Car to remember

When an electric vehicle wins the Le Mans 24 Hours, or a prototype powered by a hydrogen fuel cell manages the feat, its inspiration will be traceable to a racing machine we now consider almost conventional. Audi’s R10 TDI was anything but when this turbodiesel arrived in 2006, starting of a three-year winning streak.

The R10 wasn’t the first diesel-powered Le Mans racer: there had been so-called ‘oil-burners’ straight after World War II and a small British privateer team had brought the fuel back to Le Mans in 2004. But the Audi was the first purpose-designed diesel racer with, most pertinently, the first bespoke diesel racing engine. The Audi changed attitudes, both inside and outside the sport. It showed what could be possible with what was still called an alternative technology in the world of racing and it showed the outside world, most pertinently in the USA, that diesel engines could be sporty, even sexy.