Why the uber-successful Audi R8 splits opinion like few other racing cars

Few racing cars divide opinion like the Audi R8. Some regard the German manufacturer’s LMP prototype as the all-time great to which its record attests. Others have labelled it a boring winning machine that did as much harm as good to international sportscar racing.

The irony is that they are probably not contradictory opinions of a car that this season celebrates the 25th anniversary of the first of its five wins at the Le Mans 24 Hours.

Audi’s second stab at a prototype, developed for year two of what would end up being an 18-year adventure at the pinnacle of endurance racing, was perhaps “too good”. Those are the words of Emanuele Pirro, a driver forever associated with the R8.

Good enough, certainly, to win 63 of the 80 races it contested from its debut in the 2000 edition of the Sebring 12 Hours to its farewell at Lime Rock in 2006. Both those races were rounds of the American Le Mans Series: the R8 would end up with a nice round 50 victories in what was at the time the world’s premier sportscar championship.

Add in those five Le Mans victories – five from six starts, it should be pointed out – and there can be no other conclusion that the R8 was too good for the opposition. 

Which is why the record and legacy of the R8 will forever be questioned. That question is: who did it beat? It is undoubtedly true that the R8 did its winning at a time of downturn in endurance racing.

The fact that it was too good for the opposition will always affect the R8’s legacy (Chassis #404 pictured)

Photo by: James Mann

In year one at Le Mans in 2000, the only overt manufacturer programme up against Audi and the factory Joest team was Cadillac with its Northstar project that was a day late and a dollar short in comparison with Audi.

Cadillac would step up its assault over the coming years, and MG and Bentley would arrive. That’s not to forget Panoz, not an OEM but a worthy competitor good enough on occasion to beat Audi in the rough and tumble of the ALMS, if not at Le Mans.

The R8 undoubtedly lacked the big rival on which the great sporting stories are founded, but was the level of opposition so different to that faced by Porsche when it pitched up with the 956 in the early 1980s? Not really. 

"Very often when you drive a car for the first time you know straight away whether you have something very good in your hands. That first test was very positive; I knew it was going to be a good car" Emanuele Pirro

The Audi draws comparison with the 956 and its long-wheelbase cousin, the 962, for its success and longevity. Yet early on the Group C design only faced Ford, Lancia and what was initially a motley collection of privateers.

It flaunted its domination: ‘Nobody’s perfect’ ran a press ad after the 956 took nine of the top 10 positions at Le Mans in 1983. Even so, the Porsche remains the more loved racing car. 

Yet one of the reasons why Audi opted to go to Le Mans for the first time was the strength of the race. It was boom time in terms of manufacturer participation in 1999 when it arrived with a two-pronged attack with its first stab at an LMP, the R8R, and a closed-top LM-GTP, the R8C.

Safety advances included Formula 1-style cockpit surround (Chassis #404 pictured)

Photo by: James Mann

BMW, Toyota, Mercedes and Nissan were all present at the Circuit de la Sarthe in what was a learning year for Audi. By the time it returned in a class now called LMP900 with a car that it thought could win, the GT-One, the V12 LMR et al were gone. The reasons for that were multifarious.

“It wasn’t Audi’s fault that everyone else quit before the arrival of the R8,” states Wolfgang Ullrich, head of Audi Sport for all but the final years of the marque’s prototype engagement. “We aimed for Le Mans because it had all the manufacturers.”

Ullrich points out that you can only beat the opposition in front of you – and the race itself at Le Mans: “In the years when there were no manufacturer competitors, there were always privateer teams with good and reliable cars. It was never possible to just cruise around, and at the end of the day it is the victory that counts.”

There’s also an argument that the “too good” Audi R8 frightened off the opposition. There’s an element of truth to that. Cadillac’s programme was coming good in 2003 when it opted not to go beyond the initial three-year commitment.

The reason it cited was that it could not compete against the new direct-injection FSI engine Audi introduced in 2001. It had no plans to employ that technology in its road cars, so it made no sense to spend the money to develop it for racing. 

Whether you view the R8 with fondness or not, there is no doubt it was an excellent racing car. Just ask anyone who drove it, or was involved in running the machine. Pirro, the first driver to get behind the wheel at its roll-out at Vallelunga at the end of 1999, knew from the moment he took to the track that it was going to be something special. 

Le Mans track map prominent on the ‘passenger’ side (Chassis #404 pictured)

Photo by: James Mann

“Very often when you drive a car for the first time you know straight away whether you have something very good in your hands,” he reckons. “That first test was very positive; I knew it was going to be a good car.”

