Audi Car Racing Cars

It seems that there’s going to be a new kid on the Formula 1 block as Audi is reportedly announcing in early 2022 its decision to join the motorsport. They will join Mercedes-AMG as the two German brands set to compete for dominance at the most elite form of open-wheel racing.

It’s always interesting to see how different engine layouts compare to one another. It’s even more interesting when a high-performance SUV goes up against some of the best compact sports cars and a capable hot hatchback. This is exactly the case with this drag race from Carwow, where a Lamborghini Urus is being challenged by a Porsche Cayman GT4, Audi TT RS, and a Volkswagen Golf R.

The folks at Carwow brought in three very different vehicles to the drag strip for a series of straight-line races. The face-off was between an Audi RS6, a BMW M4 Competition, and an Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio. All of them are some of the fastest vehicles in their respective niches. So, how do they fare against each other?

Audi is planning to participate in the 2022 Dakar Rally with what has to be one of the most extreme off-roaders we’ve seen so far this year. The RS Q E-Tron is an EV, yet there’s also a TFSI gasoline engine borrowed from DTM that serves as a range generator that will allow it to run constantly without charging. If this is the reason Audi decided to ditch Formula E, then I have to admit that I whole-heartedly agree with its decision.

Audi’s R8 track-only lineup is getting bigger and better. The R8 LMS has 83 driver titles and 106 additional championship victories under its belt already. To make sure this record only gets better in the future, the company has come up with an Evo II iteration of the LMS GT3. It features a new wing, a redesigned air intake, and an upgraded suspension setup amongst other things. It breaches the half-a-million-dollar mark after price conversion.

The 2021 Audi RS3 LMS is an upgraded version of the company’s customer race car for the TCR racing series. Based on the fourth-generation Audi A3, which went into production in 2020, the 2021 RS3 LMS is the brand’s first all-new design for the racing series since the LMS debuted in 2016. On top of the updated exterior design that borrows from the road car, the 2021 RS3 LMS also features a more ergonomic cockpit with improved safety, a revised four-cylinder engine, and a new transmission. Let’s find out more about it in the review below.

German luxury brand Audi will, in a couple of years’ time, be back doing two things that it does really well: go fast on dirt and go fast in really long circuit races. In other words, Audi announced that the 2020-2021 season of Formula E will be the last for Audi as a factory team, the money spent keeping the Audi Sport Team Abt Schaeffler operation at the sharp end of the world’s best-well-known EV racing series being redirected to a couple of new and very interesting projects.

Thus, Audi is already developing an electric SUV that it will race in the Dakar Rally as early as 2022 and, then, a return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans and, presumably, the FIA World Endurance Championship (FIA WEC) is scheduled for 2023 or 2024 when Audi Sport will show up with an LMDh (Le Mans Daytona-Hybrid) prototype on the grid.

The Goodwood Festival of Speed is a great place to go if you want to see some of the world’s most revered racing cars of the past as well as a vast array of modern machinery and peeks into the future. The festival that takes places annually since 1993 on the grounds of the Goodwood House is also the place favored by some manufacturers to unveil their new products. The 2019 edition was chosen by Audi as the perfect occasion to pull the wraps off Audi Sport’s latest creation: the 640 horsepower Audi R8 LMS GT2, the most powerful racing car Audi has ever sold through its Customer Racing department. It’s designed for a new formula of Grand Touring racing that slots between GT3 and GT4 and caters for amateur racers looking for hight output machinery that’s quick down a straight line and easy to manage through the twisty bits.

Audi is a pragmatic company. Audi doesn’t put out a product for a class it doesn’t think will succeed. When Audi finally built a GT3-spec car, the class had been around for three full seasons, and it showed no signs of slowing down with more cars joining in (that same year Alpina debuted a B6-based contender, for instance) at a steady pace. Then there was the R8 LMS GT4, the GT3’s baby brother, its more pedestrian relative that is still tremendously fast (it puts out somewhere between 580 horsepower and 600 horsepower sans limiter, as much as the GT3 car without restrictions) and also expensive.

The RS3 LMS followed suit, the first sedan built by Audi Sport, one that, again, was built to be raced in a burgeoning category: TCR Touring Cars. The RS3 arrived in 2017, three years after the TCR format was first introduced. This is what makes the R8 LMS GT2 the odd one out. It’s the first Audi Sport-built car to be launched before any cars built to this ruleset ever took the track. So Audi must already know that it will be a success.

Audi just unveiled an incredibly powerful 2.0-liter, turbocharged, four-cylinder engine for its Audi RS5 DTM racing car. With a power output of 610 horsepower and half the weight of the 4.0-liter, V-8 it replaces, the new engine does not only provide 110 horsepower more than before, but it also slashed the weight of the DTM racer to 2,200 pounds. However, DTM practically summoned it with the change of rules in the DTM championship.

