Audi wasn't the only brand that competed with diesel engines at Le Mans. Shortly after, Peugeot came up with the 908 HDi FAP to compete against the Audi R10 TDI, eventually winning outright in 2009.
Shortly before, independent team Taurus Sports built their own diesel V10, taken literally out of a VW Touareg and installed into a Lola in 2004 (VW found out why they wanted to just buy an engine and refused, so they just picked up a couple of Touaregs!) Caterpillar created new internals and control systems with Ricardo engineering, the whole thing was independently done apart from Caterpillar's involvement. First it destroyed gearboxes, then it ate clutches, so didn't get any great results. Prior to that they had diesels and gas turbines at Le Mans in previous decades.
@@OsellaSquadraCorse my engineering knowledge is limited, but when talking insane torque applications, I wonder why not just go with a torque converter even if its a bit slower a double clutch, but at least it can handle the torque
Audi it won Le Mans in 2000, then again in 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. Audi also won nine American Le Mans Series championships between 2000 and 2008 and two World Endurance Championships.
@@alunchurcher7060 In a way, I think we can include 2003 too, despite having been a Bentley, that car benefitted from Audi's know-how, including its engine.
I saw the Audis in the American series in 2000 at Adelaide with a group of friends. It was new years, and what a week end and road trip that was. Having beers at The Stag Hotel at night, watching them wiz by.
@@Roddy_Zeh Yes, the Bentleys were the evolution of the 1999 Audi R8C (Coupé) both built by RTN (Racing Technology Norfolk), while the other R8s were the evolution of the 1999 R8R (Roadster); the R8C wasn't so successful because of shorter development and Audi ditched it in favor of the roadster.
@Roddy_Zeh Far from it. Next to the entire car was different to the R8's. When viewed objectively, only the engine block was the same as the R8's. The rest of the car was a complete redesign, including the transverse gearbox. It is a common misconception to view these Bentley's as rebadged Audi's with a roof, but that's doing the team, and this near perfect Le Mans victory, a big disservice..
To me, these endurance cars are way more exciting than F1 ever was. The whole series is just more interesting, encouraging every team to be as unique as possible with their engineering ideas and builds. Highly recommended! :)
Same. F1 is the 100 meter sprinters, while the Le Mans series cars are the marathon runners. I can look at a sprinter doing the 100 meters in less than ten seconds and know that it's very fast. But marathon runners are another thing altogether. They're running speeds for two hours straight that most people can't even do on a bicycle for that long. It's insane.
F1 has lost its way with all the rules and spending limits. That's why car manufacturers take part in the le mans series and such, since they can innovate. F1 is just for pictures with rich people. Real deal is really the endurance races.
Diesel used to be King in most of europe, In endurance racing they really come into their own, especially when big brands throws their knowledge and money at it 😂. Very Hard to beat .
I owned a 1,9 ltr TDI (110 hp) back in 1998. Golf III „Variant“ (Station wagon). Fuel consumption (Autobahn) was 4 liters with average speed of 130 km/h. Torque was enormous. Good motors!
At the same time I also had a Golf 3 Variant 1.9 TDI with 110 HP. Shortly afterwards I decided to upgrade it to around 129 HP with chip tuning. This meant there was even more power when accelerating while maintaining the same fuel consumption. The top speed remained almost the same.
4L/100Km at 130? I call BS on that. That is lower than my 2012 Golf TDI 2.0 150hp used on average with no motorway driving. I could get below 4L in my 2010 Polo 1.6 TDI with 115hp if driving gentle and averaging 60-70. That same Polo was up around 7-8L going down the motorway from Oslo to Göteborg at 110kmh.
@@Gazer75 You are comparing different cars here. Mine was from 1995. Less weight. And it surely depends on terrain and fuel quality and tires etc. 🤷🏻♂️
@@danishghostrider Yeah, and even stock, watching vids of that thing launching, I felt like that transmission was already dealing with more torque than it could handle.
@@danishghostrider True that! 😂 There's a UK company called Darkside, I think, that's stuffing one of those V12's in a VW Amarok. I sure would like to see more projects featuring that engine. Sucks that they're so rare and scarce, kinda like Cadillac's Blackwing engine, that 4.2 V8 twin turbo only used in the CT6, two versions [CT6-V/V-Sport and the Platinum 4.2TT].
The Advantage of the diesel is that consumes less fuel, that means less pit stops and less time lost. This was the reason that they was unbeatable by the gas powered cars.
And thats because most fuels are still measured in volume and not weight. As Diesel has a higher energy density, it is heavier and you consume less volume to achieve the same result as a gasoline engine, but actually consume more weight, as Diesel engines are usually less efficient. On gas fuels (very low energy density), they do measure in weight.
@@sasskee Diesel engines are more efficient. It it the exact opposite to your saying. The problem with diesel engines is mainly air pollution i.e. carbon particulate as well as NOx in exhaust gas. Those air pollution problem makes the diesel engines hard to compete in private vehicle market.
Not really, they had smaller fuel tanks so only really went one lap longer, an advantage to be sure but not a massive one. The real advantage was that they had much more power, real figures aren't out there but the R10 was something like 650-700hp while the Peugeot was well passed 700hp. The Judd V10 most independent teams were using at the time was about 600- 620hp.
VW group always loved diesel, and europeans loved the tdi's from Germany and the HDI from france You can see TDI Racing in the WTCC With Seat León Cars, and in the paris Dakar, with the vw "race" touareg..... And i remember, around 2006, a TDI "touareg lookalike" baja trophy truck, run some bajas there in the US
1.6 HDI is the master of low consumption. I was driving a Peugeot 307 1.6 HDI for a few months and in extra urban conditions you would rarely get more than 4 liters /100km. Usually it was 3.8l/100km without even thinking of it.
The R10 has about 675 HP at 5000/min and 1200 Nm (885 ft lbs) of maximum torque. It's predecessor, the R8, started a winning streak of 15 years for Diesels in the 24hrs of Le Mans.
Diesels won 9 times, 8 Audis (R10, 15, 18 and 18 e-tron), 1 Peugeot (908 HDi). Then dieselgate happened, the regulations stopped favoring diesel, Porsche sent diesels packing on a reg level playground and the fad died out.
Audi (and volkswagen) was really promoting diesels at the time by making crazy and technologically advanced diesel engines. The pinnacle of it all imo is the AUDI Q7 V12. Omg, what a machine. I loved driving ut in Test Drive Unlimited 2.
on the motorsports video topic , really surprised you haven't done any rally super special stage videos yet. the best rally cars 1 on 1 at same time , back in the Subaru Vs Evo Vs Ford Cossie Era they were epic !
The high-performance diesel engine, the common rail, was invented by an Italian physicist in 1997,, Mario Ricco and developed and PRE-industrialized in the FIAT research department (which then sold the patent to Bosch). The first cars with common rail engines were the Alfa Romeo 156 which mounted 1900 and 2400 JTD. FIAT for about 10-15 years had a huge advantage over all the European competition on this type of engine. My brother with the 1900 JTDM 150 hp traveled 650,000 km after which he sold the car to buy another newer Alfa with an updated 1900 JTDM engine, a fast indestructible engine with the right and economical maintenance. At that time the VW and Audi diesel engines were the worst ever, they were the last to recover the technological gap they had with FIAT, even BMW and Mercedes recovered the technological gap before VW and AUDI. For about two years, the system remained exclusive to FIAT, Alfa Romeo and Lancia, then it was adopted by all the major automotive groups with the exception of the Volkswagen group, which began using it only after about a decade.
