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And may I throw this in--the Audi R8 had as big of an advantage under the LMP900 rules as the R18 and 908 have under the new rules. One reason? The R8 was developed by a factory team with huge resource reserves. Second reason? Audi was about the only LMP900 effort that gambled on a turbocharged engine. The Panoz used an aluminum block, fuel injected version of the old Ford NASCAR V8, which was based on the Windsor V8 that Ford designed in the 1950s and was the last true "stock block" NASCAR engine to be retired (in 2010). And the BMWs ran a 6.0 V12 like what the McLaren F1 used (in fact, they were the same engine aside from being destroked to fit the LMP900 6.0 capacity limit). And then there were teams who opted for the unreliable Judd 4.0 V10, and then the 5.0 and 5.5 engines, which were soon obsolescent, or would have been if Audi developed another gasoline turbo engine.
So could we say that Audi with the R8 had the "unfair" advantage with a turbo engine that was if anything favored by the air restrictor rules that favored torque and fuel economy over brute power?
I'm not sure that the diesels have an advantage on the power front, but the diesel engines still make more torque and are fitted to cars designed around those engines by big factories. And because of that latter fact, I don't think that taking 40bhp away from the diesels or giving the petrol runners 40bhp is gonna make much of a difference. The ACO tried to take away 10 and 4% power in '09 and '10, and it didn't close the gap because of the development the factory teams did.
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