With the new DTM championship season warming up to start in May, the manufacturers are getting ready to compete following the new set of rules. The most significant change is the decision to dismiss the 4.0-liter, V-8, naturally aspirated engines in favor of the new, 2.0-liter, turbocharged fours. All in a move to close the gap between the road cars and its racing avatars in the DTM. What is more, DTM capped the power output for engines used in racing cars to 620 horsepower (plus 30 horsepower more for the push-to-pass maneuvers). That means that Audi did what the regulations allowed. If regulations allowed that this turbocharged, 2.0-liter engine could have up to 1,000 horsepower, Audi would make it like that. It happened already.

Audi is preparing for what they hope another successful season in Formula E as they enter a new stage of full-on works racing in the top EV series in the world. The first race of the season will take place in Saudi Arabia on December 15th.

Any fan of touring car racing has undoubtedly heard of the DTM series, but for those of you out there still drawing a blank, I’ll start things off with a little background info. The Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, or DTM for short, is Germany’s premier touring car race series, often pitting the big three German makes of Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz against one another on circuits around Europe. Audi Sport had a very impressive performance during the 2017 season, snagging a slew of titles and achieving its “most successful results of all time,” according to the team. However, the 2018 season is now upon us, and with it, a variety of regulation changes shake up the competitive landscape. So, how did Audi adapt to the revisions compared to Merc and BMW? Read on to find out.

Continue reading to learn more about the Audi RS 5 DTM.

Launched in 2013, the Vision Gran Turismo program gave mainstream automakers to develop wild concept cars for the Gran Turismo 6 and Gran Turismo Sport video games. No fewer than 26 virtual vehicles were created by more than 20 carmakers until 2018, with the likes of Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Aston Martin, Toyota, Chevrolet, Lexus, and Bugatti having joined the ranks. Come 2018 and Audi launched its first concept car for the Gran Turismo Sport video game. But unlike the competition, the Audi e-Tron Vision Gran Turismo is a fully functional vehicle.

While most Vision Gran Turismo concepts were developed exclusively for the pixelated world of Gran Turismo, some were built as full-scale models, and only a small fraction had an actual drivetrain. But none of them were able to function as actual race cars outside the video game. Audi is the first to deploy its Vision Gran Turismo car to real-world racetracks, as the fully-electric vehicle will be used as a taxi during Formula E events.

One of the first manufacturers to enter Formula E with a factory-backed team, Audi is now the first carmaker to offer its customers and guests the opportunity to experience Formula E’s city circuits as passengers in the e-Tron Vision Gran Turismo. This will happen starting April 14, when Formula E goes to Rome, Italy, for the seventh race of the 2017-2018 season. There’s no specific information as to how you can sign up for a ride, but a Vision Gran Turismo concept that actually works in the real world is a might big accomplishment.

Continue reading to learn more about the Audi e-Tron Vision Gran Turismo.

A daring idea back in the early 2010s, the Formula E championship for all-electric single-seaters became a reality in 2014 when the first season commenced. Audi is one of the few automakers that battled for the win in all four seasons up until now, and it’s getting ready for the next championship with a second-generation race car. It’s called the E-tron FE05, and it was just unveiled at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show.

The fifth season for Formula E is upon us, and Audi Sport is ready to dish out some electric-bred hell on the track. In preparation for the fifth season, Audi has prepared its second-gen racer with a new livery that is just downright hard to look away from. Check out Audi’s latest twitter post below along with some higher-resolution images in the gallery at the bottom.

The high-tech slab of open-wheel speed machine you see before you is the Audi E-Tron FE04, the Four Ring brand’s very first all electric race car. The FE04 just made its big debut in Neuburg, Germany, and will be used in Audi’s re-doubled efforts in the all-electric Formula E race series. That makes Audi the first German brand to enter the Formula E fray with a full factory-backed effort. Audi says the FE04 will be used as a test bed for new and upcoming technology that will eventually trickle down to its production vehicles, raising hopes that battery motivation alone will be enough to whet the appetites of future Audi performance enthusiasts.

“Following quattro, TFSI, TDI, hybrid drive and many other innovations, our single-seater race car is a portent of our product offensive in the field of electric mobility that we are ringing in with the Audi e-tron in 2018,” says Peter Mertens, Member of the Board of Management, Technical Development at Audi AG. The brand says it’s planning on offering as many as 20 new battery-assisted models, including both hybrids and all-electric models, by the year 2025. While the FE04 will use a spec chassis, per regulations, the FE04 is still an opportunity for Audi to develop it’s know-how with a new electric motor, transmission, and some suspension bits, as well as the software needed to run it all. Look for the FE04 to make its competition debut in Hong Kong this coming December, with pre-season testing taking place in Spain.

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