the story is a little wrong 1913 explored by Vickers Great Britain with patent further development by ETH Zurich in 1966 From 1964 onwards it was further developed in the GDR at the University of Magdeburg in the GDR 1981 6 VDS 26/20 ALE-2 as a common rail system diesel engine tested in trucks The process was known in the GDR as the “electronic diesel injection system” (EDES) At the end of the 1980s, the aborted development from the GDR was taken up by Magneti Marelli, Centro Ricerche Fiat and Elasis and continued until 1993 But financial difficulties arose here too, which is why the patents and development documents were assigned to Bosch in 1997 In Europe, Bosch succeeded in bringing the first road vehicle with common rail injection to market in October 1997 in the form of the Alfa Romeo 156 JTD. Shortly before that, in September 1997, the MTU BR4000 engine series for rail and off-highway applications went into series production with a common rail system from L’Orange. In 1998, Daimler-Benz followed suit as the first German manufacturer of a common rail series vehicle with the OM 611. BMW also offered a common rail engine with the BMW M57. In the same year, Citroën also began development and introduced its own system with the C6. The PSA-Peugeot-Citroën Group, in collaboration with Siemens, launched the first piezo injectors
@@bernie300c Although the history of common rail in the automotive field dates back to the 1980s and 1990s, engines with the same principle as common rail had already been used in the past in the naval and railway sectors, on boats and locomotives. The principle of the direct injection "common rail" engine was developed by researchers at the Zurich Polytechnic starting in the 1930s but was inapplicable to diesel engines for automotive use. for cars, it was invented by the physicist Mario Ricco from Bari, and was designed, developed and pre-industrialized by the Fiat Group (Magneti Marelli, Centro Ricerche Fiat branch of Bari and Elasis). The pre-industrialization of the "common rail" system began in 1990 from the collaboration between Magneti Marelli, Centro Ricerche Fiat and Elasis. After the development carried out by the Fiat Group, the project was sold, in April 1994 when the technology was now mature, to the German Robert Bosch GmbH (under pressure from Mercedes), which took care of the industrialization and marketing. In any case, FIAT enjoyed 2 years of exclusivity compared to the competition. The short-sightedness of FIAT, which ceded the rights to this technology to Bosch, which enriched itself thanks to this product, remains inexplicable. On June 27, 2008, the second version of the common rail was presented: the Multijet JTDm engine. The third generation of the common rail debuted in 2013, with the Alfa Romeo JTDm2 engine.
@@RubraLIber The first common rail diesel engine in a road vehicle was the MN 106 engine from the East German VEB IFA Motorenwerke Nordhausen. It was installed in a single IFA W50 in 1985. It ran for several thousand kilometers without problems and was the first to use constant pressure. The first successfully mass-produced vehicle with Common Rail was sold in Japan in 1995 and further developed by Denso. Prototypes were developed in the 1990s by Magneti Marelli, Centro Ricerche Fiat in Bari and Elasis and further developed by the physicist Mario Ricco of the Fiat Group, which is why the system was sold by the IFA to Magneti Marelli at the end of 1980, including the 26 patents. Bosch, for its part, provided financial and technical support and Alfa built it as standard in the first passenger cars with Mario Ricco. Mario Ricco managed to develop the common rail as a compact car engine, that was another milestone. Alfa used to be at the top in many things and was ahead of its time with technology. I think it's a shame that Alfa itself no longer has the strength it does today. At the end I would like to say that Mario Ricco is a top engineer.
@@bernie300c Your reconstruction is very precise, I would like to add that only in the 90s was a quality of design reached to satisfy European motorists who were completely converted to petrol and considered diesel vehicles dirty, smelly and slow. Another clarification is that what you consider produced by Alfa Romeo is actually made by the FIAT research center and in any case always under FIAT management, in fact the JTDm was an engine mounted on many FIAT and Alfa cars, at home we had Fiat Punto Alfa 147 Q2 Alfa 159, all cars with JTDm the most robust and least expensive diesel engine to manage, perhaps only Mercedes OM46 was equally robust, but more expensive to manage. However two fantastic products for those who want to stay in a power range that goes from 150 hp to 220. Unfortunately the biggest problem of Fiat has always been the managers trained for finance and the stock exchange and not at all competent on industrial products
The R10 with its turbodiesel was indeed reliable, and it was more fuel efficient compared to its competitors, which gave it a very significant edge even when some of the highest performing gasoline cars could reach higher speeds in later years, like some of the famous battles against Peugeot for years. The R10 still managed more laps per stint in between refueling which played a big role in their race strategy as well. The whole Audi team were just on another level. Since you already looked at the R10, it would be awesome to complete the lineup with its two main successors, the R15 and R18 Ultra, which perfected the formula and were also the first LMP racecars to introduce an active hybrid system and AWD -which was unheard of not just in Le Mans but in motorsport as a whole. It has since become standard both with Toyota and Porsche in later years, and now in the replacement Hypercar class today where every competing car uses these systems. Audi pioneered all of it with their R10/R15/R18 turbodiesel LMP cars.
The Peugeots were also diesel. Regs favoured diesel and Audi and Peugeot were the only big dogs interested in it. There weren't any competitive gasoline cars until Toyota and Porsche joined much latter, in the hybrid era. And as the regs leveled out, gasoline eventually came on top.
Driver61 has a nice video about that "When a Diesel DOMINATED at Le Mans"; some drivers called it a ghost car because beyond 250kph/150mph the wind noise was much louder than the engine. They even brought it onto the road in the Q7 V12 TDI probably it wasn't directly that same engine, but some parts and it's also a V12 Diesel after all, they even had concepts of a R8 (the road car) V12 TDI and it drove, but didn't went into production, one problem was that they didn't have enough room for that engine combined with a gearbox that is able to handle the whopping 1000Nm (737.5 lbft) of torque (Mercedes had 7-speed gearboxes in their 63 AMGs but the 65 AMGs still had a 5-speed because that V12 twin turbo also had a 1000Nm), they even had to modify their engine test stands that weren't initally able to handle that much torque. Fun fact: Early diesel cars up into the 1980s had some ironic nicknames in Germany like "Wanderdüne - migrating dune" (especially matching to German taxis which usually come in a "ivory" beige so slightly sandish color) and "Heizölferrari - heating oil Ferrari" (heating oil extra light was identical to diesel fuel, however it has less tax and fuelling a diesel car with that is illegal because of tax doding/fraud, to prevent that, heating oil gets some color pigments that will leave residue in your engine); Audi literally built a heating oil-powered Ferrari killer 😁 And Volkswagen literally built a "heating oil Maserati", Maserati had a mid-engined sports car in the 70s, the "Bora" (named after a wind) and Volkswagen also has that wind naming pattern (Golf - Gulfstream, Passat, Scirocco) and named their Jetta Mk IV in Europe "Bora" (the Mk III was called "Vento" because the Jetta wasn't very successful in Europe, so they tried these new names), of course also available with a Diesel engine. Another Volkswagen brand, SEAT, also won the WTCC (World Touring Car Championship with rather civilized compact cars derived from the road versions and just 2 litres of displacement) in 2008 and 2009 with their Léon TDI. It's nice how they've showed to world (win on sunday sell on monday) more than once that Diesel also works outside of truck racing!
Love this Austrian numberplate in your background :D greetings from (what a surprise xD) Austria and v12 TDI is the best thing ever they build this engine into the Audi Q7 Roadcar back in the day this was such a fast smooth sailer on the Autobahn maaan I hope the Diesel gets rid of his bad image really really quick
we've got a 2023 chevy tahoe with the 3.0L diesel. that thing rocks. very good fuel economy, lots of torque. it's not a race car but you will never be in a situation on the road where it doesn't have enough power to do what you want with it. and it's so freaking quiet you'd _never_ know it's a diesel. sound's like a gasser.
Remember at Le Mans in those days you had 4 classes racing at once - LMP1 and LMP2 and GT1 and GT2. Outwardly the LMP1 and LMP2s looked similar but the LMP1 is more advanced and the LMP1 cars are much faster than LMP2. The Audi probably hauls past that other prototype because it's a LMP2. Speedwise the Audi wasn't that much different to the othe LMP1s but had an efficiency benefit so needed less pit stops.
