Ingolstadt/Le Mans, June 16, 2012 – Rain made for difficult conditions in the morning’s warm-up on the 80th running of the Le Mans 24 Hours. The Audi drivers handled the conditions well and occupied the top four positions.

The fastest time of 4m 03.933s was set by world championship front runner Loïc Duval in the number “3” Audi R18 ultra shortly before the end of the 45-minute warm-up. He was followed by Dindo Capello in the best Audi R18 e-tron quattro (#2). The Italian is celebrating his 48th birthday on Sunday and has the chance of becoming the oldest winner in the history of the endurance classic.

For the race at Le Mans, dry weather has been forecast. Audi Sport Team Joest has nominated André Lotterer (#1), Allan McNish (#2), Loïc Duval (#3) and Mike Rockenfeller (#4) as start drivers of the four Audi R18 cars. It is planned that the Audi drivers take turns at the wheel in the following order:

#1 André Lotterer > Benoît Tréluyer > Marcel Fässler
#2 Allan McNish > Tom Kristensen > Dindo Capello
#3 Loïc Duval > Romain Dumas > Marc Gené
#4 Mike Rockenfeller > Marco Bonanomi > Oliver Jarvis

On the formation lap, an Audi A1 quattro will be driven in front of the field. On Friday night, Audi presented the Audi SQ5 TDI at the Audi Racing Arena alongside the track at Le Mans. The new flagship model of the Q5 range powered by a 230-kW (313 HP) 3.0 TDI with two turbochargers is the first S-model in Audi’s history to be powered by a diesel engine.