Sportscar Performance Evolution, From Endurance to 24 Hour Sprint

[chernaudi]

This is as much about tactics and strategy as it is car evolution. Like we know that this evolution began in a modern sense when the Audi R8 was able to be lapped around Le Mans in race trim consistently to a very close percentage of its qualifying times.


But basically after the R8, it seemed that most teams (especially factory teams) started to incorporate more F1 or (in the case of Audi Sport) DTM type technology into LMP cars. I've spoken on the Mulsanne's Corner Facebook page with one of the mechanics/engineers who worked at Champion on the Audi R8 and R10, and he's said that the R10 did have a lot more complexity to it than the R8, in large part due to Audi Sport incorporating ideas as far as car design based on F1 and DTM into the R10 and subsequent LMP1 cars.


Basically, it seems that the R8 was the last "let's make it durable, then make it fast" type of endurance racers. I'd argue that the Bentley Speed 8 and the Audi R10 marked the transition into "let's make it fast, then try and make it last" type of cars, being a hybrid of those concepts, with the Peugeot 908 fully embracing that mantra.


In short, the person I talked to said that the R8 was designed with the mechanics in mind, considering that between accidents and possible mechanical issues you might encounter problems in the race. Also, the R8 was quite a bit easier to set up than the R10, which had several features on it that seemed to say "let's make it fast, and hope nothing major breaks".


Is this accurate, or are there other points where this transition (especially in prototypes) occurred sooner or later after these points?

[Matador]

I feel the "Lets make it fast" started a bit before that with Mercedes and Toyota in the post Group C GT prototype era... or maybe that was a flash in the pan... I was pretty young back then not too much into the technical side.

[seanyb505]

Are there any links to periods of rapidly increasing factory budgets to periods of make it fast? Toyota reliability went through the roof when they didn't need to compete with Audi and Porsche speeds. Or am I imagining that? Kinda same with later years of the R8.

[chernaudi]

With the R8, it (and almost all other cars in all classes) got a 10% power cut in 2003, and the quick change rear end was banned after 2003 (though reliability issues there were rare--it was used more often for accident damage).


With the Toyota, they actually rarely had hybrid problems (unlike the 2016 Audi R18, which most of it's problems were hybrid related).



In the case of the R10, the "make it fast, and hope it doesn't break" comes in with some of the packaging (torsion bar springs, brake ducting backing plates, etc), probably driven by trying to get back (and get back ahead) of performance that the ACO were trying to take away from the LMP cars with the post 2004 rules.


Of course, I've been talking with a guy who worked on the R8 and R10 back in the day, and still helps maintain R8s that run in historic racing. The R8 basically is a ton simpler than the R10, and everything after the R10 tended to crank up the complexity.

[GT3_Fan]

You can make a huge case that the safety car procedures of today's series and races keeps these cars from being tested in a true endurance capacity.

[chernaudi]

I was talking more about design of the vehicles vs in-race procedures by race control. Granted, almost all series now are more apt to call for FCY/pace car situations than say back in the Audi R8 or even R10 eras, but blame insurance companies and ambulance chasing lawyers for that (though drivers and teams trying to game those systems for local yellows doesn't help much, either).


Getting back to that topic, we do have things on the R10 like the brake cooling shrouds and especially their backing plates front and rear, which seem to have been put on the car to try and improve aero efficiency compared to the R8 (and especially try and get back what the post 2004 LMP1 aero regs tried to take away vs the LMP900 cars).


And though the R10 was still fairly modular and such, it still often did take somewhat longer to do certain major repairs after an accident vs the R8, even after the use of the R8's quick change rear end was abolished by the ACO and IMSA after 2003. That said, both cars were noted for being nearly totally destroyed after accidents and within 15-30 minutes or so being back out on track as good as new and as fast as ever.


Granted, most factory teams now are as good about getting their car back out there from a performance standpoint, but a lot of times anything other than a relatively minor repair does seem to take ages basically after that.

