Giving Innovation a Racing Showcase

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/sports/autoracing/giving-innovation-a-racing-showcase.html

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LE MANS, France — As it celebrates its 90th anniversary this weekend, the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race has entered a new era of socially responsible technological innovation.

This 24-hour weekend laboratory for both racing cars and road cars could now well do for the hybrid car what it did for the diesel car and for many other technologies since its inception in 1923.

Among the world’s top three auto races — the Indianapolis 500 and the Monaco Grand Prix are the other two that share its legendary stature — Le Mans, which starts Saturday in this city 200 kilometers, or 125 miles, west of Paris, is the only one that has so consistently transformed public perception of road-car manufacturing technology.

The race organizer, the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, or A.C.O., opened up the rules in 2006 to allow diesel-powered engines and the Audi car manufacturer entered a diesel car. As a result, not only was the image of the diesel changed from a loud, polluting, slow technology into a cool, clean, fast and powerful engine, but since then, diesel-powered cars have won every year.

In the highest class of cars lined up when the race starts at 3 p.m. on Saturday, five cars from two manufacturers, Audi and Toyota, will be equipped with  hybrid engines that are powered both  by diesel fuel and by reusable energy recuperation technology from braking.

In other words, unlike the rest of the gasoline-powered field of a total of 55 cars, the leading five cars have both diesel fuel and braking-heat-converter systems to power the cars for the 24 hours.

Barring accidents or breakdowns, the consensus is that a hybrid will win the race, as was the case last year, when hybrids were entered for the first time. But the gamble then looked more like a lab experiment than a racing necessity. Next year, organizers will take another step to encourage hybrid innovation, allowing manufacturers to use any kind of locomotion, as long as it fits into a specific, allocated — and measurable — amount of energy per lap.

“They can do engines of V8, V10, V4 — I don’t know what they will do, everything is possible — but they will have a quantity of energy to expend on one lap,” said Pierre Fillon, president of the A.C.O. “So the more they manage to create their energy outside of fossil fuel energy, the more performance they will achieve. The better their hybrid system performs, the more laps they will be able to do, the faster they will be able to go, the more they will be able to win.”

While manufacturers hope to benefit from the image of a fast, powerful, energy-efficient hybrid racing engine, they are motivated by more than image. According to engineers and drivers, the hybrid cars are really better racing cars and more fun to drive.

“It is a reality: The principle of the recuperation of energy from braking is extremely clever, and you must do it,” said Pascal Vasselon, director of the Toyota team. “If you don’t, then with each moment of braking you dissipate energy in heat. There is nothing negative in the system. It provides a higher performance, because the energy that has been expended is even stronger when restored for reuse.”

Alexander Wurz, one of the Toyota drivers, who was also a Formula One driver and a longtime Formula One test driver, said it was no longer even possible to win without it.

“You could not make this same energy efficiency without being hybrid,” he said. “With hybrid, the batteries are becoming smaller and much stronger, so the efficiency is increasing. The harvesting of energy and the discharge of energy is also extremely efficient, in a very light, small, compact unit and under extreme conditions: braking, stop-and-go-stop-and-go, in much more violent and hot conditions than you have on the road. Weight, when you accelerate, costs you energy, and if your batteries are heavy, it costs energy.

“In the race, the hybrid is now so light and so powerful, it is a clear efficiency increase and it is just faster,” he added. “There is no doubt that it is a better, faster racing car. In the future on the road car, you will decide if you want it for performance, for fun, or to save some fuel and drive more efficiently.”

His teammate, Anthony Davidson, another former Formula One driver, lit up when asked if it was a different driving experience.

“I can tell you that from inside the car as a driver, it’s incredible when we get that punch, that hybrid kick of the electric power coming in, of around about 300 horsepower,” he said. “It’s not messing around, and it’s instant, and the torque is incredible as well.”

Marino Franchitti, who is driving a regular gas engine car in the second-highest category, agreed that the race was likely to change the image of hybrid cars — as well as contribute to their development. Last year, he drove the experimental Delta Wing car that the A.C.O. had allowed to test out new, clean racing technologies. The Delta Wing used much less fuel, and had smaller tires, body and engine.

“There is nothing like motorsport to accelerate technology,” Franchitti said. “That’s why so many car companies embed their engineers in the racing programs and then send them back to the road-car side. But there’s also making these technologies sexy, showing that it’s not just a more frugal technology or boring, that there’s a lot of performance that can be had from these, and that is not only good for the future of cars for everybody, it’s good for our sport.”

Still, it is not a level playing field. In the top class of the race, called LMP1, there are only eight cars racing this year: the three Audis and two Toyotas, with the superior hybrid technology, plus three traditional gasoline-fueled cars, two from the Rebellion team and one from the Strakka team, which are both are privately owned.

The budgets of the top two teams are estimated to be around 10 times as big as those of the two private teams.

But Chris Reinke, head of the Le Mans racing prototype project at Audi, said it is the fact that new technology can be compared in the same race to the older technologies that makes the event — and laboratory — so attractive.

Still, last year, thanks to accidents or technical breakdowns, only three of the cars from the top teams made it to the podium, and a Rebellion finished fourth. Nick Heidfeld, a former Formula One driver who drove that car, and who is driving for Rebellion again this year, said it was true that the hybrid cars were a fabulous innovation and the way of the future. But he added that he would not want to be driving one unless it was at a manufacturer team.

“For a private team at this stage it could be quite risky, because not only is it quite expensive, because it is still early days for it in terms of development, but also reliability would be crucial,” he said.

For the engineers, according to Reinke, the hybrid project is a lot more fun, too.

“When you start to develop something, there’s great potential in the beginning, and that is exciting,” Reinke said.

“Down the path of the regular internal combustion engine you will always find something new, but the steps get smaller and smaller,” he added. “With the hybridization of racing cars, it’s a very new technology and the steps are very big still, and that makes it very exciting.”