Audi R15 TDI - Le Mans Winner

On Monday (June 21) the victorious Le Mans squad will visit the Neckarsulm plant where the engine of the LMP1 sports car is built. Mike Rockenfeller, at the age of 26 the youngest Audi driver who celebrated a victory at Le Mans, will pilot the Audi R15 TDI designated as car number “9″ across the plant’s premises. Afterwards, Rockenfeller and his driver colleagues Timo Bernhard, Dindo Capello, Romain Dumas, Marcel Fässler, Tom Kristensen and Allan McNish will sign autographs in public in front of the Audi Forum in Neckarsulm for one hour.

In the afternoon the winning squad will travel to Ingolstadt, the headquarters of Audi and Audi Sport. There, Mike Rockenfeller will do a lap around the plant premises as well before the Le Mans winning #9 Audi R15 TDI and the other two Le Mans vehicles – cars #7 and #8 – will be showcased for public viewing at the Piazza in front of the Audi museum mobile. Benoît Treluyer will be present as well; André Lotterer cannot attend on either of the two days due to a racing commitment in Malaysia.

At the Festival of Speed in Goodwood the Audi R15 TDI can be seen in action as well. Le Mans record winner Tom Kristensen and Allan McNish will take “their” R15 TDI along to Goodwood. Prior to the start of the DTM race at the Norisring the original winning car of the Le Mans 24 Hours will do some demo laps on the 2.3-kilometer city street circuit along the Dutzendteich lake. The victorious Le Mans driver squad Timo Bernhard/Romain Dumas/Mike Rockenfeller will be at the Norisring too and sign autographs.

Mike Rockenfeller was appropriately received at his home in Altnau on Lake Constance on Monday night: his driver colleague and friend Lucas Luhr had arranged a spontaneous party for the brand new Le Mans winner.

Darren has two podium finishes

Darren Turner and Tomas Enge are now firmly on the FIA GT1 World Championship points table after two incredible runs to second in both of this weekend’s races at Brno in the Czech Republic.

Darren started the qualifying race from third, dropping a place at the start to his good friend Peter Dumbreck in the Nissan GT-R. He and Dumbreck ran bumper-to-bumper throughout the first stint, providing some thrillingly close racing for the viewers. After an excellent pit-stop, Darren’s hand over to Tomas leapfrogged the No.7 into second place where they stayed until the finish.

The start of today’s main race didn’t go quite to plan when some confusion caused Enge to drop right back to 16th place on the first lap. He immediately got stuck into his comeback drive and was up to 10th by the time the pit stop window opened and this is where it all turned around.

The Safety Car was out on track as the pits opened so all but six of the GT1 cars dived into the pit lane to do their driver change. Darren jumped in and, with the Young Driver AMR team being quick on their toes in the pits, he rejoined the race in second place!

The race order was now the Ford GT of Thomas Mutsch, Darren’s Aston Martin and Peter Dumbreck’s Nissan GT-R. In a remarkable demonstration of how evenly-matched these cars are, those three never had more than a second between them until the chequered flag fell at the end of the race.