LeMans

The last couple of years, I have made an effort to watch as much of the 24 Hours of LeMans as I feasibly can. The SPEED Channel only covers about 18 hours (only, right...), of which, I'm lucky if I can watch 5 hours of which. Generally, the racing is rather monotonous. When a race gets spread over 24 hours and 3000 miles, the races are seldom close (although some races have come down to seconds). Fortunately, most of the cameras are concentrated in the pits, where a lot of the action happens. The types of mechanical repairs that can be made in a pit stop are mind-boggling. Granted, they aren't the 6 second stops that Formula 1 cars make, but I remember 2 years ago, Audi replaced a transmission in about 12 minutes. If you're like me, it takes me about that long to pull the car into the garage and round up my tools. To say nothing of the heat resulting from 12+ hours of 200 MPH racing.

One of the curiousities of LeMan is the commercials. Primarily Audi, whose decade-long dominance of LeMans came to an end this year after 3 years of battling with Puegot's 908 HDi Diesel. Regardless, Audi seems to consider LeMans to be their Superbowl. Maybe not necessarily in their huge advertising budget, but in their irreverent, outlandish attitude. This is the event that they really push their R8 supercar. In previous years, its consisted of sticking it to "old money" types. This year, they stuck it to Ferrari. Now I realize that a lot of folks who might be reading this consider Audi owners to be stuck up and crabby people. However, most of them have never experienced Ferrari owners. When you go to buy a Ferrari at the dealership, you pretty much need to be recommended by a current Ferrari owner to even be considered to buy a new one.



Granted, an R8 is merely a dream car for a large percentage of the population (okay, maybe not a large percentage of the population, but for those who love cars), seeing as its list price starts around $115K and rockets up into the $150K+ range pretty easily with options. That's more than my house, so the odds are that Rachel will never allow me to buy a car like that. Its fine, I guess...buying a car like that isn't terribly responsible, but it might almost be justifiable considering the company that it keeps. Its AWD and the engine is pretty reliable (its actually a slightly detuned version of the engine found in Audi's LeMans winning R8 prototype car). It might actually be useful as an all year around commuter vehicle, even in northern climates. What's more, Audi has developed a concept R8 containing a V12 TDI turbo diesel engine (also derived from LeMans testing...finally a series that is revelant to street car development). Consider 500 HP, 750 ft-lbs of torque in a ridiculous sports car that can get 30 MPG. Have your cake and eat it!

Okay, I've gotten derailed a little bit, drooling. The curiousity of Audi running an R8 commercial during LeMans is that I'm guessing the vast majority of people wealthy enough to own an R8 generally have better things to do than sit and watch a race on SPEED for 18 hours. Those are the type of people who probably made a weekend getaway to LaSarthe to be part of the 250K people who chose to spectate in person this year. To me, broadcasting LeMans on TV only appeals to people, who like me, can only aspire to own cars that might share some commonality via the tire manufacturers, or for people who own Corvettes that want to watch Corvette whip the Aston boys again for the 15th time in a row, but would never consider setting foot in France. If I had the liquidity to procure an R8, I'd make sure LeMans was an annual pilgrimage.