Audi unconcerned by '09 rule changes

Diesels have dominated the Le Mans 24 Hours since Audi introduced the R10 TDi in 2006. This year the fastest petrol car in qualifying was 10 seconds slower than the diesel Peugeot's pole time.

The race organisers have now announced that air restrictors will be used to try and equalise diesel and petrol performance from 2009, removing some of Audi and Peugeot's advantage, but Ullrich played down the significance of the change.

"It has to be done every year. This is nothing new," he said. "They did it in the years before, recalibrate, even if all have been running [petrol] fuel engines. There have been years where they have attempted to give the turbo engine a little bit more than the aspirated, so this is what the ACO is regularly doing.

"They look at the race result and try to make something proper for the next season. The idea is to give all interested competitors that want to go in on the same level a very similar chance, with whatever they come [with]."

When announcing the rule tweak, ACO sporting director Daniel Poissenot conceded that part of Audi and Peugeot's advantage came not from the use of diesel, but because they had built "extraordinary cars" - a point that Ullrich agreed with.

"We discussed already last year that if somebody decides to come with a diesel, he is taking a big challenge," he said. "This is something people need to know. You have to look in the whole rulebook and see the advantages and disadvantages.

"Most people only see more power and less fuel consumption, but they don't look at all the other stuff that is behind. You have to do a car completely differently."

The ACO is also planning aerodynamic changes to reduce the chances of cars flipping after a spate of aerial accidents in recent months.

Ullrich welcomed this move, but warned that it could be impossible to completely prevent all such accidents.

"We never ignore these things. We always sit together and look at the data on it," he said. "If we think that we can make this better and we can avoid things like this happening, we'll work on it, that's for sure.

"I feel myself responsible for my drivers and Audi feels responsible to make the best solution possible. But you will never be able to avoid an incident or an accident if there is racing going on.

"If you look at the accidents that we had this year, they have been in most cases caused by strong competition and having cars close together, or even touching each other.

"You cannot avoid that (when) a car gets too much air under it that it starts to move, but the speed where it happens we have increased tremendously so we have improved the margin of safety.

"We have now seen some accidents this year, but it is very important to go into the detail of every accident and not put them all together and say these car suddenly start to fly. That's not true.

"We have been working for three years, with the FIA and ACO, to make a rulebook for sports-prototypes that improves their safety. I think these cars are really on a good level, which does not mean we do not continuously work on it."