Please check out the subsequent R15 with a diesel V10 and even the R18 with still a very cool diesel V6 and a flywheel hybrid! Also fun fact, the R10 and R15 had only 5 speed gearboxes which made the engines sound even cooler with the loooong ratios in my opinion. They had redlines of around 6000rpm and even more for the R18, Peugeot had their 908 HDi diesel Le Mans cars reportedly go near 8000, but they spent far more time lower down to be efficient which is what they were good at, and had their peak power of around 3500 R15: ruclips.net/video/oI0Uuo7k380/видео.html R18: ruclips.net/video/920KpqOiX0E/видео.html
One of the last corner marshal posts I had before I got sick was during the era of Audi R10 race cars. Drivers' RIght behind the concrete wall at T12 Road Atlanta. From the side of the track, you couldn't really hear it..except when it came around by itself. Sounded like a cat purring when the foot went to the floorboard!!
The Audi R10 TDI was a hugely successful program with so many victories I can't count... If I am not mistaken Cummings did a diesel race car a long time ago...
I've had the pleasure of watching this car race in person at Sebring Raceway and what surprised me is they barely made an exhaust note almost silent when hearing this car from the outside. You would hear the tires gripping the ground more then the exhaust. In this onboard video you would think the car is fairly loud but it is not.
the diesel engine development back then went from v12's 10s to a v6t, and still made the same power. the engines where designed by ulrich baretzky, an engineering guru when it came to engines. unfortuatly the vw diesel gate hearlded the end of diesel at le mans.
fun facts about this, some of the drivers said that tey were afraid as the engine was so silent (compared to petrol) that for the first time they heared what the other components sonded like, and they felt like the whole car felt apart even tho it was normal operating noise. and laso they didnt care about which gear they came out of a turn as it had so much torque and it just pulled away anyway
The TDIs were technically competing under a different ruleset than others in the same class. Most things were the same, but because the TDIs were much better at conserving fuel, they were required to use a smaller fueltank, as the organizers tried to even out the number of pitstops among all the entries from each class. The diesels were also the only cars allowed to bring their own fuel, while all the petrol teams used the same fuel provided by the organizers...
After Alan McNish won Le Mans in an Audi diesel he was invited to test drive an F1 car. When he got out he was asked what he thought about the car. His answer:"Feels underpowered'.
In the late 90's BMW took their new 2L diesel engine and won their class at Le Mans because it was as fast as the others but refueled less times. With bigger engines the main issue is that they need a stronger gearbox because of the higher torque. I've been driving diesel engines since then and will keep doing it for as long as they keep building them. Diesel rules...
No they didn't... They won the Nurburgring 24 hours as mentioned in the video, but never won at Le Mans with a diesel. They have an outright win from 1999 with the V12 LMR and several GT class wins with M3s, but they have never run a diesel at Le Mans, let alone won a class.
If you really dig this, you should check out the documentary "Truth in 24" from 2008, here on YT, which not only shows the 2006 Le Mans race, but also the 12 hours of Sebring and the 1000 km of Monza that came before it. One of the details that stuck with me was a remark from one of the engineers that the V12 diesel was so much quieter that the drivers could hear a lot of things _other than the engine_ during the race. More gearbox sounds, more wheel rolling sounds, and so on. It changed the driving experience.
The Audi turbodiesel LMP cars are my absolute favorite of the Le Mans prototype racecars after the group C era ended. Just something so mechanical and raw and industrial about them, and they go like crazy... Also helps that my countryman Tom Kristensen (aka mr. Le Mans) drove the most successful era of Audi Sport during his prime in these exact cars. Best driver with the best cars, in Le Mans history. Such a defining piece of motorsport heritage.
What many people don't know, the special "F1 Sound" doesn't come from the engines, but from their secret, patented way of fusing all the header pipes into one singular one and the high pressure of the exhaust gases cause the high-pitched, whistling screams of F1 cars. If you search for it, you can see it; they look like some exotic take on a trumpet. 😂
Audi also made a 6.0 v12 diesel version of their q7 suv which was super expensive at the time and therefore super rare now... I'd look into it its interesting
The drivers said the engine was so silent they were surprised to basically only hear the wind and tyre noise from the inside of the car. VW also built a V10 Diesel in the Touareg SUV (readily available in North America). Not sure about reliability, but fuel mileage was a major reason - the diesels could do a couple more laps before having to refuel, which game them a big advantage.
I was at Le Mans the first year Audi had their diesel car on track. It was crazy hearing the differnce between the roaring Corvettes and screaming Aston Martins and the the Audi just rolled by almost without a sound... :D
Just learn more about this e it's successors, the R18 Ultra and e-Tron. Almost the same technology but V6 and so incredibly quiet and phantasmagoric. It's amazing !
You should check out the Lola's too. Damn cool early open cockpit LMP cars. I would say that vs F1 cars of the same era it would depend a lot on the track.
I had a Renault with a 1.9 Dci turbo diesel engine with 140 horsepower. This was such a strong engjne and in 6th gear it did about 2000 rpm at 120km/h and it made such a relaxing, soothing diesel drumroll sound I loved very much. 90 degree turns in the city in 3rd gear no problem at all. Sadly, diesel has gone out of fashion for the past 5 years really quick (in the Netherlands at least)
My 2012 Golf 2.0 TDi 150hp with DSG would shift to 6th and run at 1400-1500rpm around 60-70kmh. I believe it was around 1600rpm at 80. I have no motorways around me though.
Have to admit that I like clips from before the Mulsanne straight had chicanes batter. Like the 1977 clip where a Porsche 936 makes the 935s look like they are standing still...
LMPs were very fast, and the R10 is a legend, but... it still weighted 900Kg and had "only" around 650HP. F1s of that time were the very nimble V8s, with some 750Hp pushing only ~600kg. Not even close. Edit: For reference, in 2008 the F1 pole at Spa (a long an fast circuit that favours the less dragy LMPs) was 1:47 ; the Spa 1000km pole was 1:58 (set by a Peugeot 908, another diesel V12).
You should also check out onboards the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP, it was the main competitor to the R10 and later the R15 TDI's. It is considered by any driver that has driven it to be a hell of a racecar. It is the fastest non hybrid lmp car ever and holds lmp1 lap records wherever it went and the lmp1 hybrids didn't. Just about the only things that are faster than it at tracks where it went are those, f1 cars, and the 2008 era gp2 cars. The only real issue with it was reliability, in 2010 three of the four cars suffered engine issues and caught fire. For most of it's time in endurance racing it ran with over 700hp, and had been given over 100lbs of balast by the end of its run because it was just so damn fast.
What do you want in endurance racing. Reliability Fuel Economy Torque for overtaking and coming out of corners. Diesel gives you all of that. The diesel hybrids are even more mental.
Audi dominated the European Racing championship as well as The American Le Mans series. On the European front it dominated all the way through the R15. 13 Le Mans victories from 2000-to 2016. Not to mention all the other races they won through that period.
In long races like Le Mans, fuel economy plays a role, and that was why the diesels had an advantage, they could run more laps on a tank and thus have less pit stops, as others have said look up the 908 HDi FAP as well There were not many small diesel cars available in the USA, but there were a few like the Golf, hunt around and see if you can find a second hand manual diesel golf (luckily diesel gate has made them cheap and undesirable), I think it'll become your favourite car, yes even a small 4cyl diesel is a heap of fun to drive, so much torque compared to a petrol car, and in a light hatchback with stiff springs is a grin factory, you'll need to learn to change up earlier and down later, you want to enter a corner at about 1200-1500 rpm (just enough that the turbo is spooling) then punch it staying in the same gear to 3000 rpm and feel that tourque push you into the seat. then you let off and let the compression braking slow you down for the next corner......
The Le Man regulations dictate that the engine has to stay within the rev range of a production road car. That means this Beast uses a rev range of 3,000 to 5,000 rpm. The petrol race cars are up at around the 7,000 to 9,000rpm level. Half the revs, wonderful sound and still ridiculously quick!
