This weekend, for the 14th time on the trot, Audi will line up to take the start at Le Mans. And with four cars entered and the only other cars with the raw pace even to hope to challenge its dominance being a brace of hitherto unraced Toyotas, I suspect the outcome of the race has never been more easily predicted.
The question is why does Audi come back year after year? I have long inclined to the view that if the only news worth reporting is when you don’t win, it’s time to do something else. Audi begs to differ. It will tell you that even at the top level, winning in sports cars requires a tiny fraction of the budget you’d need to be an also ran in F1. It will also point to its brand, which has never been more successful or more globally highly regarded than it is right now. And it will insist that the lessons it learns chuntering around western France for a day and night will in time benefit the people who drive their road cars.
But does racing really improve the breed, or is that a convenient excuse, a way for car manufacturers to claim solid consumer benefit for what is actually a mere marketing exercise?
There is no doubt that technologies perfected on the track have found their way onto road cars. Would a McLaren F1 have had a carbon fibre monocoque had the MP4 not have one 14 years earlier? And would today’s most expensive and sporting road cars still have carbon ceramic brakes had the technology not first been proven in the white heat of racing? I very much doubt it.
But there are two points to make here: so far these innovations and others such as downforce generating bodywork, underfloor aerodynamics and road-legal tyres that provide almost as much grip as pure racing rubber, have benefitted a number of cars that, seem on a global scale is statistically negligible.
Second, road cars have more than repaid the compliment. On the subject of monocoques, a Lancia Lamba had one almost 40 years before they first appeared in Formula 1. On the braking front, the first cars to use discs were road cars, not racers.
In fact I think that for most of us who drive normal, affordable cars, racing has done rather little. Think of the major road car innovations that have really made a difference to our lives: inertia reel seat-belts, anti-lock brakes and air bags for instance. None of those were seen on race cars first.
For the most part at least the influence of racing cars over normal road cars is limited to advances in electronics, instilling a sense of pride in a workforce and any practical lessons it can learn about being quick to respond to unforeseen circumstances.
So it seems racing is predominately a marketing tool. Should Audi or anyone else be criticised for that? I think not. First this is not exactly a modern phenomenon: the only reason that great pre-war engineer WO Bentley allowed his cars to go racing is that he knew he’d sell more of them if he did. But Audi’s understanding extends somewhat beyond the ‘race on Sunday, sell on Monday’ approach espoused by WO. It knows the value of making a point well and then making it again and again, to a point past where the argument is merely won, to one where the territory is all but owned.
So don’t think for a moment that your next Audi A4 is going to be a better car because Audi steamrollers its way to another Le Mans victory this weekend. But you might still feel that tiny bit better about it anyway. To Audi, that is all the justification it needs.
80 or 50 or even 25 years ago, perhaps, but nowadays a 24 hour race is no longer a good enough test of endurance. Even a 7-year-old Ford or Vauxhall can toddle along the motorways for 24 hours nowadays, no problem. Half the Poles and Romanians in the UK drive home for breaks in battered old scrapyard-dodgers. Wouldn’t have been possible back in the glory days of the Allegro, Princess and Maxi. Nope, we need this race to get back to being a proper edurance test.
Le Mans should become at least a 48 hour race (start Friday afternoon, end Sunday) with teams of four drivers per car. Or even 72 hours. Most fans are there for the whole extended weekend anyway, they’d barely notice the difference.
Dunlop disc brake on D type Jaguars surely aided the development of disc brakes on road cars as did the development of Bosch motronic electronic fuel injection on the Mclaren mp4/2 and porsche 956. I also believe underfloor aero dynamics play a large part in modern road cars fuel consumption figures. If you look underneath most German road cars the extensive use of alloy in subframes and suspension components comes from the use of light weight materials in racing.
The link link between racing and road car development is something manufacturers often miss in there marketing. What better tool than winning using your road car engine I.e jaguars xk or v12. Audi and Peugeot have done much to champion the misconception that diesels are slow and belong only in lorries.
I,m looking forward to seeing how the Toyota goes with the petrol electic hybrid. The rules in sports cars appear to me much better than f1 in that the manufactures are aloud to use there energy recovery systems more often each lap which is relevant to everyday road conditions.
Well written, Andrew. There is very, very little common ground between vehicles designed for mass production (and profit) vs. vehicles designed for “sport”. So long as enough people are susceptible to the B.S. of marketing, there will be a reason for car companies to engage in the exercise of racing.
