Audi LMP1 Discussion

[hcl123]

This 2 races are not that much conclusive... and for reasons were slower than they could had been ... but it takes a look at 2013 time numbers, Toyota gained a tiny bit while Audi is almost 2 sec slower, and is about to get worst ( Toyota even better, Audi even worst than last year 'Long Tail' 3:22 min was last year pole, just amazing )

Crippled beyond repair... best solution http://tentenths.com/forum/showpost....postcount=3523 could have change, as it is only with great great luck.

[hcl123]

Originally Posted by hcl123

And doubt VW would wont another petrol( an Audi FSTi) to compete with Porsche...

Ooops ! LOL its Audi TSFi ( damn the T and F jumped place.. damn dancing letters lol )

[TF110]

Originally Posted by Bandicoot17

But they had great pace at Silverstone before being undone by not pitting in the rain, and at Spa they ran two cars in HDF which is not the correct config, of course they were going to be slow. In previous years with lower top end and no hybrid boost to accel Audi had superior accel and could get away with hdf because of the differences between top speed being a bit less.

They're not going to have the superior top end because they can't accelerate as quickly as the bigger hybrids and they can't bleed more power in at top speed, and if you think a car that is 30kmh slower should be winning or be highly competitive on a track where 2/3's is long straights you're crazy.

I concur. This was the second time for the low df package. Why would it be such a threat either? They just need more tests with it. Spa was a good opportunity for it, like what Rebellion were doing. Audi not winning doesn't spell their doom. There was a time where they won nothing outside Le Mans, lets not forget!

[1969MGCGTdriver]

Originally Posted by TF110

There was a time where they won nothing outside Le Mans, lets not forget!

There was? Not being confrontational, but I don't remember such a time.

[TF110]

Originally Posted by 1969MGCGTdriver

There was? Not being confrontational, but I don't remember such a time.

Yes. Peugeot won every meeting in the ilmc in 2010 and 2011, but Audi won Le Mans in both instances.

[MyNameIsNigel]

Originally Posted by MyNameIsNigel

During the race broadcast, there was a reasonably good shot at the new exhaust layout on the #3 Audi at the occasion of the 5th pitstop (lap 119), 4h14min into the race:



My apologies for the bad quality screen shots

The race performance might not be there yet but Audi have been working hard on the design of their LM-spec car. Here is the clearest picture available of the new exhaust layout:

(source: Audi Media)

[tyronnezx]

Originally Posted by hcl123

Unfavorable is an "understatement" ... and the "joker" they might have, like #3 doing one less pit stop at Spa, is gone... this EoT gives diesel 1 more liter for LM, but 3.9 liters more for petrol... 390% more of "additional" fuel in favor of petrol... so not only a diesel will not have the same top speed, very hard with >11% less fuel flow... at Le Mans with this EoT probably will be the petrols doing 1 or 2 or 3 less pit stops than an Audi.

If i where Dr. Ulrich i'll be contemplating dropping off *immediately*... not easy because there are contracts to fulfill .... perhaps slow march in protest... but 2014 is a sure bet to be off.

Why ? ... this fraudulent charade can be very damaging for a brand prestige, doubt Audi will be willing to endure one more year of the same or worst... without the fraud blowing back into the sales, specially diesel car sales ( not hot head or fanboism decisions).

And doubt VW would wont another petrol( an Audi FSTi) to compete with Porsche... 2014 can serve very well as a good diesel R&D season, then off.

You are so boycotted FIA/ACO ! lol ... unqualifiable adjectives !... when the honest thing to do is simply ban diesel. ( can't beat them, ban them... but don't leave them crippled, that is very cruel )

you could ban them . Then again, Audi weren't forced to go with Diesel. they chose to, just like everyone that they beat over the last few years with a Diesel. Trust me Audi isnt handicapped. There's a lot more to come. It almost feels rigged that Audi would put the low down-force car on the wrong strategist to make sure nothings given away. they most likely know what its capable of. You dont need the spa round to compare speeds between the two packages. just take them to Paul ricard to work that out

[Spyderman]