The big advantage of Diesel engines comes with the long distance, most of all. In a 24 hour race like LeMans you may be able to do 3 or 4 pit stops less to refuel than equally powerful petrol cars. And that is a significant time saving. In a historic film about a Indy 500 race in the 1960s they showed a Diesel racecar as well. But it didn't perform so well because it was a lot heavier than the competitors. Diesel engines were not as refined then as they are today. So the Diesel idea didn't really stick back then. But they did try... Btw., if you see a car being passed as if its parked in a LeMans race, its because they have very different classes of cars on the track at the same time. The LMP1 cars are the king of the hill, so a souped up Porsche or Lambo has no chance whatsoever against one of them.
the biggest reason for diesel engines to not be that common in road racing, that is IF they are allowed in the rules, is because simply nobody does it and everything has to be engineered from the ground up to be used with a diesel engine in racing. high pressure fuel pumps, high pressure injectors, chassis to take the heavy diesel engine, gearbox for the extreme torque, etc. audi used the opportunity to develop all this and use the knowledge they won as well as the marketing of tdi for their road cars. so the extreme costs of engineering and the biggest upside of having way better fuel mileage is only really feasible in a prototype scenario for endurance races.
Not really comparable, but my daily driver is a 2 litre HDi Peugeot, first registered in 2003 (so around 21 years old). Not sporty at all, but so much torque. Also no traction control, so pulling out of a junction, when you need to be nippy, it's hard not to get wheelspin, even in the dry.
No traction control on a 2003? Is it a work van? Thats got to be very uncommon for a normal passenger car by that year, are you sure you dont mix it up with (the more extensive) stability control?
@@davidpreston9909 Fair enough, that explains it. My car is also diesel powered, by a 3 liter engine with about 350hp. Grips pretty well but on bumpy roads the traction control can get a bit of a workout. I am trying to make it it into a combined long distance cruiser/towing car/daily driver/ track car... not the easiest combination to pull off... cheers mate.
For the amazing they were, the main point of the TDi was their fuel efficiency. They did less stops and that was all the advantage. Once they were forced to use smaller tanks, petrol engines went back to the winning positions. (Was that or everyone to move to tdi :) )
I han an Alfa Romeo 159 2.0 diesel estate...only 170bhp stock, but had 259lbs/ft of torque at just 2,000rpm. Made it a very comfortable cruiser (2000 rpm in sixth with an indicated 70 mph) on a highway with plenty of overtaking power and great economy. Manual, of course. Did once put the foot down on a good piece of road here in the UK and was very surprised as to how stable the car was at 115 mph. Totally illegal of course, but I just had to know. The Alfa is one of those cars that asks you to drive the hell out of it.
5:45 an insane torque all across the rpm range = you don't need to shift as often as your gas-powered opponents; you will also accelerate fine when you're not that close to the redline. That's a general phenomenon even for the most dull of passenger vehicles - the diesel version is almost always far more agile from low rpm than the gasoline version, even a gasoline version with 30% more power.
the figures acording to wiki are 650 hp between 3,000 and 5,000 rpm, and over 11ftlb of torque, and that was in its first year.... figures this ran from 06-10 in both le mans and US le mans series before they both had to make rules to nerf it... like the volvo 5 cylinders
Diesel engines are running with much lower revs as gasoline engines but have much higher torque with low revs. The gear shift is automatic with german double clutch system and therefore superfast shifting.
@IWrocker you should check the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP LMP1 car... That car made some drastical changes to rules in LMP category, since Audi wasn't able to catch it 😂😅
I invite you to find out about the beginnings of the 24 hours of Le Mans, the rules applied at the time, the conditions, the machines, it's absolutely incredible.
The R10 set a 1:58.7 lap time at Spa, for reference the 2007 F1 GP at Spa had a fastest lap of 1:48.0 and a pole time of 1:45.9. That year's GP2 at Spa saw a 1:58.5 as fastest lap. Formula 1 is faster, but LMP1 was about on par with GP2 cars back then. There aren't many things quicker round a racing track.
Also surprised it's so grunty for a V12. These things do 340 kmh down the straights, 212mph, should be screaming. Always wondered if diesel gave them and edge with more engine reliability known for diesels. They do rev considerably lower so that should also be a benefit, power is evidently not missing whatsoever. Really cool stuff
Audi were in the process of renewing their contact with,on the quite, the u.n.'s replacement diesel engines for the u.n.'s light tanks, I,at the time serving as a sergeant/coms and k9 officer, in Chad,got to drive one of those,light tanks(4.8 tons) and that little,ha, monster could go frighteningly fast, I can proudly say drove 135 mph across the Chadian desert,God Ian, I so regret not filming some of the hairy stuff we, my unit at the time, my uncle used to pro rally with, alpine/Renaud, our unit had a v twelve, 5.6,6 cilinder, some guys in other units got up to 185 mph, the russkies were using kamza, also v12 diesel, they were tougher but 175 mph was thier top, only their spetznaz had quicker,197/8,mph, our unit never caught those fukers, Audi,auff von schprutt technic's,gbh., good video dude,bless u sir,chau for now
Should definitely check out the Audi r18 it’s another Audi diesel lmp1 and it sounds like a fighter jet on the flybys also if you want a v12 the Matra simca ms670 is one of the best
Audi wasn't the only brand that competed with diesel engines at Le Mans. Shortly after, Peugeot came up with the 908 HDi FAP to compete against the Audi R10 TDI, eventually winning outright in 2009.
Shortly before, independent team Taurus Sports built their own diesel V10, taken literally out of a VW Touareg and installed into a Lola in 2004 (VW found out why they wanted to just buy an engine and refused, so they just picked up a couple of Touaregs!)
Caterpillar created new internals and control systems with Ricardo engineering, the whole thing was independently done apart from Caterpillar's involvement. First it destroyed gearboxes, then it ate clutches, so didn't get any great results.
Prior to that they had diesels and gas turbines at Le Mans in previous decades.
@@OsellaSquadraCorse my engineering knowledge is limited, but when talking insane torque applications, I wonder why not just go with a torque converter even if its a bit slower a double clutch, but at least it can handle the torque
Audi it won Le Mans in 2000, then again in 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. Audi also won nine American Le Mans Series championships between 2000 and 2008 and two World Endurance Championships.
@@alunchurcher7060 In a way, I think we can include 2003 too, despite having been a Bentley, that car benefitted from Audi's know-how, including its engine.
I saw the Audis in the American series in 2000 at Adelaide with a group of friends. It was new years, and what a week end and road trip that was. Having beers at The Stag Hotel at night, watching them wiz by.
Tom Christensen!! -As a dane I consider him a legend!
@@Roddy_Zeh Yes, the Bentleys were the evolution of the 1999 Audi R8C (Coupé) both built by RTN (Racing Technology Norfolk), while the other R8s were the evolution of the 1999 R8R (Roadster); the R8C wasn't so successful because of shorter development and Audi ditched it in favor of the roadster.
@Roddy_Zeh Far from it. Next to the entire car was different to the R8's.
When viewed objectively, only the engine block was the same as the R8's. The rest of the car was a complete redesign, including the transverse gearbox.
It is a common misconception to view these Bentley's as rebadged Audi's with a roof, but that's doing the team, and this near perfect Le Mans victory, a big disservice..
To me, these endurance cars are way more exciting than F1 ever was. The whole series is just more interesting, encouraging every team to be as unique as possible with their engineering ideas and builds. Highly recommended! :)
Same. F1 is the 100 meter sprinters, while the Le Mans series cars are the marathon runners.
I can look at a sprinter doing the 100 meters in less than ten seconds and know that it's very fast. But marathon runners are another thing altogether. They're running speeds for two hours straight that most people can't even do on a bicycle for that long. It's insane.
I think the v10 era was the peak of formula 1. Now wec is killing it with hypercar and the gt3 class
@@marksmits1911 I agree. I've been watching F1 for 38 years, and there were some epic seasons, but for the last two decades it's downhill...
F1 has lost its way with all the rules and spending limits. That's why car manufacturers take part in the le mans series and such, since they can innovate. F1 is just for pictures with rich people. Real deal is really the endurance races.
