For the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) and the Le Mans 24 Hours, Audi has redesigned their LeMans Prototype race car from scratch and is claimed to have almost nothing in common anymore with its outgoing version. The new 2016 Audi R18 race car is said to pack more power and efficiency; and happens to be Audi’s strongest race car.
Powering the 2016 Audi R18 is the revised V6 TDi engine assisted by a battery-powered hybrid drive system fires out more than 1000 Bhp of power and consumes 10% less fuel than the previous version. The power is sent to all four corners by a new transmission kit. Audi Sport engineers switched to a 6-megajoule class hybrid system that is capable of recovering 50% of the energy. As the energy consumption has decreased, the 2016 Audi R18 has become lighter, and allows for more favourable packaging of the component assemblies. The car’s aerodynamics concept is stated to be fundamentally new and almost all systems have been refined and reworked.
The 2016 Audi R18 Le Mans Prototype race car gets improved radical aerodynamics that includes a new safety cell and its new proportions influence weight distribution as well. Suspension kinematics has been significantly revised. On the safety front, the 2016 R18 is equipped with a driver information monitor in the cockpit to display race control flag signals is prescribed; also Matrix LED headlights combined with Audi laser light optimize the light beam of the race cars that can reach speeds of up to 340 km/h. In addition to all of this, a lightweight and energy-efficient camera system in combination with an ultramodern AMOLED screen is plonked in that also serves as a digital rear view mirror. The Audi R18 can also automatically control the brake force distribution with respect to operating conditions.