I will also add: 1) computerized data acquisition and numerical simulation methods played the biggest role in killing the racetrack as laboratory; and 2) computerized engine controls to reduce tailpipe emissions advanced the humble production engine light years ahead of racing engines (Ford’s use of the EEC-IV chip, from their production lines, in their 1.5 litre turbo engine comes to mind).
Perhaps in motorcycle racing one can sustain a legitimate argument that the tech tickles down to the consumer in a useful way. But much of that tech is automobile derived and lagging cars by decades.
24 hours is still a major challenge. While reliability has gone to nearly perfect, the pace in a modern Lemans is essentially a flat-out sprint for 24 hours.
Why does Audi come back? The same reason why Porsche came back in the past: little/no real competition, nothing like F1. If Peugeot had mounted a serious effort last year, I doubt Audi would have come back.
I’m curious to see the Deltacar and the hybrids, but It’s hard to take the Toyota effort seriously when they haven’t yet raced the car, and were in development with one single chassis (which broke). I’d be really surprised if the Toyota super capacitor lasts the whole 24 hrs.
Racing has nothing to do with road cars any more. Even Audi, they brought the Diesel to Lemans, but the R8 flagship sports car is still petrol.
I’d like to see some rules that insist on stock block engines, and I’d like to see a commitment to non-battery kinetic recovery.
It’s been written that NASCAR is exciting, but F1 is interesting. Well, F1 isn’t really exciting or interesting any more and sports cars are filling the gap. What sports cars need is a single, serious worldwide series with minimal participation to qualify for Lemans.
Mclaren Honda mp4/16 of 1993 first F1 car with a flyby wire throttle system 5 years before the first road car with a flyby wire throttle ( Peugeots 406 2.1td with Lucas epic injection system). Multivalve cylinder heads on f1 cars in the 1960,s and only coming into mass produced road cars in the late 1980,s and how about alloy road wheels Bugatti tyre35 (I think?) in the 1920,s.
Maybe the rules reed to be less restrictive now to allow the next faze of developments to come through?
I think one thing Audi has shown over the last decade+ is that it can take a proven, winning ugly car, make it uglier, and still dominate the 24 hours.
Racing does showcase useful technology, if not to the public then to the industry. For example, Audi demonstrated clean burn diesel to the public a few years ago. Less obvious to the public, Indy cars are demonstrating and validating alcohol fuel handling and storage qualities to the alternative fuels industry.
Racing is still relevant and important for the auto industry but in ways that are less obvious.
Hasn’t the engine technology and information gained from the diesel powered Audi R10 TDI been transferred to Audi’s diesel production car engines?
As Le Mans and sportscar racing doesn’t really get much global media attention compared to F1, what has been the point of Audi investing millions Euro (may be the odd billion) if the technology has not been tranferred to road car production and to improve the brand.
I look forward to reading your car test regarding the new Audi A4 with e-tron quattro technology in a couple of years time!
Matt Willis makes a very good point. The rules restrictions in the top echelons of motorsport are imposed in the interests of cost management and/or entertainment. They actually deter innovation and experimentation in any meaningful sense, therby preventing motor sport ‘improving the breed’, as used to be the case.
Whether disc brakes, alloy wheels or KERS first appeared on road or racing cars is not really the point; the point is that motor racing allows for testing and development of such components in an environment made extreme by competition.
Today, we have the ridiculous situation that road cars are actually more sophisticated than racing cars, which is a peculiar state of affairs. Apart from electronic driver aids, they even feature such items long-banned in motorsport as moveable aerodynamic aids. The result is that some of the most creative (and best-paid) engineers on the planet are reduced to fiddling with minutiae within the narrow parameters of the rule-book, rather than unleashing their imaginations on new ideas. Sad.
Any 24 hour race is neither an easy thing to win, nor, I would respectfully suggest a foregone conclusion.
Marketing has a very powerful influence on all our thinking today. Like it or not, we are all influenced. I’ve even read respected journalists talking about a cars “soul”. Utter marketing b/s.
I would urge you all to put aside the marketing hype and come out to Le Mans at least once. It’s a truly amazing spectacle to see the cars hammering round for 24 hours.
I come home every year elated, smelly and slightly hung-over. It’s an interesting combination. Try it, you’ll love it.