It's pretty much all about aerodynamics in F1 these days. They change the regs every few years, but it's about aerodynamics for the most part.
2006 is recently. We are still 16 in our heads. What a nice toy.
Look at the Q7 V12 TDI, a street car with a vision of that engine.
Good suggestion
2:30 "I associate screaming engines" well, for a diesel, it is screaming tho :D
Diesel used to be King in most of europe, In endurance racing they really come into their own, especially when big brands throws their knowledge and money at it 😂. Very Hard to beat .
In the ex-Yugoslavia, the Golf 1 diesel still drives as if it is "new" and is still statment
And the expensive diesel hybrids were too superior, so they changed the rules, and that's why we can't have nice things anymore 🙄
It was easy to beat them in the end, 1st halve the fuel tank by regulation. 2nd repeat until petrol engine is the fastest option over 24 hours.
I owned a 1,9 ltr TDI (110 hp) back in 1998. Golf III „Variant“ (Station wagon). Fuel consumption (Autobahn) was 4 liters with average speed of 130 km/h. Torque was enormous. Good motors!
At the same time I also had a Golf 3 Variant 1.9 TDI with 110 HP. Shortly afterwards I decided to upgrade it to around 129 HP with chip tuning. This meant there was even more power when accelerating while maintaining the same fuel consumption. The top speed remained almost the same.
4L/100Km at 130? I call BS on that. That is lower than my 2012 Golf TDI 2.0 150hp used on average with no motorway driving. I could get below 4L in my 2010 Polo 1.6 TDI with 115hp if driving gentle and averaging 60-70. That same Polo was up around 7-8L going down the motorway from Oslo to Göteborg at 110kmh.
The 1.9 will also run forever
@@danishghostrider yeah, pretty much outlasting any shell it got put into...
@@Gazer75 You are comparing different cars here. Mine was from 1995. Less weight. And it surely depends on terrain and fuel quality and tires etc.
🤷🏻♂️
And to think Audi put a V12 diesel into a Q7 with nearly 500hp and over 730lbs ft of torque 😮
And it was probably a conservative tune.
@@Roddy_Zeh It would probably blow the transmission if they boosted it any more.
@@danishghostrider Yeah, and even stock, watching vids of that thing launching, I felt like that transmission was already dealing with more torque than it could handle.
@@Roddy_Zeh How it even works without snapping in half is beyond my comprehension. It's like they said "How much torque do you want? Yes."
@@danishghostrider True that! 😂
There's a UK company called Darkside, I think, that's stuffing one of those V12's in a VW Amarok.
I sure would like to see more projects featuring that engine. Sucks that they're so rare and scarce, kinda like Cadillac's Blackwing engine, that 4.2 V8 twin turbo only used in the CT6, two versions [CT6-V/V-Sport and the Platinum 4.2TT].
The Advantage of the diesel is that consumes less fuel, that means less pit stops and less time lost. This was the reason that they was unbeatable by the gas powered cars.
Plus they worked out they could burn engine oil to fuel the engine. There was no restriction in volume of oil consumption...
Eventually they were forced to change the fuel tank size to be *fair* to the gas powered cars
And thats because most fuels are still measured in volume and not weight. As Diesel has a higher energy density, it is heavier and you consume less volume to achieve the same result as a gasoline engine, but actually consume more weight, as Diesel engines are usually less efficient.
On gas fuels (very low energy density), they do measure in weight.
@@sasskee Diesel engines are more efficient. It it the exact opposite to your saying. The problem with diesel engines is mainly air pollution i.e. carbon particulate as well as NOx in exhaust gas. Those air pollution problem makes the diesel engines hard to compete in private vehicle market.
Not really, they had smaller fuel tanks so only really went one lap longer, an advantage to be sure but not a massive one. The real advantage was that they had much more power, real figures aren't out there but the R10 was something like 650-700hp while the Peugeot was well passed 700hp. The Judd V10 most independent teams were using at the time was about 600- 620hp.
I would think every Danish person have some love for audi's le mans cars just saying tom Kristensen
Im Danish and I can confirm that.
(Im serious that im from Denmark)
VW group always loved diesel, and europeans loved the tdi's from Germany and the HDI from france
You can see TDI Racing in the WTCC With Seat León Cars, and in the paris Dakar, with the vw "race" touareg.....
And i remember, around 2006, a TDI "touareg lookalike" baja trophy truck, run some bajas there in the US
1.6 HDI is the master of low consumption. I was driving a Peugeot 307 1.6 HDI for a few months and in extra urban conditions you would rarely get more than 4 liters /100km. Usually it was 3.8l/100km without even thinking of it.
The R10 has about 675 HP at 5000/min and 1200 Nm (885 ft lbs) of maximum torque. It's predecessor, the R8, started a winning streak of 15 years for Diesels in the 24hrs of Le Mans.
The R8 wasn't a diesel. The R10 was the first diesel to win, and dominated due to the fuel efficiency advantage it had over gas-powered cars.
@@mbochum83 You are right. Only the R10 and the R15 were Diesel cars.
@@SiqueScarface R18 and subsequent ones were, too.
@@Roddy_Zeh Right. R18 also was a Diesel to win Le Mans several times.
Diesels won 9 times, 8 Audis (R10, 15, 18 and 18 e-tron), 1 Peugeot (908 HDi).
Then dieselgate happened, the regulations stopped favoring diesel, Porsche sent diesels packing on a reg level playground and the fad died out.
Industrial sound is the best description ever for the sound this thing makes.
Audi (and volkswagen) was really promoting diesels at the time by making crazy and technologically advanced diesel engines. The pinnacle of it all imo is the AUDI Q7 V12. Omg, what a machine. I loved driving ut in Test Drive Unlimited 2.
on the motorsports video topic , really surprised you haven't done any rally super special stage videos yet. the best rally cars 1 on 1 at same time , back in the Subaru Vs Evo Vs Ford Cossie Era they were epic !
My boss at work used to have a VW Tourareg V10 TDI. beast of a car. ( 5.0-liter turbodiesel V10, rated at 310 horsepower and 553 lb-ft of torque)
What year was that? Seems very low on power for a 5L
2008 had 310hp. It may seem low, but something like a Ford 7.3 diesel made even less@@shorey66
Yes! An IWrocker video about my favourite racecar!
One of my favourite race cars of all time, It not only sounds great it looks great too imo
The high-performance diesel engine, the common rail, was invented by an Italian physicist in 1997,, Mario Ricco and developed and PRE-industrialized in the FIAT research department (which then sold the patent to Bosch). The first cars with common rail engines were the Alfa Romeo 156 which mounted 1900 and 2400 JTD. FIAT for about 10-15 years had a huge advantage over all the European competition on this type of engine. My brother with the 1900 JTDM 150 hp traveled 650,000 km after which he sold the car to buy another newer Alfa with an updated 1900 JTDM engine, a fast indestructible engine with the right and economical maintenance. At that time the VW and Audi diesel engines were the worst ever, they were the last to recover the technological gap they had with FIAT, even BMW and Mercedes recovered the technological gap before VW and AUDI. For about two years, the system remained exclusive to FIAT, Alfa Romeo and Lancia, then it was adopted by all the major automotive groups with the exception of the Volkswagen group, which began using it only after about a decade.
the story is a little wrong
1913 explored by Vickers Great Britain with patent
further development by ETH Zurich in 1966
From 1964 onwards it was further developed in the GDR at the University of Magdeburg
in the GDR 1981 6 VDS 26/20 ALE-2 as a common rail system diesel engine tested in trucks
The process was known in the GDR as the “electronic diesel injection system” (EDES)
At the end of the 1980s, the aborted development from the GDR was taken up by Magneti Marelli, Centro Ricerche Fiat and Elasis and continued until 1993
But financial difficulties arose here too, which is why the patents and development documents were assigned to Bosch in 1997
In Europe, Bosch succeeded in bringing the first road vehicle with common rail injection to market in October 1997 in the form of the Alfa Romeo 156 JTD. Shortly before that, in September 1997, the MTU BR4000 engine series for rail and off-highway applications went into series production with a common rail system from L’Orange. In 1998, Daimler-Benz followed suit as the first German manufacturer of a common rail series vehicle with the OM 611. BMW also offered a common rail engine with the BMW M57. In the same year, Citroën also began development and introduced its own system with the C6.
