Bathurst-winning Audis set to return?

Maybe Audi's 1-2 success at the Bathurst 12-hour will be the start of something big. Perhaps other car companies will also see an opportunity to promote products through a motor sport event that isn't a closed shop for just two car companies.

"Maybe it will be a signal... to other manufacturers to also go to this race, because an endurance race is a strong challenge for the drivers and the product itself," said Audi's local MD, Uwe Hagen.

Shamefaced, Hagen admitted during the launch of the new A8 diesel variants that he didn't even know where Bathurst was, prior to being approached by the company's Motorsport Committee in Germany about entering two R8 LMS cars in this year's event.

The Motorsport Committee monitors endurance events from around the world and settled on Bathurst as a potentially great showcase for the company's newest R8 variants, which were developed to compete in the LMS (Le Mans Series) -- hence the name.

"We have a motorsport committee... and they were looking worldwide [at] endurance races," Hagen told the Carsales Network. "Bathurst is well known as an endurance race. It was on the list, like Sepang, like Dubai. And then this call came in and the director said yes, we'll do this.

"The idea was with this R8 LMS. After launching this car, we could see this car performing really well in other races... and the idea was how can we participate in other endurance races? -- and Bathurst was on the list."

The R8 LMS has gone into production and at least one will be coming to Australia, according to Hagen, following an excited local getting caught up in the atmosphere at Bathurst.

"We sold one R8 LMS... that's not what we're looking at, but what we do... we try to measure all our marketing investments. We do this to increase the awareness of the brand, but we always combine this with a form of customer [engagement].

Hagen's information suggests that the Bathurst event has considerable potential to attract the attention of international media and TV viewing audiences all over the globe. The initiative to run the two-car 'team' at Bathurst didn't come from the event organisers and nor did it come from the local Audi management team. That's telling in itself.

"The call came to us, asking... are you interest in running this, because beside just the investment on the race side, there's a huge investment on the marketing side," Hagen explained. By 'huge investment', the company was taking account of inviting 80 guests to the event -- among other associated costs. With video footage of the event being viewed all over the world, the company will likely see some return on that investment.

"We invited all our R8 [owners]... who were really fascinated. Looking at the R8 LMS, around 50 per cent of this car is similar to the normal production car... it was also an idea to get this form of transfer. A car that came out of the Le Mans... is coming out of the race series, is going into series production."

Hagen, who has been to Le Mans on a number of occasions and described the atmosphere for the Bathurst event as "exactly the same" offered some further insights about the race and the team's entries.

"What you also have to see, due to the restrictions -- I didn't know this, I have to be honest -- is [the race rules] only [allow] rear-wheel driven [cars]... we had to deactivate the four-wheel drive. So the cars were only... rear-wheel driven."

He was also amused by the fact that the Aussie team knew the track, but not the cars; the Germans knew the cars, but not the track. In fact, Craig Lowndes had reportedly never driven a mid/rear-engined road car before. But the Germans had a little trick up their sleeve, Hagen explained.

"The German drivers trained on PS3... because there was no possibility to drive this track, so just to become familiar with the different curves, they [learned] in the beginning from PS3."

You can watch videos of the event from the Audi perspective on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/AudiAustralia?feature=mhum.

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