It takes an incredibly special car to be as dominant in its career as the Audi R8. In seven years of competition, the R8 won the 24 Hours of Le Mans a total of five times (and the car’s engine, housed in corporate partner Bentley’s Speed 8 LMP car, won an additional time), a track record that has helped Audi become the second most-winning Le Mans constructor of all time. What makes the R8 so special? To start, there’s the immensely powerful 3.5-liter twin-turbocharged V8 amidships, providing more than 620 horsepower in a chassis that weighs far less than a ton. The other key to the R8’s success was the foresighted engineering that went into its construction. In the heat of an endurance race, parts will fail, and on the R8 they were designed to be quickly accessed and replaced, a trait that would benefit the R8 over its career. In this livery, the #2 R8 saw success in ALMS racing in 2006, after it had retired from LMS racing in favor of the diesel-powered R10.
