Richard wrote:Note that road relevance about brand not actual nuts and bolts. LMP played the perfect trump card by allowing diesel engines. In the blink of an eye the image of diesel engines flipped from smokey vans to sexy race cars. You can't get more road relevant imagery than that.
I agree diesel power is an interesting aspect for racing, which definately has helped, but i have trouble believing there is direct relevance from Audi's race TDI engines to their road versions. It's like the mercedes v6T engines, or renault's V6T engines having relevance to the road. Street engines and race engines are nothing alike.
Audi for example has a whole bunch of research devision on road engines. they do the work on the road engines, they aren't commited to the LMP program whatsoever and vise versa.
acosmichippo wrote:
Also other various things like LED and Laser headlights..
hell no. These led and laser headlights have been mounted on these le mans cars, but the le mans cars were not the reason we have road cars with led/laser tech.
first of all, Led technology excists on cars as far back as late 80's early 90's, starting with brake lighting. Light companies ever since have been doing research on bringing this technology to a 'higher level'.
Furthermore, Lexus LS600 was the first car introduced to run Led headlights. I'm not talking about daytime running lights, these 'fast-and-furious' gimmicks have nothing to do with real lighting technology and even less with Le Mans.
Lexus has not been running le mans prototypes carrying Led technology, and the supplier of Lexus led headlamp technology isn't the same as audi's.
Furthermore, BMW is the first brand to run Laser technology on road cars, before audi has installed them on a road car. BMW has no Laser lights tested in Le Mans, Yet they intrduced them as early as the 2011 i8 concept and on the final production version. Now suddenly this year Audi runs Laser lights in Le mans, yet - Laser lights are already available on cars, so they are not new.
Road relevance? not even slightly. the Le Mans audi team decided they would benefit from the improved lights that led and laser technology grants - it's not like they decided let's plant led or laser lights as a technology platform for road cars.
a statement from Audi themselves
Audi has previously set standards in lighting technology at Le Mans on several occasions. The Audi R10 TDI in 2006 was the first race car equipped with LED daytime running light. On the R15 TDI, LEDs additionally functioned as the high beam. In 2011, with the R18 TDI, Audi used full LED headlights for the first time; and in 2013 matrix LED technology followed.
2006 led daytime running lights > i've had the same concept on my bike when i was 12 years old, and perhaps so did you. remember those little boxes you could clip on your handle bar and put in your backpack? essentially, it's exactly the same.
Daytime running lights provide zero illumination, they're essentially a replacement or the same as good-old 'parking lights'.
R15 TDI 2009 additional (not full) leds on LM cars. Meanwhile, Lexus already ran LED technology headlamps.
2011, R18, Full led headlights; still, led headlight (beam) technology has been in the lexus flagship for several years.
2014; laser lights. But the BMW i8 has them already since last year.
So, Le Mans has given zero road relevance regarding light technology of Audi. It would be the other way aroud; road technology has given racing relevance.
The whole road relevance connection is BS and is too for LM. The only reason they keep their mouths shut regarding this is because Le Mans paints a pretty picture for selling cars and brand image - as long as they win a lot. Audi has had their ass handed to them by Peugeuot a couple of times, not something to be very proud of.
What does work is that le mans is an ENDURANCE race, so being highly successful in an ENDURANCE class automatically is translated for the viewer and the buyer into: Audi has built enduring, reliable racing cars - their road cars must be enduring and reliable just as well, then. (offtopic; i have owned several, they are not reliable AT ALL, nor enduring).
Le mans gives the idea of road relevance, yet in reality, there is nearly zero. It goes for all brands/manufacturers.
Peugeot LM engines have nothing to do with road cars. Neither does any other manufacturer.
Iti's prize money, it's prestige, it's media entertainment, it's sponsorship, it's brand exposure, it's people's hobbies fullfilled, that's why le mans is interesting, not because of supposed road relevancy, there is zero to none.
The problem of F1 is that Bernie controls everything and exposure is limited. Bernie holds all the television and media rights, that's not very pleasing for brand exposure. F1 has had many manufacturers coming in and slamming millions of dollars into the division and still don't get the results they were hoping or expecting. Honda, BMW, Toyota. Honda might be coming back next year, but don't forget 2008/2009. And then, we have smaller teams that are collapsing.
F1 is not the prettiest environment to begin a 'project' with. The 'image' of F1 isn't very attractive.
That's the reason Audi hasn't entered untill now, and perhaps for the time being, they won't.
statements by some audi motorsport TWITTER and not even a single REAL source doesn't change the possibility Audi is working on the background on some F1 project. They may, they may be not.
It's still silly season and it's quite silly we haven't heard a good definative anwer from the major keyholders in the silly season. the silly season essentialy though is the cause the Audi/VW F1 project rumours are given life again. I'd rather had read about VW/Audi in F1 totally unconnected to the silly season (Alonso), that would make it a bit fair more trustworthy and exciting news.
In any case, Audi/VW would do a good job hiring Alonso, so there's the connection again.