The car was caught in action that day by a well-informed photographer up in the hills above the circuit with a long lens. Pirro spotted him and gave him a wave as he went about his shakedown duties. He would receive a photo from said snapper of his cheeky wave with a message. “Not a greeting, a rehearsal for victory,” it read.

It was a prescient comment: Pirro would celebrate his victories in exuberant style, most notably completing an unprecedented hat-trick with team-mates Frank Biela and Tom Kristensen at Le Mans 2002. He was half out of the car, waving again, as he pootled around on the pitlane speed limiter on the slowing-down lap. 

"You knew you could drive it to the limit. Once you found the set-up, you could really trust the car and it never did anything surprising" JJ Lehto

But the R8 wasn’t the perfect racing machine in year one. As good as it was when it notched up its first big victories, at Sebring and Le Mans, and went on to take the ALMS title with Allan McNish, there was still room for improvement.

That came in year two with the introduction of the FSI version of the twin-turbo 3.6-litre V8, revised aerodynamics and a third spring set-up in the front suspension.  

“The new engine played a big role in making the R8 even better,” recalls Pirro. “A large part of the driver-friendliness of a car comes from the power delivery. That was undoubtedly improved. We made quite a big step from year one to year two.”

Le Mans victory #1: 2000, with Frank Biela, Emanuele Pirro and Tom Kristensen

Photo by: Motorsport Images

The R8 was perhaps the ultimate user-friendly sportscar, easy to drive and run. “I never spun an R8, I’m sure I didn’t,” says Pirro. “I had incidents, fortunately not many, when I went off or had a collision, but I never actually spun the car.

“You never had to fight the R8: you braked, turned in and put the power down, and the corner was finished for you. The car was understeery, but not in a bad way. It had a very good rear end.”

McNish, part of the Audi line-up in 2000 before returning to its factory roster in 2004 following his Formula 1 sojourn, reckons the R8 could be tuned for any circuit or any set of track conditions: “It didn’t matter if it was raining like hell at Silverstone or scorching hot at Le Mans, you could always make the car work.

“The 2000 car was a bit tricky to drive, but by the time I came back to the R8 in 2004 it was quick in every situation.”

JJ Lehto, a stalwart of Champion Racing’s campaigns in the ALMS and part of the team’s winning crew at Le Mans in 2005, revelled in driving the R8. “Every time you jumped in the car it was so much fun,” he recalls.

“You knew you could drive it to the limit. Once you found the set-up, you could really trust the car and it never did anything surprising.”

Le Mans victory #2: Pirro, Kristensen and Biela on the podium in 2001

Photo by: Sutton Images

Customer teams got their hands on the car as early as year two of the programme. The exploits of Champion, Veloqx, Team Goh and ORECA would cement the legacy of the R8 once Audi’s factory engagement came to an end after 2002.

Audi strictly controlled its customers – and supported them with the loan of drivers and more. Jo Hausner, who had engineered Audi to its 2000-02 Le Mans hat-trick, was placed with Goh when it triumphed in France in 2004.

An R8 came with a meaty operating manual and the teams were discouraged from diverging from the recommended set-up, let alone trying to develop the car themselves.

When Audi completed a 1-2-3 Le Mans finish on its debut in 2000, only the winning car, chassis #404 pictured here complete with the dirt and dust from what would stand as its only race start, made it through with its original gearbox

“Inevitably we’d end up trying stuff,” remembers Chris Gorne, who engineered Johnny Herbert and Jamie Davies to the Le Mans Endurance Series LMP1 title with Veloqx in 2004. “But we’d usually come back to their settings, because they produced the lap times.”

Audi appeared to regard the team’s job as to bolt the car together, and then stick in the fuel and change the tyres. “You didn’t rebuild the uprights or put new rosejoints in,” continues Gorne.

“A new corner would arrive fully assembled and you rarely took it apart. The whole system behind the R8 customer programme was fantastic.”

Le Mans victory #3: 2002, Pirro (again sharing with Kristensen and Biela) celebrates

Photo by: Marcel Mochet / AFP via Getty Images

If the R8 swept all before it on the race track at Le Mans and beyond, its legacy stretches beyond its bulging CV. It set new benchmarks for both safety and serviceability in prototype racing.

The key safety development was the introduction of a Formula 1-style surround for the driver in the ‘two-seater’ cockpit. It was subsequently made mandatory in the rules.

The advances in safety made by Audi make it an irony that the last driver to die at the wheel of a top-class prototype was Michele Alboreto when he crashed at the Eurospeedway Lausitz in April 2001. Ullrich describes this as the low point of the R8 programme. 

