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GRAND-AM: Inside Audi’s Improbable Rolex 24 Win
With 18 bad-fast Porsches, six Ferraris and a variety of other GT cars standing in its way, Audi wasn't supposed to win the Rolex 24 with a privateer team.
The No. 24 Audi wasn't in pristine shape by the end of the race, but it was still fast and led home a 1-2 for the R8 GRAND-AMs. (Photo: Marshall Pruett)
The sight of an Audi in Victory Lane at a major international sports car event has been a fixture for more than a decade, but last weekend’s class win by the 4-Rings at the Rolex 24 At Daytona didn’t quite fit the mold.
Sure, there were factory drivers celebrating, and Dr. Ullrich, head of Audi Sport, was present, but it wasn’t a prototype and the battalion-sized factory team was nowhere to be found.
While the Le Mans kings were back home in Ingolstadt preparing the latest iteration of its Audi R18 e-trons, a small band of US-based privateers, armed with four GRAND-AM-sped Audi R8s, were leading the charge against no less than 18 Porsches, six Ferraris and a variety of other proven GT machinery.
There was an undeniable factory presence behind Alex Job Racing, APR Motorsports and Rum Bum Racing, with assistance provided under the Audi Sport Customer Racing banner and a familiar face—Le Mans-winning engineer Brad Kettler—responsible for orchestrating the entire production.
As director of operations and engineering for Audi Sport Customer Racing, USA, Kettler’s workshop in rural Indiana has been home to a number of Audi racing projects, and with the administration and support of the R8 GRAND-AM program now serving as his primary focus, everything from leading the build on the four Rolex 24 cars to bringing decades of race strategy to bear played a vital role in earning a 1-2 finish on Sunday.
Based on Porsche’s pace at the Roar Before The 24 test in early January, the famed brand looked set for its third consecutive GT win at the Rolex 24, and after qualifying 1-2-3-4, there was little doubt which marque was holding the high ground.
“You really have to understand that we were not at all happy with where we were in terms of top speed,” said Kettler. “The Porsche are always usually dominant at Daytona because they're almost built for that track, let’s face it. They have an advantage with a small frontal area and the amount of power they had, we pretty much figured that they would make everyone look silly in qualifying and we pleaded with the GRAND-AM for some kind of break to achieve more even top speed. But you saw even in the beginning of the race that top speed was definitely not our thing. We just couldn't go any faster on the straightaway than that.”
The Audi R8s were woefully slow on their debut at the 2012 Rolex 24, and despite an intensive year and off-season of development, they were still lacking outright pace and weren’t expected to challenge for the win.
Kettler, whom I nicknamed the “Tire Whisperer” years ago in deference to his savant-like understanding of racing tires, was able to sock away one advantage during winter testing that didn’t stand out on the stop watch—at least not in setting staggering lap times—but soon presented itself as a possible point of concern for the Porsche camp.
“We ran so many laps here with the test car that we knew pretty much exactly the package that we had and we encouraged the guys, the engineers and so forth, because they were new to the car, to basically experiment within a very small window,” he said. “It took us a little while to develop it, but we knew that we were very, very good on tire degradation, that whatever we could do on lap 10 we could probably do on lap 60 in terms of tires. So we worked a lot more, the soft side of the setup, the long and soft rubber. We worked a lot to be very kind to the tire, to not overwork the car because of the tire because we were so slow in a straight line we worked on these other things.”
If running off and hiding in the distance wasn’t possible, Kettler and Co. figured the best strategy would be to kill the competition with consistency. The pole-winning Konrad Motorsport/Orbit Porsche lapped the 3.56-mile road course at 1:47.631 while the best Audi, the No. 24, settled for sixth, more than a half-second off pole at 1:48.282.
Lacking Porsche’s blistering pace yet armed with a chassis setup that favored long and consistent runs, Kettler hatched a simple plan for the R8 customer teams: 24 hours of maximum attack.
“We were not surprised at our qualifying speed,” he said. “Low 48s—that’s all we could do. That’s all we could ever do. And we ran the car up 100% all the time, and there wasn’t any sandbagging or playing games. It’s what we had to work with so we did. And we talked about it and I talked to (racing legend) Alwin [Springer] about it before that. He said, ‘Run the car full-out?’ And I said, ‘Yep, we will run the car full-out.’ That's all we'll have.”
It wasn’t immediately apparent, but Kettler’s focus on tire life would come into play once the race moved into the long overnight stretch.
As other teams burned down their tires to pull out a gap, the Audi Sport Customer teams played a waiting game—confident that they would move forward as the competition would eventually struggle for grip and come back to them.