The PSA-Peugeot-Citroën Group, in collaboration with Siemens, launched the first piezo injectors
@@bernie300c Although the history of common rail in the automotive field dates back to the 1980s and 1990s, engines with the same principle as common rail had already been used in the past in the naval and railway sectors, on boats and locomotives. The principle of the direct injection "common rail" engine was developed by researchers at the Zurich Polytechnic starting in the 1930s but was inapplicable to diesel engines for automotive use. for cars, it was invented by the physicist Mario Ricco from Bari, and was designed, developed and pre-industrialized by the Fiat Group (Magneti Marelli, Centro Ricerche Fiat branch of Bari and Elasis). The pre-industrialization of the "common rail" system began in 1990 from the collaboration between Magneti Marelli, Centro Ricerche Fiat and Elasis. After the development carried out by the Fiat Group, the project was sold, in April 1994 when the technology was now mature, to the German Robert Bosch GmbH (under pressure from Mercedes), which took care of the industrialization and marketing. In any case, FIAT enjoyed 2 years of exclusivity compared to the competition. The short-sightedness of FIAT, which ceded the rights to this technology to Bosch, which enriched itself thanks to this product, remains inexplicable. On June 27, 2008, the second version of the common rail was presented: the Multijet JTDm engine. The third generation of the common rail debuted in 2013, with the Alfa Romeo JTDm2 engine.
@@RubraLIber The first common rail diesel engine in a road vehicle was the MN 106 engine from the East German VEB IFA Motorenwerke Nordhausen. It was installed in a single IFA W50 in 1985. It ran for several thousand kilometers without problems and was the first to use constant pressure.
The first successfully mass-produced vehicle with Common Rail was sold in Japan in 1995 and further developed by Denso.
Prototypes were developed in the 1990s by Magneti Marelli, Centro Ricerche Fiat in Bari and Elasis and further developed by the physicist Mario Ricco of the Fiat Group, which is why the system was sold by the IFA to Magneti Marelli at the end of 1980, including the 26 patents.
Bosch, for its part, provided financial and technical support and Alfa built it as standard in the first passenger cars with Mario Ricco.
Mario Ricco managed to develop the common rail as a compact car engine, that was another milestone.
Alfa used to be at the top in many things and was ahead of its time with technology. I think it's a shame that Alfa itself no longer has the strength it does today.
At the end I would like to say that Mario Ricco is a top engineer.
@@bernie300c Your reconstruction is very precise, I would like to add that only in the 90s was a quality of design reached to satisfy European motorists who were completely converted to petrol and considered diesel vehicles dirty, smelly and slow. Another clarification is that what you consider produced by Alfa Romeo is actually made by the FIAT research center and in any case always under FIAT management, in fact the JTDm was an engine mounted on many FIAT and Alfa cars, at home we had Fiat Punto Alfa 147 Q2 Alfa 159, all cars with JTDm the most robust and least expensive diesel engine to manage, perhaps only Mercedes OM46 was equally robust, but more expensive to manage. However two fantastic products for those who want to stay in a power range that goes from 150 hp to 220. Unfortunately the biggest problem of Fiat has always been the managers trained for finance and the stock exchange and not at all competent on industrial products
These engines were extremely reliable and fast. They dominated for several years.
The R10 with its turbodiesel was indeed reliable, and it was more fuel efficient compared to its competitors, which gave it a very significant edge even when some of the highest performing gasoline cars could reach higher speeds in later years, like some of the famous battles against Peugeot for years. The R10 still managed more laps per stint in between refueling which played a big role in their race strategy as well. The whole Audi team were just on another level.
Since you already looked at the R10, it would be awesome to complete the lineup with its two main successors, the R15 and R18 Ultra, which perfected the formula and were also the first LMP racecars to introduce an active hybrid system and AWD -which was unheard of not just in Le Mans but in motorsport as a whole. It has since become standard both with Toyota and Porsche in later years, and now in the replacement Hypercar class today where every competing car uses these systems. Audi pioneered all of it with their R10/R15/R18 turbodiesel LMP cars.
The Peugeots were also diesel. Regs favoured diesel and Audi and Peugeot were the only big dogs interested in it. There weren't any competitive gasoline cars until Toyota and Porsche joined much latter, in the hybrid era. And as the regs leveled out, gasoline eventually came on top.
Driver61 has a nice video about that "When a Diesel DOMINATED at Le Mans"; some drivers called it a ghost car because beyond 250kph/150mph the wind noise was much louder than the engine.
They even brought it onto the road in the Q7 V12 TDI probably it wasn't directly that same engine, but some parts and it's also a V12 Diesel after all, they even had concepts of a R8 (the road car) V12 TDI and it drove, but didn't went into production, one problem was that they didn't have enough room for that engine combined with a gearbox that is able to handle the whopping 1000Nm (737.5 lbft) of torque (Mercedes had 7-speed gearboxes in their 63 AMGs but the 65 AMGs still had a 5-speed because that V12 twin turbo also had a 1000Nm), they even had to modify their engine test stands that weren't initally able to handle that much torque.
Fun fact: Early diesel cars up into the 1980s had some ironic nicknames in Germany like "Wanderdüne - migrating dune" (especially matching to German taxis which usually come in a "ivory" beige so slightly sandish color) and "Heizölferrari - heating oil Ferrari" (heating oil extra light was identical to diesel fuel, however it has less tax and fuelling a diesel car with that is illegal because of tax doding/fraud, to prevent that, heating oil gets some color pigments that will leave residue in your engine); Audi literally built a heating oil-powered Ferrari killer 😁
And Volkswagen literally built a "heating oil Maserati", Maserati had a mid-engined sports car in the 70s, the "Bora" (named after a wind) and Volkswagen also has that wind naming pattern (Golf - Gulfstream, Passat, Scirocco) and named their Jetta Mk IV in Europe "Bora" (the Mk III was called "Vento" because the Jetta wasn't very successful in Europe, so they tried these new names), of course also available with a Diesel engine.
Another Volkswagen brand, SEAT, also won the WTCC (World Touring Car Championship with rather civilized compact cars derived from the road versions and just 2 litres of displacement) in 2008 and 2009 with their Léon TDI.
It's nice how they've showed to world (win on sunday sell on monday) more than once that Diesel also works outside of truck racing!
Love this Austrian numberplate in your background :D greetings from (what a surprise xD) Austria
and v12 TDI is the best thing ever they build this engine into the Audi Q7 Roadcar back in the day this was such a fast smooth sailer on the Autobahn maaan I hope the Diesel gets rid of his bad image really really quick
Reminds me of Jimmy Broadbent and DHR racing the R18 "tractor" on iRacing.
we've got a 2023 chevy tahoe with the 3.0L diesel. that thing rocks. very good fuel economy, lots of torque. it's not a race car but you will never be in a situation on the road where it doesn't have enough power to do what you want with it. and it's so freaking quiet you'd _never_ know it's a diesel. sound's like a gasser.
Remember at Le Mans in those days you had 4 classes racing at once - LMP1 and LMP2 and GT1 and GT2.
Outwardly the LMP1 and LMP2s looked similar but the LMP1 is more advanced and the LMP1 cars are much faster than LMP2.
The Audi probably hauls past that other prototype because it's a LMP2.
Speedwise the Audi wasn't that much different to the othe LMP1s but had an efficiency benefit so needed less pit stops.
