Although we don’t usually cover motorsports, we thought Audi’s release today of new details on the R10 Le Mans race car — more specifically on its engine — was worth noting. What makes this so interesting? Besides the fact that the car’s twelve-cylinder diesel engine is incredibly innovative, it also provides a glimpse of technology that could one day make it to regular street cars. The all-new Audi R10, which was unveiled on Tuesday in Paris, is powered by a totally new 5.5-litre, twelve-cylinder bi-turbo TDI engine, which is extremely quiet and economical. The all-aluminum engine produces over 650 hp and more than 1,100 Newton metres torque. As with the TFSI technology, which triumphed initially at Le Mans before being adopted for mass-production, Audi and VW customers should stand to benefit once again from the lessons learned in motorsport. More info and images after the jump…

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”With the A8 4.2 TDI quattro, Audi already builds one of the most powerful diesel cars in the world,” explained Prof Dr Martin Winterkorn, Chairman of the Board of Management of AUDI AG, at the R10 presentation in Paris. “The Le Mans project will help our technicians to extract even more from TDI technology. Nowadays, every second Audi is delivered with a TDI engine. We expect that the percentage of diesel engines will be even larger in the future.”
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The R10 prototype’s V12 power unit, which is equipped with two diesel particle filters, is hardly recognizable as a diesel thanks to the engine’s smooth running nature. The TDI engine’s specialities presented the Audi Sport engineers with a whole list of challenges. The injection pressure easily exceeds the 1,600 bar achieved in production cars. The usable power band lies between 3,000 and 5,000 revs per minute – an unusually low rev range for a racing engine. The driver must change gear in the R10 far less often than in the R8 because of the TDI engine’s favourable torque curve.