[Aysedasi]

Audi were the absolute masters of turning around accident damage in insanely quick times. Remember the year at LM when they had turbos go on two of the cars, they replaced the first in double-quick time and later the second in about half the time, bring out a package each time that contained everything they needed to make the repair, including the tools necessary for it. The level of preparation was incredibly high - they were ready for anything, basically.

[Tel 911S]

With Le Mans being one of the most prestiges races in the world , manufacturers have always developed new cars and ideas to help to promote the name .This has been going on for a long time .
Bentley , Ferrari , Porsche , Jaguar have all become more famous from their success there .
But not all of the evolution has worked .
In the mid 50s , Jaguar built a " Low Drag " C type for Le Mans .In a way it was the first " Wing Car " , but the wing was the same way up as on an aircraft , and on Mulsanne it was trying to fly .
The cars were withdrawn , taken back to the factory and all scrapped , and Jaguar claimed it was a cooling problem because they did not want to give away the very expensive lesson they had learned .

So yes , there has been a lot of evolution and learning from sports car racing which has been going on for a long time , but not all of it has told about .

[chernaudi]

I do think that the most notable thing about the era of the Audi R8 and the Audi R10 is the genesis of at Le Mans of running very close to the cars' qualifying times for much of the race (at least when dry). This was due to either having to maximize pace to minimize performance gaps to faster cars (that couldn't necessarily do the same for the same duration) and/or exploit when the faster cars had issues (2005 and 2008), or when Audi themselves weren't 100% certain of not having issues themselves (2000 with the suspension ball joints, and 2006 with the new diesel engines).


As to things like the R8 vs R10 and onwards general mounting complexity, I've talked with someone on the Mulsanne's Corner Facebook group, and he says that the R8 was ridiculously easy to work on and repair after accidents. The R10 by comparison was a fair bit more complex. Partly because of the diesel engine and such, and partly because Audi were performance optimizing the car. Already the R10 started to incorporate some technology derived from F1 and DTM, more so than the R8 did.


Granted, DSC did an article about the R10 in early 2006, and the R10 was initially designed to use the R8's engine before the decision to use a diesel engine. It was early enough in the design stage that it wasn't a significant change to retool the design to use the TDI V12 (IE, starting over as the design wasn't set aside from the very broad car concept). But image if it was as optimized to use the R8's engine as far as weight savings. If Audi were aiming for ultimately playing with at least 50 kg of ballast even at 900kg for the R10 as they had done on the R8, the R8 powered R10 might have been (all else being equal) down to like 700-750 kg unballasted.

[chernaudi]

Not 100% related to this whole evolution thread, but I've had some discussions on if the Audi R10 used the engine from the Audi R8 instead of being powered by a diesel V12. Would the R10 have had the same or similar wheelbase as it was built with the V12? An article that I read on DSC does suggest that this would've happened due to the front and rear overhang limits (1000mm front and 750mm rear) while the overall length was still 4650mm.



So I'm wondering if a V8 powered R10 would've had a similar of identical wheelbase to how the R10 was actually built?

[chernaudi]

I did read an article on the development of the Nissan R390 and in it Allan McNish (who drove for Porsche at the time) said that LM '98 was the first race where due to the factory presence that year everyone had to drive almost flat out for most of the race to have a shot at the win.


Now, I'm not going to refute what Allan said, one, he was there (and won that year), and two, especially when he was at Audi that was always his mentality of driving 100% as much as you could to maximize that (and everything else). But even then and in '99 the fastest race laps that everyone ran were significantly slower percentage-wise than what Audi typically did with the R8 and the R10 in subsequent years.


IMO, it was Audi Sport who set the tone with the R8 and R10 from that perspective. One, if you were going to win LM those years, you had to go though them (or the Audi Sport-backed Bentley program in '03), and two, you almost would have to run qualifying lap pace throughout most of the race to have a shot at doing that.