Originally Posted by tyronnezx

you could ban them . Then again, Audi weren't forced to go with Diesel. they chose to, just like everyone that they beat over the last few years with a Diesel. Trust me Audi isnt handicapped. There's a lot more to come. It almost feels rigged that Audi would put the low down-force car on the wrong strategist to make sure nothings given away. they most likely know what its capable of. You dont need the spa round to compare speeds between the two packages. just take them to Paul ricard to work that out

I agree. I suspect that what we have seen up to now is mostly smoke and mirrors.
Oh! and not necessarily because of EOT (although the current performance will assist in their arguments further down the road), but because there is a "story" to be written about Le Mans. It goes something like this: Poor little ugly duckling gets picked on by organizers. Ugly duckling is crushed in the first two rounds. Ugly duckling rises from the ashes at Le Mans to turn itself into beautiful Phoenix.
Call me a cynic....

BTW - That "Story"serves to steal some of the thunder from the return of the "evil" sister company.

[GT6]

It is not surprising we see comments coming out of teams complaining about being disadvantaged by this or that, after all the teams have large numbers of people employed to do just that and they need to earn their money. Perhaps they should return to the days of employing drivers and mechanics and people that work on the cars rather than spend so much of the budget on lawyers and PR people

[JoestForEver]

Originally Posted by Spyderman

I agree. I suspect that what we have seen up to now is mostly smoke and mirrors.
Oh! and not necessarily because of EOT (although the current performance will assist in their arguments further down the road), but because there is a "story" to be written about Le Mans. It goes something like this: Poor little ugly duckling gets picked on by organizers. Ugly duckling is crushed in the first two rounds. Ugly duckling rises from the ashes at Le Mans to turn itself into beautiful Phoenix.
Call me a cynic....

BTW - That "Story"serves to steal some of the thunder from the return of the "evil" sister company.

If you are with tyronnezx on the 'choosing theory', then you should be aware that it is the same case as pre-2014 era. Which is the logic in this post

In the past, the rule book is more or less evenly played out as there are effectively no petrol entry from any manufacturers. When new entries join(a.k.a Toyota), the door of petrol and diesel is freely open to them, and they deliberately choose petrol because Toyota believe it can win instead of it's something less competitive. That's all. Hopefully not a petrol vs diesel battle all over again. http://tentenths.com/forum/showthrea...64#post3387264

Yet this was regarded as not part of reality. Don't get me wrong because I have nothing personal in this or against anyone as we are all good friends in this forum, but I do hope there is nothing personal or double standard towards any tech or any route or any manufacturer as well. At least no more conspiracy theory or poorly-elaborated sandbagging hypothesis.
In other words, the same ugly duck story suits Toyota better isn't it? Bullied by Audi and evil ACO for 2 years and now they are in reign. Yet the truth is they were simply not competitive enough, not until the new car, or new favorable EoT, just running away from being beaten by Porsche now.

[MyNameIsNigel]

There is surely more to come from the LM-spec car. The #3 Audi was clearly on a different strategy at Spa compared to the #1 and #2 cars. The #3 car could cover 24/25 laps per stint at Spa, while the #1 and #2 cars were running 23/24 laps per stint. The #3 car could therefore cover similar distances as the #14 Porsche on one tank, even though the 2 MJ ERS option suffers from shorter stints compared to the 6 MJ ERS option in which Porsche and Toyota are running.

Audi have definitely tried a few things at Spa on the #3 car in terms of fuel consumption by consuming less than the #1 and #2 cars. In other words, the #3 was not consuming the maximum allowable fuel allocation per lap in an attempt to increase stint length. This could be translated back into more performance over a single lap.

I may be wrong, but I am still hopeful that Audi can produce very good performance at LM.

[MyNameIsNigel]

Another shot of the rear end of the LM-spec Audi R18 by Laurent Chauveau (endurance-info.com):


I am now looking forward to seeing how the exhaust pipes are routed from the turbocharger through the rear suspension area. There isn't much space there...

[Spyderman]

Originally Posted by MyNameIsNigel

There is surely more to come from the LM-spec car. The #3 Audi was clearly on a different strategy at Spa compared to the #1 and #2 cars. The #3 car could cover 24/25 laps per stint at Spa, while the #1 and #2 cars were running 23/24 laps per stint. The #3 car could therefore cover similar distances as the #14 Porsche on one tank, even though the 2 MJ ERS option suffers from shorter stints compared to the 6 MJ ERS option in which Porsche and Toyota are running.