“We found we could run for 75 laps on a set of tires. You saw the cars were very, very consistently well-driven, everything was going correctly in the race at the mid-49, mid to low 49, 48 for some of the superstars that were really pushing. It was completely transparent what we had there.
“What you saw at the beginning of the race was a phenomenally strong couple of forces between the Magnus Porsche and the Konrad Porsche, which was an absolute rocket. You saw them really take off. Then our consistency began to build up, I would say, probably about midnight; maybe about midnight or so the Camaro started to struggle. You saw the Corvette start to have problems. Some of the Porsches were slowing down or having a little bit more trouble at that point. Through the night we very much crept up on it and we kept doing the same thing.”
Kettler also added more insight on the ‘maximum attack directive that was given to the drivers, and says it was more about attacking each lap, compared to fighting with every GT car in proximity to an R8.
“There wasn't any really specific strategy of holding the car back and then showing later,” he explained. “What did change is we let the guys, not let them, we gave the guys more encouragement to hold the car back for later because we were really put on our back foot with our top speed. This made us really caution the drivers against engaging in too much battle early in the race. I mean, we were going to let it go and let it happen because the [Ferrari] 458s and the Porsches were going for it. Our guys had no business fighting with them, really because there was nothing to be gained by it. The strength came from letting the guys out a little bit and encouraging them to attack the best possible lap times. It’s a different mentality. You’re kind of on your own mission, rather than encouraging them to attack the car in front of them at all times.
“If you do that, and do it too early, you're taking a lot of risks to run a faster lap with a slower top speed car, you have to take a lot more inherent risk, you got to tuck your nose in, you have to out-brake everyone, you have to do a lot of stuff that's really a bit more edgy and we didn't want the guys making those maneuvers until it was really going to count for position and stick. So that was really the difference in how and when we encouraged them to attack.”
While that might sound like a perfectly rational plan for the drivers to follow, given their competitive nature, Kettler admits it was like dangling meat in front of a pack of hungry dogs for hours on end.
“We told the guys, you're not going to be able to out-run the other cars off the bus stop; there's no way, you're not going to be able to do it,” he said. “They’re going to put five, six car lengths on you there and you accept it that you have to conserve the car and know that when the time comes that you can hold onto the tail and then out-brake them in turn one if you have to do that.
“There are different ways to get 100 percent out of a car, and if we’d let them really use up the tires and brakes to get those lap times, it would have hurt our overall chances. It was a fine line to walk. Getting that 100 percent being smooth and flowing and patient is what we were committed to until it was time to leave it all on the table towards the end.”
Sure, there were factory drivers celebrating, and Dr. Ullrich, head of Audi Sport, was present, but it wasn’t a prototype and the battalion-sized factory team was nowhere to be found.
While the Le Mans kings were back home in Ingolstadt preparing the latest iteration of its Audi R18 e-trons, a small band of US-based privateers, armed with four GRAND-AM-sped Audi R8s, were leading the charge against no less than 18 Porsches, six Ferraris and a variety of other proven GT machinery.
There was an undeniable factory presence behind Alex Job Racing, APR Motorsports and Rum Bum Racing, with assistance provided under the Audi Sport Customer Racing banner and a familiar face—Le Mans-winning engineer Brad Kettler—responsible for orchestrating the entire production.
As director of operations and engineering for Audi Sport Customer Racing, USA, Kettler’s workshop in rural Indiana has been home to a number of Audi racing projects, and with the administration and support of the R8 GRAND-AM program now serving as his primary focus, everything from leading the build on the four Rolex 24 cars to bringing decades of race strategy to bear played a vital role in earning a 1-2 finish on Sunday.
Based on Porsche’s pace at the Roar Before The 24 test in early January, the famed brand looked set for its third consecutive GT win at the Rolex 24, and after qualifying 1-2-3-4, there was little doubt which marque was holding the high ground.
“You really have to understand that we were not at all happy with where we were in terms of top speed,” said Kettler. “The Porsche are always usually dominant at Daytona because they're almost built for that track, let’s face it. They have an advantage with a small frontal area and the amount of power they had, we pretty much figured that they would make everyone look silly in qualifying and we pleaded with the GRAND-AM for some kind of break to achieve more even top speed. But you saw even in the beginning of the race that top speed was definitely not our thing. We just couldn't go any faster on the straightaway than that.”
The Audi R8s were woefully slow on their debut at the 2012 Rolex 24, and despite an intensive year and off-season of development, they were still lacking outright pace and weren’t expected to challenge for the win.
