Editor's note: This story by James Mills was first published in 2009. Photos: Mark Fagelson.

This is where they sat. Where they sweated. Braced. Focused. Fought. Swore. And cried.

No amount of hopes, dreams, planning, well-drilled pit crews or perfectly calculated strategies run from a laboratory-load of laptops could succeed without the men who sat where I’m sitting.

For 24 hours it was all down to the diminutive figures of Dindo Capello, Tom Kristensen and Allan McNish. Around the circuit of Le Mans they tore, the bobbing crash helmet changing every few hours as each professional driver took their turn at the wheel, risking life, limb and a £1,000,000 car (and multi-million pound marketing campaign) to take motor racing’s most coveted trophy, Les Vingt Quatre Heures Du Mans.

Now it’s my turn.

People don’t get to do this; drive a cutting-edge race car, which has earned enough silverware to fill one of Audi Sport’s double decker race car transporters. But after persistent pleading with Audi Sport and technical partner, Shell V-Power Diesel, an invitation with a difference arrived.

It’s eerie. None of the dinner conversation, team briefings or talk-throughs of the Audi R10 TDI – the unstoppable diesel-powered supercar which has won three Le Mans on the trot (2006 to 2008)– can prepare me for the feeling I get the moment I slip the Nomex balaclava over my head and then gently squeeze into the Arai crash helmet.

Up onto the side pod I step. One foot drops gingerly to the seat, followed by the other, and I lower myself down into the depths of one of the most successful endurance racing cars in history.

My eye line barely clears the shallow adjustable perspex wind deflector ahead of the steering wheel. Look left or right and half your line of sight is obscured by energy-dissipating foam ‘collars’. No wonder cars come to grief. My legs stretched out ahead, near horizontal, my back tilted unnaturally, but the seat fits like it was tailor-made. I couldn’t be more comfortable.

A tensiled webbing strap divides the footwell, presumably to prevent the driver’s leg flailing around in an accident. Someone reaches in and straps me in place, like an appliance. It’s snug, cocooning and confidence boosting – kind of what you’d hope for from a 230mph machine with no windscreen or roof.

I’m sat in silence. Nervous. Fidgeting. Reminding myself which switch does what, desperately trying to divert my mind from countless ‘What if…?’ scenarios. But it’s no good. What if I stall it? What if I don’t shift up a gear with MORE than 50 per cent throttle, like I’ve been told to? What if the brakes – without any anti-lock safety net – lock-up and I skid past the corner, into the crash barriers? What if I spin off at the last bend of northern Italy’s Misano circuit, right into the pit lane wall in front of Head of Audi Motorsport, Dr Wolfgang Ullrich?All around me, the guys from Audi Sport’s German racing partner, Joest Racing, are busy making final checks to their precious baby. I can’t hear anything – they’re in their world, I’m in mine. ‘Why did I have to be the first journalist to drive,’ I fret. Still, if I bin it, at least I’ll have driven it. If I was last in the (admittedly short) queue, there’s a chance there’d be no drive of the R10 TDI at all, before it’s retired to a tour-of-duty of motor shows and museums around the world.

This car is up there with legends of Le Mans. Think Porsche 956, Ford GT40, Jaguar D-Type and Ferrari 250. And now the earpiece fitted for the test drive crackles into life. “Are you ready, James?” It’s the voice of chief engineer Howden Haynes.

“We should have brought Peugeot’s 908 HDi along for a twin test,” I quip. “We asked them and they declined, for some reason,” says Ralf Jüttner, Joest Racing’s Technical Director. “Where are the cupholders?” I ask. You get the idea. An intercom system could provide hours of entertainment in the average family hatchback. If you’re simple. Like me.

Whatever, this is it. The tyre warmers come off and the car is wheeled out on trolley jacks. The team releases them, so the R10 sits on its air jacks. When they’re released, the escaping air pressure sets the carbon fibre and aluminium honeycomb monocoque shuddering violently.

