How Audi made legendary R8: the car brought Le Mans domination

While Audi Sport UK pressed ahead with its car in isolation, the Audi R8R that was being developed in Germany bore a striking resemblance to the Ferrari 333SP, having based its design on the already successful model. It was similar enough to the Ferrari that the team called it the Ingolstadt Ferrari. The basic packaging of the car saw the positioning of the radiators and the double roll hoop a carry-over from the Ferrari, although the finer details, such as the front suspension pick-up points, were different.

The radiator at the front was clearly an issue in the first test at Sebring. ‘Emmanuele Pirro drove the car and complained at the heat coming into the cockpit,’ remembers Ullrich. ‘I told him that the Ferrari had run like that for years and no driver had been grilled, but he was not amused. He came into the pitlane in Sebring and made a sign for me to come over to the car and said I should drive it down the pitlane and back to the tent. I did it and for sure it was warm, but in Spa I think they would have asked for this heating.’

The R8R was pronounced ready to run at Sebring in March 1999 but, with such a new programme, there were teething problems. The strength of some of the carbon fibre parts commissioned from various companies were found to be inadequate, so new parts had to be ordered.

“The R8R was flexing on the front so much, we were testing in Daytona at the end of 1998 and there was a Riley and Scott private team,” remembers Team Joest’s former technical director, Ralf Juttner.

“Michele [Alboreto] always pitted complaining that the car was vibrating like hell. We tried using wires to hold the splitter lip, but over 250km/h everything was flexing. Once he got on the radio and said he was coming past the pits and told us to watch, and the thing was flexing badly. Watching the car going down to the first corner, we had a team of 30 or 40, all in Audi red, and [also testing there was a] privateer team of four. They watched the car as well and, as it went into turn one, they turned to us and applauded. It was so embarrassing.”

Joest had already worked with David Price at Surrey, UK-based DPS Composites on its 962 and WSC car and therefore the company capable of producing the quality of parts needed to make the car work properly. As this version of the R8R was left clearly wanting, a secret design was commissioned. It involved a whole new front end that fitted within the original bodywork but had improved airflow and strength.

“A designer we knew very well made a new design of the front end, including the splitter, the nose and the radiator, ducting, radiator mounts and fixation, but with the same aero,’ recalls Juttner. ‘Dr Ullrich knew about it, but the design department didn’t. The underfloor was all the same, but the mounting was different, and it was designed for stiffness, built by [David Price at] DPS.”

Sebring in March 1999 saw the debut of the new car, but the bumpy Florida circuit is unforgiving and temperatures, even at that time of year, are high. ‘The car was jumping like a pig, it was ridiculous,’ remembers Juttner. ‘We really felt for the drivers, but the biggest issue that year was the reliability of the gearbox. The car that finished third at Sebring, with Michele Alboreto, Dindo Capello and Stefan Johansson, ran the last few hours with only two or three gears.

“When we opened the gearbox after the race, it was like a blown-up pinball table. We were lucky to finish at all, but we did complete the race and that was good.”

Understandably, the team went to Le Mans in June with trepidation. Throughout testing, the gearboxes had problems, and the team knew it was unlikely to get through the 24 hours without issue.

“When we approached Sebring in 1999, we had experienced massive problems with gearboxes in testing, and it was always dog-ring failures, nothing to do with the drivers or the electronics,’ says Juttner. ‘We had a guy in Bavaria who had made a pneumatic system for bikes and he knew [Audi designer] Wolfgang Appel. He came up with a system for the R8R. We had it at a test and it was a disaster. We had new parts from Germany flown in and were ready to go early afternoon, but had to stop again in the early evening because of gearboxes. Within a few laps we had dog-ring problems again, so we threw it out thinking it didn’t work.

“In hindsight, that decision was premature. Later, we found that just a few parameters were wrong between the engine and gearbox. The first shift already damaged everything, but we were nervous so went back to the original gearshift mechanism.

“We went to Le Mans with both cars fitted with a standard manual gear lever, and Audi came with two systems of the Megaline [gearshift system]. The idea was to give one to Audi Sport UK [for use in the R8C] and we would run the other. Audi UK said they didn’t want it – they thought it was too late to put it in – but we put it on both our cars, and they worked.

“We were pretty sure we wouldn’t make [the finish] with the system we had, so there was a question of what to do. We had to try something and, looking at it now, it was the right decision.”

The cars ran at Le Mans that year and finished third and fourth, but the design of an all-new car, the R8, was already well underway, and by the end of the year it was ready to start testing. By this point a whole new rear end had been designed and Joest decided to make use of the old cars one last time.

“When we went to the R8, we went to test at Sebring and here at Joest we had built a mule, an interim car, which was the chassis of the R8R but with the rear end of the Audi R8,” explains Juttner. “That was not that easy, though, because in the R8 the engine was fully stressed, whereas the R8R had a subframe. We had to modify the R8R chassis to take engine mounts that in this situation had never been designed to take the loads. In the fuel cell we had tubes and all sorts, but it worked.

“The R8 interim car was already so much better. [Team Joest chief engineer] Jo Hausner said we should put the same springs and dampers in the car that we had in the race in 1999 [for back-to-back testing] and Tom [Kristensen] did his first test with us with Audi at that time. He was elected by Mr Hausner to sit in the car and jump around the Sebring circuit. We decided to give the car to the new guy to lose his teeth, but it wasn’t that bad. We just wanted to get miles on the [new] rear end.”

The second R8 became available for the race, and the team was complete. Kristensen, who had won Sebring in 1999 for BMW and come close to winning Le Mans, was placed alongside the established Touring Car stars, Biela and Pirro, while Allan McNish, winner for Porsche in 1998, lined up at Sebring in 2000 alongside Alboreto and Capello. The two Audis started on the front row of the grid and finished first and second after completing more than 1,300 miles and setting a fastest race lap 1.5sec quicker than the previous record.

Despite the convincing one-two position, the two R8s did not have a perfect race. Biela lost time when he accidentally turned off the electronics switch, while Alboreto suffered a puncture that damaged the front bodywork. However, the main issue was the brakes. Biela stopped after eight hours for a three-minute bleed of the brakes, handing the lead to McNish. The Scot continued without bleeding the brakes and, with Capello, led in the final hour.

Light rain and fading brake pressure caused the Italian to do a half spin, which was enough to bring the sister car within striking distance. There was much work to do on the cars post-Sebring. The brake issue was partly to do with the bumps around the track, but the team also strengthened the uprights and hubs ready for Le Mans and changed the brake seals and fluid to prevent the same thing happening again.

Le Mans demands less of the brakes than Sebring, but Audi was taking no chances, having committed three of its new cars to Le Mans to try to win the trophy for the first time.

The new R8 had been on the design board since before Easter in 1998 and was a step change in design concept, with new tub, layout, weight distribution and aero. This was a totally new car, taking all the learning from the early experience of the R8R and improving upon it.

Following Audi’s triumphant debut of the R8 at Sebring, there were two further races of the American Le Mans Series, one at Charlotte in North Carolina, the other Silverstone. With the R8s being prepared for Le Mans and therefore unavailable to race, the R8R was pushed back into service.