 9 minutes 50 seconds, including fuel and tires. Even so, Audi says the car spent less than 30 minutes in the pits across the whole race.

Pole, fastest lap and records

Dindo Capello put an R10 TDI on pole with a 3:30.466 lap. Meanwhile, Kristensen set the fastest race lap, a 3:31.211, in the fifth hour. That was less than a second slower than pole.

The result also gave Joest its eighth Le Mans win, which Audi says made it the most successful team in the race’s history. For Biela and Pirro, it was a fourth Le Mans victory. Werner, by comparison, won for the second year running.

Audi also tells a story about how clean the diesel ran. Head of race engine development Ulrich Baretzky wiped the inside of the tailpipes with paper napkins, and the napkins stayed white, according to Audi.

What the Audi R10 TDI won after 2006

The 2006 win was only the start. According to Wikipedia, the R10 TDI won Le Mans again in 2007 and 2008. Later, the R15 TDI replaced it after the 2008 American Le Mans Series season.

By then, the Audi R10 TDI had entered 48 races and won 36 of them, Wikipedia records. The first of those big wins, Le Mans 2006, still stands as the first diesel victory in the race’s history.

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This article was created with the help of AI and was reviewed and edited by Fast Lane Only editors before publication.