Please check out the subsequent R15 with a diesel V10 and even the R18 with still a very cool diesel V6 and a flywheel hybrid! Also fun fact, the R10 and R15 had only 5 speed gearboxes which made the engines sound even cooler with the loooong ratios in my opinion. They had redlines of around 6000rpm and even more for the R18, Peugeot had their 908 HDi diesel Le Mans cars reportedly go near 8000, but they spent far more time lower down to be efficient which is what they were good at, and had their peak power of around 3500
R15: ruclips.net/video/oI0Uuo7k380/видео.html
R18: ruclips.net/video/920KpqOiX0E/видео.html
The Audi TDI always sounded like it had had enough at 5k rpm, whereas the Peugeot sounded like it wanted more at 7k. Shame it was so unreliable.
The v6 single turbo with double spool idea was peak engineering of tdi. That engine and car was ridiculously well thought.
One of the last corner marshal posts I had before I got sick was during the era of Audi R10 race cars. Drivers' RIght behind the concrete wall at T12 Road Atlanta. From the side of the track, you couldn't really hear it..except when it came around by itself. Sounded like a cat purring when the foot went to the floorboard!!
The Audi R10 TDI was a hugely successful program with so many victories I can't count...
If I am not mistaken Cummings did a diesel race car a long time ago...
I've had the pleasure of watching this car race in person at Sebring Raceway and what surprised me is they barely made an exhaust note almost silent when hearing this car from the outside. You would hear the tires gripping the ground more then the exhaust. In this onboard video you would think the car is fairly loud but it is not.
I am still waiting for a Porsche 911 RSR sound reaction. Would be awesome :)
the diesel engine development back then went from v12's 10s to a v6t, and still made the same power. the engines where designed by ulrich baretzky, an engineering guru when it came to engines. unfortuatly the vw diesel gate hearlded the end of diesel at le mans.
They raced all over the US in the ALMS, and dominated
That audi is epic it's making me feel old I miss cars like this
fun facts about this, some of the drivers said that tey were afraid as the engine was so silent (compared to petrol) that for the first time they heared what the other components sonded like, and they felt like the whole car felt apart even tho it was normal operating noise. and laso they didnt care about which gear they came out of a turn as it had so much torque and it just pulled away anyway
The TDIs were technically competing under a different ruleset than others in the same class.
Most things were the same, but because the TDIs were much better at conserving fuel, they were required to use a smaller fueltank, as the organizers tried to even out the number of pitstops among all the entries from each class. The diesels were also the only cars allowed to bring their own fuel, while all the petrol teams used the same fuel provided by the organizers...
Mentioning High RPM and saying F1 and NASCAR in the same sentence, made my smile ;)
After Alan McNish won Le Mans in an Audi diesel he was invited to test drive an F1 car. When he got out he was asked what he thought about the car. His answer:"Feels underpowered'.
In the late 90's BMW took their new 2L diesel engine and won their class at Le Mans because it was as fast as the others but refueled less times. With bigger engines the main issue is that they need a stronger gearbox because of the higher torque. I've been driving diesel engines since then and will keep doing it for as long as they keep building them. Diesel rules...
No they didn't... They won the Nurburgring 24 hours as mentioned in the video, but never won at Le Mans with a diesel. They have an outright win from 1999 with the V12 LMR and several GT class wins with M3s, but they have never run a diesel at Le Mans, let alone won a class.
@@OsellaSquadraCorse I stand corrected. Thanks
If you really dig this, you should check out the documentary "Truth in 24" from 2008, here on YT, which not only shows the 2006 Le Mans race, but also the 12 hours of Sebring and the 1000 km of Monza that came before it.
One of the details that stuck with me was a remark from one of the engineers that the V12 diesel was so much quieter that the drivers could hear a lot of things _other than the engine_ during the race. More gearbox sounds, more wheel rolling sounds, and so on. It changed the driving experience.
The Audi turbodiesel LMP cars are my absolute favorite of the Le Mans prototype racecars after the group C era ended. Just something so mechanical and raw and industrial about them, and they go like crazy...
Also helps that my countryman Tom Kristensen (aka mr. Le Mans) drove the most successful era of Audi Sport during his prime in these exact cars. Best driver with the best cars, in Le Mans history.
Such a defining piece of motorsport heritage.
"Good pick up" - Blues Brothers.
What many people don't know, the special "F1 Sound" doesn't come from the engines, but from their secret, patented way of fusing all the header pipes into one singular one and the high pressure of the exhaust gases cause the high-pitched, whistling screams of F1 cars. If you search for it, you can see it; they look like some exotic take on a trumpet. 😂
Audi also made a 6.0 v12 diesel version of their q7 suv which was super expensive at the time and therefore super rare now... I'd look into it its interesting
I'm surprised I still remember every turn on this track from playing for a motorsports on Xbox lol
Surely you need to find some onboard from the R18 E-tron? That was an amazing car to see and hear (or sometimes not hear) at Le Mans...
Mr LeMans Tom Kristensen was so dominant in that car it's unbelievable
The drivers said the engine was so silent they were surprised to basically only hear the wind and tyre noise from the inside of the car.
VW also built a V10 Diesel in the Touareg SUV (readily available in North America).
Not sure about reliability, but fuel mileage was a major reason - the diesels could do a couple more laps before having to refuel, which game them a big advantage.
In 1986 season a BMW Diesel race in the Spanish rallys de Tierra (Gravel/Dirt) Championship.
I was at Le Mans the first year Audi had their diesel car on track. It was crazy hearing the differnce between the roaring Corvettes and screaming Aston Martins and the the Audi just rolled by almost without a sound... :D
Just learn more about this e it's successors, the R18 Ultra and e-Tron. Almost the same technology but V6 and so incredibly quiet and phantasmagoric. It's amazing !
The Diesel v12 sounds good until you listen to something like a Lola Aston Martin v12
You should check out the Lola's too. Damn cool early open cockpit LMP cars.
I would say that vs F1 cars of the same era it would depend a lot on the track.
I had a Renault with a 1.9 Dci turbo diesel engine with 140 horsepower. This was such a strong engjne and in 6th gear it did about 2000 rpm at 120km/h and it made such a relaxing, soothing diesel drumroll sound I loved very much. 90 degree turns in the city in 3rd gear no problem at all.
Sadly, diesel has gone out of fashion for the past 5 years really quick (in the Netherlands at least)
My 2012 Golf 2.0 TDi 150hp with DSG would shift to 6th and run at 1400-1500rpm around 60-70kmh. I believe it was around 1600rpm at 80. I have no motorways around me though.
Have to admit that I like clips from before the Mulsanne straight had chicanes batter. Like the 1977 clip where a Porsche 936 makes the 935s look like they are standing still...
I'm sure John Nielsen and others disagree with you.
You can hear the turbo "whistle" on top though 🙂
I was willing you on to look at its successor... The stunning R18!
LMPs were very fast, and the R10 is a legend, but... it still weighted 900Kg and had "only" around 650HP.
F1s of that time were the very nimble V8s, with some 750Hp pushing only ~600kg. Not even close.
Edit: For reference, in 2008 the F1 pole at Spa (a long an fast circuit that favours the less dragy LMPs) was 1:47 ; the Spa 1000km pole was 1:58 (set by a Peugeot 908, another diesel V12).
You should also check out onboards the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP, it was the main competitor to the R10 and later the R15 TDI's. It is considered by any driver that has driven it to be a hell of a racecar. It is the fastest non hybrid lmp car ever and holds lmp1 lap records wherever it went and the lmp1 hybrids didn't. Just about the only things that are faster than it at tracks where it went are those, f1 cars, and the 2008 era gp2 cars. The only real issue with it was reliability, in 2010 three of the four cars suffered engine issues and caught fire. For most of it's time in endurance racing it ran with over 700hp, and had been given over 100lbs of balast by the end of its run because it was just so damn fast.
What do you want in endurance racing.
Reliability
Fuel Economy
Torque for overtaking and coming out of corners.
Diesel gives you all of that.
The diesel hybrids are even more mental.
You have to one day watch the Le Manns 24 hour race especially on a clear dry night, the engine sounds are worth the air fairs alone.
Not only did it race, it won, many times !
My god that sounds good. Reminds me of the Auto Union GP cars, even though it had a V16.