The instructions come to fire up the engine. My heart is thump-thump-thumping. Ignition toggle pulled out and down. Check for neutral on the gear display indicator. Say a little prayer. Then punch the little black starter button…

The diesel engine jumps to life. I’m instructed to familiarise myself with the throttle for sensitivity. To my surprise, the 5.5-litre, twin-turbo V12 flicks up and down the rev range like a sewing machine. It’s so smooth. Responsive. Free from inertia. Even without moving away it feels every inch the finely honed three-time Le Mans-winner it is – and far from the agricultural diesel machine some armchair pundits would snobbishly believe.

The first two laps are frustrating. I’m to follow a camera car at 50 per cent power, on wet tyres, so the Michelin slicks can be kept warm, ready for the four laps proper. With a firm shove of my left leg, the short-travel clutch sinks to the floor and the first gear engages with a ‘clunk’. The camera car is halfway up the
pit lane by the time I’ve feathered the clutch and dialled in some rpm, and my heart feels as if it’s beating faster than the engine is turning over.

Time to catch up. I floor the throttle and the power is, how can I put this, disappointing. But, the signs of an animal bred for speed are all there: a steering rack that darts from one full turn of lock to another, without a hint of resistance, throttle which translates the slightest pressure into forward momentum and a tightly wound drivetrain without a hint of slack. The sooner we get this over with, the better.

Two laps later, I’m peeling off into the pit lane. The air jacks lift the car. Over the radio, Haynes asks if everything is OK. Then he leans into the cockpit and twists the engine mapping MIX rotary dial between his fingers to position one of 12. The steering wheel has more controls than a nuclear reactor. I can remember the radio command to talk with the team, and the neutral and reverse commands, but the rest are a jumble of colours and software. “That’s full power James. Exactly the same as the drivers’ use. Go carefully and enjoy it.”

With that said, the tyre warmers are off and the air jacks rumble as the R10 TDI touches down. Throttle pressure, clutch eased out and away I go. If I was nervous before, I simply can’t afford to be now. Concentrate.

Four laps is nothing. Especially when you’ve only had five ‘familiarisation’ laps of a circuit you’ve not driven before, in an Audi S3. I need to know what it feels like, though, so halfway up the pit lane exit, I floor the throttle in second gear and WHAM! The big V12 TDI compresses my chest and the steering wheel-set gearshift lights cycle through green, amber then red. At the first blink of red, I shift to third, then find myself upon a nasty right-left flick at the end of the pit straight, followed by a long arcing right hander that widens to full throttle and another gear again, before standing on that brake pedal – wow, it needs a serious shove from your thigh muscles – and it’s down to second gear, fingers quivering as they twice snap the left gear-shift paddle and drop with a rev-synched BANG, BANG, to second gear.

In the fourth- and fifth-gear bends I won’t be going fast enough to push the suspension and tyres to the edge of adhesion. Putting my faith in the R10 TDI’s aerodynamics, which pinned Dindo Capello to the asphalt as he rounded a fifth-gear kink at 163mph, is too big a leap for me. 125mph is all I can muster.

If anything, it’s the tight corners that will spit me off. In the second and third gear turns just one or two mph separate our speeds. The back wheels slip if I open the throttle too wide as the car fires out of each apex. Thankfully the ASR (traction control) is on, preventing an egg-on-face moment. Again, the throttle hits its stop and flashing LED lights pierce my vision. The free-revving engine should eat up its 5,000rpm rev range in a flash, but with its ultra-flexible torque delivery, Audi Sport opted for a five-speed transmission to offset weight, of which there’s plenty with a V12 behind you. So, each gear ratio is longer than you’d expect. But no matter where you are in the rev range, the V12 punches the car down the road like a bouncer turfing a drunk student out from a nightclub. And with every upshift of the sequential transmission, the process starts all over again.

Then there’s the sound. Sure, it’s dramatically quieter than petrol-engined race cars, but sat here I can hear everything I need to – a mechanical melody rising and falling that’s unlike anything I’ve experienced before.

