General Features
The Unfair Advantage: Round 2 Part 3
By by: George Achorn
Jun 26, 2002, 21:57

Part 3

Team Operations

The Audi A4 quattro Touring Car, and its numerous very successful drivers garner most of the attention and the praise when the championships are won. In fact, the talented drivers and the A4 quattros are only half of the story. Audi also perfected the management of highly effective factory teams which contributed in no small fashion to the A4’s worldwide success.

Factory teams were sponsored in several series worldwide, including an eight-car team from the AZK-ROC Franco-German alliance, two-car team in the UK, two-car team in Italy, and a team in Australia. Audi A4s have also been campaigned by several privateer teams including one sponsored by Abt, the famed Volkswagen and Audi accessory company. In fact, Christian Abt so successfully piloted an Abt team car that he was offered a position with the German factory backed team and a seat in one of the R8s that competed in the 1999 Le Mans endurance race.

There are very few fully supported in-house factory teams in motorsport today that exist to the degree that Audi’s factory touring program did. Most teams use independent contractors who specialize in various aspects of racing team management. No rival in TOCA follows the complete process performed by Audi of creating, testing, and delivering products rather than signing multi-million dollar contracts with specialists to take care of varied responsibilities for them. Audi took great pains in ensuring that their program was second to none.

Audi Sport in Ingolstadt built the cars using their own engineers and team technicians working together. The race-spec engines were built in the Neckarsalm facility inside a long hangar dating back to pre-war days and NSU.

Each team used parts and materials sourced through Audi. Nothing was used in the competition cars which had not been tested and approved by the factory engineers. While this can be particularly annoying for an overseas Audi-backed team in the case of a quicker tire compound being tested at a racing venue, it pays off in the long run in reliability.

Audi devised a part numbering system where each part on the cars was given its own part number and had a life based on aviation principals. The inspiration came from similar systems used by successful Formula 1 teams.

For instance, after 2000km of incident-free use, parts like the forged OZ alloy wheels and each A4 racecar’s engine are sent back to Germany for an inspection and to be rebuilt in the case of the engine. Each car’s transmission returns after its own 5000km of incident-free use.

To help perform the huge task of logging the life of each component, Audi incorporated a state of the art computer system, which logged and dictated the life of each part. At each racing venue, laptop computers established the exact setup of each A4 racecar and monitored mileage for individual components using the IDL (Intelligent Data Loading) adaptation of a program sourced from Microsoft.



A Fujitsu laptop acted as an infield notebook. It could download data on every aspect of chassis performance logged on strain gauges. The information was then transferred via a Micro Dynamics rear passenger port for the chassis dynamics. More data from the Bosch MP2.8 engine management system was transferred through a plug-in point mounted in the B-pillar of the A4.

The computer system was also configured for recording outside variables with the use of a mini weather station. Meteorological measurements are made inside of one of the team’s MAN support trucks. The measurements include wind speed and barometric pressure. This data was fed into the laptops to preface a detailed report of each outing for each car.

There was also a provision for driver input on description of the car during specific racing periods. Through the use of a short hand keypad, the driver could make comments on performance.

The IDL system’s aviation style of logging and lifeing each part and component paid off, giving Audi an edge over the competition in reliability. Such effort offers a significant advantage when campaigning over 20 cars worldwide and is one of the main reasons that Audi Sport UK was able to complete the 1996 season with not one race withdrawal due to mechanical breakdown. This reliability record is one that no other team has even come close to achieving in the history of the BTCC.

Audi Sport UK

Audi Sport UK is housed in a 5000 square-foot facility just outside Buckingham. The team employs a sizeable staff, the majority of which are either specialist or general technicians.

Up until the 1998 season, Audi Sport UK fielded two British program cars for the 1996, 1997 and 1998 seasons. John Bintcliffe (UK) and Frank Biela (Germany) piloted the first two seasons’ cars. In 1998 Biela departed for the Italian series and was replaced by Yvan Muller.

Since the withdrawal from the BTCC by Audi, Audi Sport UK has continued its role as a key component in Audi AG’s worldwide motorsport campaign endeavors. The UK-based franchise was in charge of the two-car R8C campaign in last year’s race Le Mans. With no R8C development scheduled for the ’00 racing season, their current role remains unclear at this point.



The Aftermath

Due to the 1998 season ban on all-wheel-drive, the somewhat unsuccessful campaign of front-wheel-drive versions of the sedan, and the newfound interest in GT1 racing, Audi has chosen to pull out of TOCA. It would appear that factory-backed TOCA teams by Audi have come to an end for the moment.

Nevertheless, privateer teams are alive and kicking in Europe where the ban on all-wheel-drive has been lifted in some cases. Audi Sport Australia was the only factory team still campaigning during the ‘99 season, and their future looks somewhat limited with Audi’s own lessening interest in the format.

Audi achieved what it set out to do. The A4 range has been a sales success, which was achieved at least in part through worldwide motorsport notoriety. Audi’s own sporting image and emphasis on state of the art technology has been further engraved on the minds of fans worldwide, ensuring that Audi is a major player amongst the likes of BMW and Mercedes Benz. Most significantly, Audi has shown that it can be the motorsport powerhouse worthy of the ancestral Auto Union motorsport dominance of yore.

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