Audi have definitely tried a few things at Spa on the #3 car in terms of fuel consumption by consuming less than the #1 and #2 cars. In other words, the #3 was not consuming the maximum allowable fuel allocation per lap in an attempt to increase stint length. This could be translated back into more performance over a single lap.

I may be wrong, but I am still hopeful that Audi can produce very good performance at LM.

You can bet your hat on that. The phoenix must rise from the ashes. There is a lot of money/reputation/pride/PR riding on that outcome.

The pressure really is on Audi. Porsche are not expected to win. If Toyota win, its a "nice change". Audi must win. It's their reputation at stake. The Satus Quo. The "saving of face". If Porsche should win (by some miracle) it will be crushing to them. There will be a mad rush to hide the kitchen knives and any other sharp objects.

[tyronnezx]

Originally Posted by JoestForEver

If you are with tyronnezx on the 'choosing theory', then you should be aware that it is the same case as pre-2014 era. Which is the logic in this post

Yet this was regarded as not part of reality. Don't get me wrong because I have nothing personal in this or against anyone as we are all good friends in this forum, but I do hope there is nothing personal or double standard towards any tech or any route or any manufacturer as well. At least no more conspiracy theory or poorly-elaborated sandbagging hypothesis.
In other words, the same ugly duck story suits Toyota better isn't it? Bullied by Audi and evil ACO for 2 years and now they are in reign. Yet the truth is they were simply not competitive enough, not until the new car, or new favorable EoT, just running away from being beaten by Porsche now.

We're all friends, but dont be naive man, if Toyota wanted to build a Diesel engine, they would. Not to mention that they make one heck of a diesel engine for road applications. they simply went with what suited their business model. which is what Audi also chose to do. No Bad mouthing them, Tbh Props to them to sticking to their guns, but we all know that the Diesel is absolutely a knockout when it comes to untapped power. and believe me im not a techical person but i agree with others when they say that Audi knows how to play this well. And we also know from the past that Audi would rather have a Moto gp bike and give a pushbike to everyone else if they could. so i think this is fair that they are given this EOP.

[Aysedasi]

I think it will be a lot more than a 'nice change' for Toyota to win. Audi have no 'divine rights' at Le Mans.......

[Spyderman]

Originally Posted by Aysedasi

I think it will be a lot more than a 'nice change' for Toyota to win. Audi have no 'divine rights' at Le Mans.......

Agreed....but try telling that to some .

[Velociraptor]

Originally Posted by Spyderman

. If Porsche should win (by some miracle)

If Porsche doesn't get stopped by reliability or bad tactics, I think I would slightly favor them over Toyota or Audi to win at Le Mans. And I'm very surprised to be saying this. But they have the speed, especially in a straight line, they are probably best on fuel. Only question is how good/bad the 919 will be on tires.

[Aysedasi]

I'll bank on them failing due to unexpected issues. Winning first time out at Le Mans isn't unheard of, but is a huge ask.....

[MyNameIsNigel]

There are interesting comments from Thomas Laudenbach, Head of Audi Sport's Hybrid Division, being reported in the June 2014 issue of Racecar Engineering (short article by Andrew Cotton on pages 81-82).

Laudenbach is in particular reported to say that the decision to go for the 2 MJ/lap ERS option was made very early in the decision-making process:

'It was an early decision to go for 2MJ, but it was made before I got there', says Laudenbach. 'That decision was made based on the fact that we had said this was quickest. (...)'

I don't know when exactly Laudenbach (a former Porsche guy) joined Audi Sport, but this happened before Sebring 2013. The decision to go for the 2 MJ/lap ERS option was therefore apparently made more than a year ago.

Laudenbach is also reported to say that the 4MJ/lap option would have been possible with the flywheel energy storage system, but that would have compromised weight distribution.

