Audi today announced the new driver lineup for the 77th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, with the last year's winners again forming a trio for the German automaker.
The team that achieved the victory last year, Dindo Capello (Italy), Tom Kristensen (Denmark) and Allan McNish (Scotland), will compete in car #1. The Audi R15 TDI designated as car number "2” will include the same crew as the one at the 12-hour race at Sebring (USA): Lucas Luhr, Mike Rockenfeller and Marco Werner. Last but not least, car #3 will be driven by German Timo Bernhard and the two Frenchmen Romain Dumas and Alexandre Prémat.
"The 12-hour race at Sebring was a successful dress rehearsal for us,” says Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich. "That’s why we didn’t make any changes to the driver teams that competed at Sebring. The squad for the third car automatically resulted from this decision. I’m convinced that we’ve filled the cockpits of all three R15 TDI cars at Le Mans with outstanding racers – also thanks to the two drivers Porsche is providing to us.”
The 24 Hours of Le Mans will take place on June 13-14 and Audi has quite high expectations especially following the past results.
Furthermore, the new members of the crew, Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas, have already tested the Audi R15 TDI which is going to feature an aerodynamics package especially optimized for this event. Partially, the modifications were required after the organizers of the race decided to increase the minimum weight for diesel cars by 30 kilos, which means Audi's engineers had to remove several parts of the car, thus making the optimizing process a bit more difficult.
The team that achieved the victory last year, Dindo Capello (Italy), Tom Kristensen (Denmark) and Allan McNish (Scotland), will compete in car #1. The Audi R15 TDI designated as car number "2” will include the same crew as the one at the 12-hour race at Sebring (USA): Lucas Luhr, Mike Rockenfeller and Marco Werner. Last but not least, car #3 will be driven by German Timo Bernhard and the two Frenchmen Romain Dumas and Alexandre Prémat.
"The 12-hour race at Sebring was a successful dress rehearsal for us,” says Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich. "That’s why we didn’t make any changes to the driver teams that competed at Sebring. The squad for the third car automatically resulted from this decision. I’m convinced that we’ve filled the cockpits of all three R15 TDI cars at Le Mans with outstanding racers – also thanks to the two drivers Porsche is providing to us.”
The 24 Hours of Le Mans will take place on June 13-14 and Audi has quite high expectations especially following the past results.
Furthermore, the new members of the crew, Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas, have already tested the Audi R15 TDI which is going to feature an aerodynamics package especially optimized for this event. Partially, the modifications were required after the organizers of the race decided to increase the minimum weight for diesel cars by 30 kilos, which means Audi's engineers had to remove several parts of the car, thus making the optimizing process a bit more difficult.