The serviceability or repairability of the R8 changed the face of endurance racing, and not just in the prototype arena. The change of a rear diffuser or whatever on a GT3 car in double-quick time at the Spa 24 Hours owes everything to the standard set by Audi’s LMP. 

Ralf Juttner, managing director at Joest, tells a story about a conversation with Marino Franchitti after the 2002 Sears Point round of the ALMS. Audi had initially planned to skip the race only a month prior to Le Mans, but ended up borrowing the car used by Champion the previous year in order to gain valuable points, only for Pirro to crash as the result of a cut tyre late in the race. 

“I remember speaking to Marino after the race,” says Juttner. “He was out in his Porsche GT car and saw our car in the barriers. The next lap around it was still there. The third time around, it was gone and he thought the marshals had done a good job.

Le Mans victory #4: 2004, Seiji Ara (sharing with Rinaldo Capello and Kristensen) crosses the line

Photo by: David Piole AFP via Getty Images

“About 15 or 20 minutes later, Emanuele blew past him. After seeing the damage, he couldn’t believe that the car had been repaired. Emanuele had brought the car back on three wheels!”

Two years later at Le Mans, Lehto and McNish went off in unison on oil on the entry to the Porsche Curves at the end of the second hour. Both somehow made it back to the pits in heavily damaged machines.

McNish was ruled out of the remainder of the race with concussion, but his mount was repaired. It would end up fifth, while the Champion car took home some silverware with third. 

Wolfgang Appel, technical director on both the R8R and R8 programmes, always joked that development of the latter started the Monday after Le Mans 1999. "No Tuesday, actually; we had a day off"

The modular nature of the R8 was born of necessity. During the first endurance tests of the R8R over the winter of 1998-99, its new Ricardo-built gearbox had proved troublesome. “There were quite some problems with the gearbox and we already understood how difficult it was to make the transmission reliable when we did our studies into the reasons why cars retired from Le Mans,” says Ullrich.

“Out of that our group came up with the idea to change the complete rear end. I agreed, but I said, ‘Yes, if you can do it without losing a lap at Le Mans.’”

Ullrich reckons it could be done in under three and a half minutes, but there is no evidence of that being the case in competition. The record appears to be a sub-five-minute change at Le Mans in 1999.  

Le Mans victory #5: 2005, Kristensen (this time with JJ Lehto and Marco Werner) takes the flag

Photo by: Jean-Francois Monier / AFP via Getty Images

The quick rear-end change was vital in getting the fourth-place R8R to the finish of Le Mans in 1999. It would undergo three changes of ’box over the 24 hours, even with a further development made shortly before the race: the introduction of a MEGA-Line paddleshift system. (The sister car in third would go through the race without a transmission change.) 

This modular concept was developed further for the R8, and played an important role in many of its successes. When Audi completed a 1-2-3 Le Mans finish on its debut in 2000, only the winning car, chassis #404 pictured here complete with the dirt and dust from what would stand as its only race start, made it through with its original gearbox. The second and third-place entries run by Joest underwent rear-end changes: damaged suspension resulting from a puncture rather than a transmission glitch precipitated the change on the third-placed car.

Audi had opted for a conservative approach with its first prototype, which had a convoluted gestation at a time when it wasn’t clear whether an open-top LMP or a GT1 car was the way to go.

It eventually decided to hedge its bets with the development of the closed-top R8C in the UK to the new GTP rules that had replaced GT1. Pirro describes the R8R as “over-engineered”. 

“The most important thing was to complete the race because only by doing that do you gather data and gain experience,” he explains. “This was the target for 1999.”

So it was mission accomplished for Audi with third and fourth with the R8R, even if the drivers were told by the press department that they were to say they were going to Le Mans to win. 

R8’s serviceability and repairability changed the face of endurance racing

Photo by: Sutton Images

Wolfgang Appel, technical director on both the R8R and R8 programmes, always joked that development of the latter started the Monday after Le Mans 1999. “No Tuesday, actually; we had a day off,” he told this author. The reality is that Audi was already scheming its second LMP earlier. 

“There was a small group working on ideas for the new car,” reveals Ullrich. “Really it was a small group, but they were also working on the R8R – we had a lot of work to do for our first Le Mans. The real intense work started after the race.”

That makes it all the more remarkable that, love it or loathe it, one of the all-time great racing cars was up and running that December. And winning four months later. And that’s something it never stopped doing. Winning!

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The R8’s short development period and the small size of the team involved make its success all the more exceptional (Chassis #404 pictured)

Photo by: James Mann