Audi boss Dr Wolfgang Ullrich has paid tribute to his drivers' following their commanding one-two finish in Saturday's Acura Sports Car Challenge at Mid-Ohio, the latest round in the American Le Mans Series.
Lucas Luhr and Marco Werner were particularly impressive in the #2 Audi R10 TDI and in total they led 107 of the 111 laps.
After the start, Werner needed just five laps to pass the four Acura/Honda and Porsche cars which had started in front of him. The German then set a new race lap record on lap seven and handed over the car to Luhr in first position after 50 laps.
Luhr then defended the lead until the finish and while four caution periods wiped out the advantage of the #2 Audi, each time he was able to pull away after the re-start – and this despite the fact he completed almost two hours on just one set of tyres.
The sister car driven by Dindo Capello and Emanuele Pirro also had a strong outing and was up to second from seventh on the grid after just 18 minutes.
While they had some dramas - including an incident with a GT2 car, Pirro came through following the last caution period to overtake Romain Dumas in the Porsche RS Spyder, thus giving Audi a one-two.
"It was a perfect performance today, everything went so well," stated Ullrich. "The key factor was that both cars had a good and consistent speed. "We also had a good strategy regarding the fuel consumption – even if this was somewhat eased by the caution periods. I'm glad that my first visit to a race in the U.S. since quite a while was rewarded with a 1-2 victory. I promise, I'll come also to the next race."
"After Friday's qualifying I did expect a podium finish, but not such a dominant performance," added Audi Sport North America team director, Dave Maraj. "I want to congratulate the whole team and the drivers for a fantastic job. It was a great team effort!"
Luhr and Werner meanwhile were also happy with their win on a track which in the past favoured the lighter LMP2 cars and on which Audi last scored an overall victory in 2004.