My brain is consumed by the mental process of driving Audi Sport’s winning creation. For an amateur, it concentrates the mind like a knife to the throat. And that’s without a full field of other race cars bunched up around you, oil and debris on the track, rain, or slower backmarkers cutting across your racing line.

At the end of the back straight, I try braking as hard as my left leg will allow. But no matter how much I push, I can’t generate enough pedal pressure pressure for the carbon fibre brake discs to stop the wheels turning. As Dindo Capello later explains, legs are an area that need work at the gym. “The neck gets toned from all the driving, but the legs have to be strong for three or four hours at the wheel.”

At least the steering is manageable, if a little light. Capello says it was the best compromise for the drivers – less fatigue, fast flick-on opposite lock to catch a tailslide and manageable in the high-speed turns where the bodywork’s aero package delivers up to 2.7g of lateral load at Misano.

Apexes are yours for the taking. As racing cars go, the Audi isn’t that light – the regulations at Le Mans, for example, dictate a minimum of 900kg. None the less, it responds faithfully and feels encouraging as I grow more confident. It’s on your side, built to work with the driver, not challenge – well, in the bends where I can
approach the threshold of grip.

When I do, its natural tendency is to understeer, pushing the nose wide if you get heavy-handed with the throttle or carry too much speed into a bend. But in Misano’s two fast, fifth gear kinks, my brain short-circuits. It can’t accept I shouldn’t slow. It’s too much for me, too scary; another world, where professional race car drivers excel at outer limits that see mere mortals stumble.

And then it happens. “Box James. Box.” The voice makes me jump out of my skin. ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ Then I remember the earpiece. I fumble around, the car coasting, as I look for the radio button. “Was that: come into the pits?” I ask. “Yes, pit on this lap.”

Gutted. That can’t have been four laps, surely?

Audi needs one more victory to overtake Ferrari for the second most wins at 24 Heures Du Mans, after Porsche. To help hit the target, its drivers have a new V10 diesel-powered race car, the R15 TDI. It has proved a born winner at its first race, the 12 Hours of Sebring in Florida, typically a good indicator of performance at Le Mans. [Audi went on to overtake Ferrari, and now boasts 13 victories, to Porsche's 19 and Ferrari's 11.]

After driving the R10 TDI, a car at the end of its career, all I can say is it’s going to take a monumental effort to beat Audi at its own game. Good luck.

The man behind the machine

“The Shell V-Power Diesel we race with is so close to road fuel, we put it in our trucks if we ever have any left over!” So says Ralf Jüttner, Joest Racing’s Technical Director and the man behind the Audi R10 TDI. “Friction of race engines has become more important, especially when you are heavily regulated.

Together with Shell and using its Helix lubricants, we made big improvements.” Shell engineers also analyse the oil and filters for evidence of contamination which could point to an impending engine failure.

Car number 2 took the chequered flag at the 2008 Le Mans 24 race. Everything about it is beyond the ordinary, explains Jüttner. “It’s constructed like a Formula One car, with a carbon fibre tub cocooning the driver, and off which you hang all the components. The aerodynmaics are very sophisticated. Not a single bit of airflow goes to waste, giving it the edge on track.”

The carbon fibre bodywork is reinforced with Kevlar; Audi Sport’s 12 cylinder 90 degree turbo diesel generates over 1,100Nm of torque; the carbon brake discs could last for two Le Mans 24 Hours races – the list of over-engineering goes on.

Audi R10 TDI technical specifications

Engine: 5,500cc V12, 48-valve, twin turbo
Power: 650bhp
Torque: 811Ib/ft
Fuel: Shell V-Power Diesel
Transmission: Five-speed sequential manual
Chassis: Mid-engined, longitudinally mounted, rear-wheel drive, built by Dallara
Suspension: Front and rear double-wishbone with pushrod system, anti-roll bars and adjustable dampers
Brakes: Ventilated carbon fibre discs with adjustable braking bias
Weight: 900kg (at Le Mans 24 Hour)

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