Audi Bows Out of New Le Mans Hypercar Class in Favor of Formula E
Le Mans is doing away with LMP1 and replacing it with a new Hypercar class, but it looks like Audi won't be bothering to participate.
Whole New World
Late last year, the ACO and FIA—organizers of the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the World Endurance Championship, announced that they were doing away with their long-running LMP1 class and replacing it with a new "Hypercar" class. And sadly, after months of speculation, it appears that Audi won't be participating in this new venture.
Photos: Audi
Back to the Future
The idea is to replace the incredibly expensive prototype cars with a back-to-the-future class filled with spec chassis and road car-derived engines and hybrid systems. Manufacturers are welcome to employ supercar styling cues as well, if they so wish.
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Nothing to Offer
And therein lies the problem for Audi - they don't currently build and sell a hypercar. "With the new hypercars, the idea is it’s based on a hyper road model, and we simply don’t have one," Chris Reinke, head of Audi’s customer racing, told Top Gear. "If you say ‘maybe you do it like Toyota’, and we create a hypercar around that project, then there’s got to be a story of ‘what do we want to deliver?’"
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Don't Go There
"Le Mans was a success for us because our legend in motorsport is we differentiate for success through technology," Reinke added. "We used quattro in rally and touring cars, diesel and hybrid at Le Mans. We need differentiation, we’ve got to have that advanced technology at least. Therefore, I simply don’t see with those regulations that we have to go there."
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Low Visibility
"Such kind of cars are very effective to get attention on technology and to make a halo effect," added Oliver Hoffman, Audi's fast-car boss. "If we create an R8 follower we have to sell more cars, and with a hypercar, there are customers, but not a high number of them. You sell ten of these cars and collectors put them in their garage. We want to get visibility of these cars on the street."
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Class Down
While a hi-power R8 sounds like a fantastic idea, the new rules wouldn't allow it to compete for overall victory, unfortunately. And that's a big problem in Audi's eyes.
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Rule Limitations
"If they would have opted for ‘GTE plus’ instead of ‘hypercar’ regulations, then it would be a different story," Reinke said. "Then you would have authenticity to a road car model, you could get an overall win, and there would be a lot of manufacturers looking to jump on it. I think we would have investigated it."
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Changing Focus
"But it’s not the desire of Audi that we have to go back to top-level endurance racing," Reinke added. "There was a great era and it worked well for us, but we can also accept that at the moment we focus on something else, which is currently Formula E."
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Glory Days Are Gone
All of this is a huge letdown for Audi fans pining for a return to the glory days of the mid-2000s. Us included. But we also understand Audi's reasoning for bowing out, as much as it hurts.
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Like the Wind
Then again, these sorts of things tend to change like the wind. It's quite likely that Le Mans organizers will make alterations in the near future that might entice Audi to come back. And we certainly hope that's the case, sooner rather than later.
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