Posted by Rusty RaeJuly 3, 2009
Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich
INGOLSTADT, Germany — The following are five questions that were presented to Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich via email. His answers are interesting an illuminating, in retrospect to the third place finish by Audi at Le Mans after dominating the track for nearly a decade. Most interesting is that Audi Corporate has given the go-ahead for the team to return to Le Mans next year to see if they can wrestle the title back from Peugeot.
1. I believe that you and the Audi team have always respected your competitors (and this perhaps showed more in the loss this year at Le Mans) but I wonder if the scintillating win at Sebring might have created a false sense of security with respect to the level of the development of the R-15 chassis?
Not at all. Sebring and Le Mans are very different race tracks. Sebring is a good dress rehearsal and a good test for Le Mans because the track is very tough and you can see if a new car is strong enough. But you are running with much more down force at Sebring and the speeds are much higher than at Le Mans. We knew after Sebring that we have quite a good car right from the start but we knew also that there was still a lot of work to do.
The Audi R-15 scored a spectacular victory at Sebring -- but it did not translate into a win at Le Mans.
2. There is little doubt that the economy of today has affected all of automotive industry, but is it fair to say that had you been able to run the car in all of the ALMS series prior to Le Mans, and several of the other major endurance events, do you think this would have contributed to the R-15 chassis being more competitive at Le Mans?
We were running an intense test program for the R15 TDI between Sebring and Le Mans and had to adapt the car to the additional 30 kilograms (a little more than 66 pounds) which the ACO imposed for Diesel-powered cars. This was quite a lot of work with a brand new car. Even if we would have had the budget it would have been almost impossible for us to compete in any races. It’s difficult to judge if we would have been more competitive at Le Mans if we had done some more races with the R15 TDI because most of the problems we had were very much “Le Mans specials”. The pre-test would have been helpful. We raced at Sebring and we did not have any of the problems we had at Le Mans.
At the start of the race, you can see the Audi team had "carved" on the front end to add additional "winglets".
3. Let’s assume that your management says that it is a wise and prudent idea to come back to Le Mans next year and for the next four years. How much additional development will required for a closed car?
Our CEO has already announced that we will be back at Le Mans next year – and we will be back with the R15 TDI. We still believe that the concept of an open car is a good one for Le Mans. We’ve seen this year that it has become even more difficult to be competitive at Le Mans with a brand new car at the very first time because there is no more test day. So building a new car for 2010 would definitely not be our goal. The R15 TDI has a lot of potential and we are sure the car can be competitive in 2010 as soon as we have solved the issues we had this year.
The Audi R-15 will return to Le Mans for the 2010 event, Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich, head of Audi Sport announced.
4. There seemed to be some significant discussion with officials at about the halfway point of the race. There were rulebooks out and some discussions with the ACO official there — can you elucidate on what was being discussed?
There have been some discussions on details of the new pit stop rules regarding the work of the mechanics in the pit lane that had been allowed in the past.
Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich (at right) with crew (and rulebook) and ACO official review pit stop repairs.
Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich (at right) with crew (and rulebook) and ACO official review pit stop repairs.
5. Do you think that the rain that came on Monday would have made a difference in the results had it come 12 or 16 hours earlier?
This is difficult to say. The rain definitely helped us in 2008 and the R15 TDI was very competitive in the wet conditions during free practice on Wednesday. But Peugeot was also strong. So, this is hypothetical.