Kettler, whom I nicknamed the “Tire Whisperer” years ago in deference to his savant-like understanding of racing tires, was able to sock away one advantage during winter testing that didn’t stand out on the stop watch—at least not in setting staggering lap times—but soon presented itself as a possible point of concern for the Porsche camp.
“We ran so many laps here with the test car that we knew pretty much exactly the package that we had and we encouraged the guys, the engineers and so forth, because they were new to the car, to basically experiment within a very small window,” he said. “It took us a little while to develop it, but we knew that we were very, very good on tire degradation, that whatever we could do on lap 10 we could probably do on lap 60 in terms of tires. So we worked a lot more, the soft side of the setup, the long and soft rubber. We worked a lot to be very kind to the tire, to not overwork the car because of the tire because we were so slow in a straight line we worked on these other things.”
If running off and hiding in the distance wasn’t possible, Kettler and Co. figured the best strategy would be to kill the competition with consistency. The pole-winning Konrad Motorsport/Orbit Porsche lapped the 3.56-mile road course at 1:47.631 while the best Audi, the No. 24, settled for sixth, more than a half-second off pole at 1:48.282.
Lacking Porsche’s blistering pace yet armed with a chassis setup that favored long and consistent runs, Kettler hatched a simple plan for the R8 customer teams: 24 hours of maximum attack.
“We were not surprised at our qualifying speed,” he said. “Low 48s—that’s all we could do. That’s all we could ever do. And we ran the car up 100% all the time, and there wasn’t any sandbagging or playing games. It’s what we had to work with so we did. And we talked about it and I talked to (racing legend) Alwin [Springer] about it before that. He said, ‘Run the car full-out?’ And I said, ‘Yep, we will run the car full-out.’ That's all we'll have.”
It wasn’t immediately apparent, but Kettler’s focus on tire life would come into play once the race moved into the long overnight stretch.
As other teams burned down their tires to pull out a gap, the Audi Sport Customer teams played a waiting game—confident that they would move forward as the competition would eventually struggle for grip and come back to them.
“We found we could run for 75 laps on a set of tires. You saw the cars were very, very consistently well-driven, everything was going correctly in the race at the mid-49, mid to low 49, 48 for some of the superstars that were really pushing. It was completely transparent what we had there.
“What you saw at the beginning of the race was a phenomenally strong couple of forces between the Magnus Porsche and the Konrad Porsche, which was an absolute rocket. You saw them really take off. Then our consistency began to build up, I would say, probably about midnight; maybe about midnight or so the Camaro started to struggle. You saw the Corvette start to have problems. Some of the Porsches were slowing down or having a little bit more trouble at that point. Through the night we very much crept up on it and we kept doing the same thing.”
Kettler also added more insight on the ‘maximum attack directive that was given to the drivers, and says it was more about attacking each lap, compared to fighting with every GT car in proximity to an R8.
“There wasn't any really specific strategy of holding the car back and then showing later,” he explained. “What did change is we let the guys, not let them, we gave the guys more encouragement to hold the car back for later because we were really put on our back foot with our top speed. This made us really caution the drivers against engaging in too much battle early in the race. I mean, we were going to let it go and let it happen because the [Ferrari] 458s and the Porsches were going for it. Our guys had no business fighting with them, really because there was nothing to be gained by it. The strength came from letting the guys out a little bit and encouraging them to attack the best possible lap times. It’s a different mentality. You’re kind of on your own mission, rather than encouraging them to attack the car in front of them at all times.
“If you do that, and do it too early, you're taking a lot of risks to run a faster lap with a slower top speed car, you have to take a lot more inherent risk, you got to tuck your nose in, you have to out-brake everyone, you have to do a lot of stuff that's really a bit more edgy and we didn't want the guys making those maneuvers until it was really going to count for position and stick. So that was really the difference in how and when we encouraged them to attack.”
While that might sound like a perfectly rational plan for the drivers to follow, given their competitive nature, Kettler admits it was like dangling meat in front of a pack of hungry dogs for hours on end.
“We told the guys, you're not going to be able to out-run the other cars off the bus stop; there's no way, you're not going to be able to do it,” he said. “They’re going to put five, six car lengths on you there and you accept it that you have to conserve the car and know that when the time comes that you can hold onto the tail and then out-brake them in turn one if you have to do that.
“There are different ways to get 100 percent out of a car, and if we’d let them really use up the tires and brakes to get those lap times, it would have hurt our overall chances. It was a fine line to walk. Getting that 100 percent being smooth and flowing and patient is what we were committed to until it was time to leave it all on the table towards the end.”
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