If you loved the Audi R10’s V12, then you’re surely going to love the BMW V12 LMR, which won the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans
Audi dominated the European Racing championship as well as The American Le Mans series. On the European front it dominated all the way through the R15. 13 Le Mans victories from 2000-to 2016. Not to mention all the other races they won through that period.
In long races like Le Mans, fuel economy plays a role, and that was why the diesels had an advantage, they could run more laps on a tank and thus have less pit stops, as others have said look up the 908 HDi FAP as well
There were not many small diesel cars available in the USA, but there were a few like the Golf, hunt around and see if you can find a second hand manual diesel golf (luckily diesel gate has made them cheap and undesirable), I think it'll become your favourite car, yes even a small 4cyl diesel is a heap of fun to drive, so much torque compared to a petrol car, and in a light hatchback with stiff springs is a grin factory, you'll need to learn to change up earlier and down later, you want to enter a corner at about 1200-1500 rpm (just enough that the turbo is spooling) then punch it staying in the same gear to 3000 rpm and feel that tourque push you into the seat. then you let off and let the compression braking slow you down for the next corner......
What I love about diesel engines is the torque. Love torque way much more than horsepower.
The Le Man regulations dictate that the engine has to stay within the rev range of a production road car. That means this Beast uses a rev range of 3,000 to 5,000 rpm. The petrol race cars are up at around the 7,000 to 9,000rpm level. Half the revs, wonderful sound and still ridiculously quick!
Peugeot had a diesel engine as well and they lead for years.
VW had a diesel rally golf in the late 90s.
It's got a serious amount of shnell. Love it.
The big advantage of Diesel engines comes with the long distance, most of all. In a 24 hour race like LeMans you may be able to do 3 or 4 pit stops less to refuel than equally powerful petrol cars. And that is a significant time saving.
In a historic film about a Indy 500 race in the 1960s they showed a Diesel racecar as well. But it didn't perform so well because it was a lot heavier than the competitors. Diesel engines were not as refined then as they are today. So the Diesel idea didn't really stick back then. But they did try...
Btw., if you see a car being passed as if its parked in a LeMans race, its because they have very different classes of cars on the track at the same time. The LMP1 cars are the king of the hill, so a souped up Porsche or Lambo has no chance whatsoever against one of them.
Awesome car!
You should see the French Movie "Michel Vaillant", inspired by a french Comics, about race cars. This movies shows some COOL LMP racing
the biggest reason for diesel engines to not be that common in road racing, that is IF they are allowed in the rules, is because simply nobody does it and everything has to be engineered from the ground up to be used with a diesel engine in racing. high pressure fuel pumps, high pressure injectors, chassis to take the heavy diesel engine, gearbox for the extreme torque, etc. audi used the opportunity to develop all this and use the knowledge they won as well as the marketing of tdi for their road cars. so the extreme costs of engineering and the biggest upside of having way better fuel mileage is only really feasible in a prototype scenario for endurance races.
In 99 i had 1.9 tdi seat ibiza , two seater ,its a Volkswagen engine whit 110 hp, i can tell you it is a little plane whitout wings.
Not really comparable, but my daily driver is a 2 litre HDi Peugeot, first registered in 2003 (so around 21 years old). Not sporty at all, but so much torque. Also no traction control, so pulling out of a junction, when you need to be nippy, it's hard not to get wheelspin, even in the dry.
No traction control on a 2003? Is it a work van? Thats got to be very uncommon for a normal passenger car by that year, are you sure you dont mix it up with (the more extensive) stability control?
@@GoldenCroc It's a Partner estate, so not far off a van.
@@davidpreston9909 Fair enough, that explains it.
My car is also diesel powered, by a 3 liter engine with about 350hp. Grips pretty well but on bumpy roads the traction control can get a bit of a workout. I am trying to make it it into a combined long distance cruiser/towing car/daily driver/ track car... not the easiest combination to pull off... cheers mate.
For the amazing they were, the main point of the TDi was their fuel efficiency. They did less stops and that was all the advantage. Once they were forced to use smaller tanks, petrol engines went back to the winning positions. (Was that or everyone to move to tdi :) )
I han an Alfa Romeo 159 2.0 diesel estate...only 170bhp stock, but had 259lbs/ft of torque at just 2,000rpm. Made it a very comfortable cruiser (2000 rpm in sixth with an indicated 70 mph) on a highway with plenty of overtaking power and great economy. Manual, of course. Did once put the foot down on a good piece of road here in the UK and was very surprised as to how stable the car was at 115 mph. Totally illegal of course, but I just had to know. The Alfa is one of those cars that asks you to drive the hell out of it.
And they won!
5:45 an insane torque all across the rpm range = you don't need to shift as often as your gas-powered opponents; you will also accelerate fine when you're not that close to the redline.
That's a general phenomenon even for the most dull of passenger vehicles - the diesel version is almost always far more agile from low rpm than the gasoline version, even a gasoline version with 30% more power.
That sound reminds me of 1970s Jaguar E-Type V12 engine
the figures acording to wiki are 650 hp between 3,000 and 5,000 rpm, and over 11ftlb of torque, and that was in its first year.... figures this ran from 06-10 in both le mans and US le mans series before they both had to make rules to nerf it... like the volvo 5 cylinders
Peace of cake. Check Porsche 919 Nordschleife record😊
Im pretty sure he already did.
Diesel engines are running with much lower revs as gasoline engines but have much higher torque with low revs. The gear shift is automatic with german double clutch system and therefore superfast shifting.
641 hp -@ 5000 rpm and 1100nm touque (811 foot pound)
@IWrocker you should check the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP LMP1 car... That car made some drastical changes to rules in LMP category, since Audi wasn't able to catch it 😂😅
I invite you to find out about the beginnings of the 24 hours of Le Mans, the rules applied at the time, the conditions, the machines, it's absolutely incredible.
I think on that particular lmp1 car the shift point was about 5500rpm.
The R10 set a 1:58.7 lap time at Spa, for reference the 2007 F1 GP at Spa had a fastest lap of 1:48.0 and a pole time of 1:45.9. That year's GP2 at Spa saw a 1:58.5 as fastest lap. Formula 1 is faster, but LMP1 was about on par with GP2 cars back then. There aren't many things quicker round a racing track.
Well, a diesel Cummingw took pole in Indy 500 back in the 50s... :)
Also surprised it's so grunty for a V12. These things do 340 kmh down the straights, 212mph, should be screaming. Always wondered if diesel gave them and edge with more engine reliability known for diesels. They do rev considerably lower so that should also be a benefit, power is evidently not missing whatsoever. Really cool stuff
Audi were in the process of renewing their contact with,on the quite, the u.n.'s replacement diesel engines for the u.n.'s light tanks, I,at the time serving as a sergeant/coms and k9 officer, in Chad,got to drive one of those,light tanks(4.8 tons) and that little,ha, monster could go frighteningly fast, I can proudly say drove 135 mph across the Chadian desert,God Ian, I so regret not filming some of the hairy stuff we, my unit at the time, my uncle used to pro rally with, alpine/Renaud, our unit had a v twelve, 5.6,6 cilinder, some guys in other units got up to 185 mph, the russkies were using kamza, also v12 diesel, they were tougher but 175 mph was thier top, only their spetznaz had quicker,197/8,mph, our unit never caught those fukers, Audi,auff von schprutt technic's,gbh., good video dude,bless u sir,chau for now
you need to hear the roar in V8 Toyota diesel engines in the 70 series Land Cruisers or even better offroad crawlers
Should definitely check out the Audi r18 it’s another Audi diesel lmp1 and it sounds like a fighter jet on the flybys also if you want a v12 the Matra simca ms670 is one of the best
Please take a look at the MAZDA 787B! This thing will blow you away. For shure.
Nice greetings from germany ✌️
2012 Audi Q7 V12 6.0 TDI also look at this Peugeot 908 HDi FAP
The rev limit is an audi secret. It is estimated to be up to 8000 rpm.
The TDI engine was the best one for endurance races.