Laudenbach further points out that Audi may have made a different choice had they had the knowledge at the time they have now:

'At the stage where we started, the 2MJ was the way to go. It was the quickest solution, but things have changed. Everyone has worked on energy strategies, which have a big effect on lap time. When we began, no one was working on the strategies because that was development. So I am not 100 per cent sure that the decision would be the same with the knowledge that we have today.'

It is also apparent that the decision to abandon the ERS-H had no bearing on the category in which Audi is running this season. Andrew Cotton claims in this article that the energy from the ERS-H was never going to be stored (?) and that the system was only to be used to combat turbo lag.

[J Jay]

Originally Posted by MyNameIsNigel

Laudenbach is also reported to say that the 4MJ/lap option would have been possible with the flywheel energy storage system, but that would have compromised weight distribution.

Beat me to it there! Only managed to read the TS040 feature so far.

I was going to ask what the precluding factors would have been to not "scale up" the flybrid from 3.5MJ to 4MJ, because on the face of it a 14% increase to a relatively light system doesn't seem like that much. But we've seen that Porsche and Toyota have had to drop the 8MJ class because of weight concerns and for all the benefits of a diesel engine, weight is not one of them.

From what we saw at Spa, between the sprint and LM cars Audi have the top speed, fuel/tyre consumption and lap time to be competitive. But they can't get them all on one car; so which aspect will they give up in order to boost the others?

[ger80]

Originally Posted by MyNameIsNigel

There are interesting comments from Thomas Laudenbach, Head of Audi Sport's Hybrid Division, being reported in the June 2014 issue of Racecar Engineering (short article by Andrew Cotton on pages 81-82).

Laudenbach is in particular reported to say that the decision to go for the 2 MJ/lap ERS option was made very early in the decision-making process:


I don't know when exactly Laudenbach (a former Porsche guy) joined Audi Sport, but this happened before Sebring 2013. The decision to go for the 2 MJ/lap ERS option was therefore apparently made more than a year ago.

Laudenbach is also reported to say that the 4MJ/lap option would have been possible with the flywheel energy storage system, but that would have compromised weight distribution.

Laudenbach further points out that Audi may have made a different choice had they had the knowledge at the time they have now:


It is also apparent that the decision to abandon the ERS-H had no bearing on the category in which Audi is running this season. Andrew Cotton claims in this article that the energy from the ERS-H was never going to be stored (?) and that the system was only to be used to combat turbo lag.

Already preparing excuses?

[MyNameIsNigel]

Originally Posted by ger80

Already preparing excuses?

I don't believe there is any excuse to prepare. Audi made a technical choice some time ago and it is always easier to criticize this choice after it has been made. It's less easy to make that choice in the first place.

Based on the information and knowledge they had at the time, Audi probably made a good decision. Things have changed a bit since then and, as Laudenbach is reported to say, they may have made a different choice with the knowledge they know have.

Now, LM is always full of surprises and the faster car does not necessarily end up first. So, who knows what while happen in June ?

I will be there and enjoy the race as much as possible. 2014 has everything to promise a great battle.

[Aysedasi]

Couldn't agree more - it could well be the best we've seen for years........

[Mal]

And of course Toyota have been developing and racing their hybrid technology for far longer (possibly before Audi started on their Diesel LMP engine) and therefore maybe they had the knowledge to make the right decision at the necessary time.

I still remember how confident Toyota were in their Hybrid system during the Q & A session at the pit visit in 2012 and that is partly why I think the programme has been focused on this year from the start.

[J Jay]

Originally Posted by J Jay

I was going to ask what the precluding factors would have been to not "scale up" the flybrid from 3.5MJ to 4MJ, because on the face of it a 14% increase to a relatively light system doesn't seem like that much.

To answer my own question, from page 82 of this month's Racecar Engineering (emphasis my own):

The decision to go for the 2MJ class appears to be a strange one, considering that at Le Mans, under the old regulations, the Audi was theoretically able to generate 3.5MJ (seven times 0.5MJ), delivered over 120km/h. However, Audi struggled to harvest a full amount of energy from its two motors at the front axle, and never managed to reach its target.

This seems ominous to me; it looks like Audi couldn't choose any ERS class over 2MJ because they wouldn't be able to harvest the full amount of energy with their current hybrid system.