Granted, the R8 and R10 were full-blooded endurance races by the standards of the time, even though the R10 did (especially in terms of aero) start to introduce DTM or F1 influenced bits (like the brake duct backing plates front and rear, a small gurney flap on the side pod near the pontoon fender extension, and of course the "Spa wings"). But IMO things started from that standpoint to get ridiculous with the LMP2 cars optimized for the ALMS, and got really insane with the first iteration of the Audi R15. Even the "tamer" 2010 car both got into DTM/F1 aero stuff extensively (and IMO looked strange, even the R18 until 2016 stuck with the platypus nose from the R15 series, not that the 2016 R18 looked any less strange).

[flatlandsman]

What staggered me is that in the recent Motorsport magazine best car ever vote the R8 was 8th.

Winner was the Lotus 49, not even remotely the best f1 car ever made!"!" the 72 was far more iconic and long lasting.

Just shows that journalists and readers are n ot always the most balanced when it comes to views about such things.

[v8supes]

Given how reliable cars are over 24 hours, isnt it about time that we extend the time to 30/36 or even 48 hours?

Does anyone else often wonder at the end of a 24 hour race how much longer the cars that are successful would last? I find it curious to know.

[Teretonga]

Originally Posted by flatlandsman

What staggered me is that in the recent Motorsport magazine best car ever vote the R8 was 8th.

Winner was the Lotus 49, not even remotely the best f1 car ever made!"!" the 72 was far more iconic and long lasting.

Just shows that journalists and readers are n ot always the most balanced when it comes to views about such things.

Nostalgia.
But in other ways the Lotus 49 was a defining car that set the standard for the next decade, and in that respect, it does deserve recognition.
The 72, which you mentioned, was a refinement of some of the ideas but in itself did not redefine F1 engineering.
So maybe the scribes and enthusiasts may be more balanced than you might think.

[Aysedasi]

I couldn't take it. By the time I get to bed after the cars have done 24 hours, I'll have done at least 36 anyway......

[flatlandsman]

You are probably right, but for me the 49 was a great engine in a decent car *( as many of its rivals testified at the time), the 72 was an overall package that was sustained at the top level through endless development. Arguably a better achievement.

It is always hard to do these types of thing as back on those days you COULD run a car for 4 or 5 years and gradually develop it.

But again, I look at the R8, nothing got near it for many, many years, it utterly dominated, revolutionised the sport in many ways, and retired still at the top! I still find it staggering that a rally car that had numerous iterations was more popular!

[Teretonga]

Originally Posted by flatlandsman

You are probably right, but for me the 49 was a great engine in a decent car *( as many of its rivals testified at the time), the 72 was an overall package that was sustained at the top level through endless development. Arguably a better achievement.

It is always hard to do these types of thing as back on those days you COULD run a car for 4 or 5 years and gradually develop it.

But again, I look at the R8, nothing got near it for many, many years, it utterly dominated, revolutionised the sport in many ways, and retired still at the top! I still find it staggering that a rally car that had numerous iterations was more popular!

Well, if you looked at sports car /prototype racing you could probably argue that the GT40 was an iconic car of note having the prototype racing in 1963 and the Ford at Le Mans in 1964 and still winning it in 1968 and 1969...
Thats a number of iterations still able to foot it five years later.

I would agree that the Lotus 72 was ultimately a great package and was able to be developed over a number of years and remain competitive, but it didn't set a standard that changed the sport the way the Lotus 49 did.
And it wasn't just the engine of the Lotus 49. the whole concept set a trend that lasted beyond the lifetime of the follow up car, the 72. F1 changed the entire way people went about GP racing, and it still resonated a dozen years later.

[flatlandsman]

True the GT40 was a game changer but it has a lot of iterations and mods, the R8 stayed roughly the same for its life after the early two versions.

Maybe also a shout for the Oreca in LMP2 what a staggeringly brilliant piece of kit that is and still going strong.