Bentley and Audi in Sportscar racing

In some ways these are an odd pairing, but, as this site concentrates on more modern sportscar racing, they are inextricably linked. Some might also argue that what Bentley were in the 30s, Audi are in the early years of the 21st century.

Audi's first ventures into sportscar racing, as a marque, were as recent as 1999, (although there were a few Audi engined Group C2 cars before that), when they raced two different cars

One was a radical looking coupe, reminiscent of the Group C cars, but more modern. The other was a modern, but more ordinary open topped car, the R8. Both were powered by a turbocharged V8 and appeared at Le Mans.

Both performed reasonably well, but the coupe was dropped for 2000 and, with BMW withdrawing from Le Mans, the way was open for Audi's heavily revised R8 to begin its domination of sportscar racing.

They repeated the feat in 2001, but there was another car from the Volkswagen Group on the podium, too.

Bentley first raced at the first Le Mans 24 Hour race, in 1923, and went on to win the race in 1924, 1927, 1928 and 1929 with (as Bugatti described them) "The world's fastest lorry".

After the heydays of the Bentley Boys, Bentley was taken under Rolls Royce's wing and was never seen again at Le Mans.

However, in a convoluted deal in the late 1990s, the VW group briefly owned Rolls Royce and Bentley, before having to pass the Rolls Royce name onto BMW. Cleverly, VAG continued the revival of the Bentley marque, started under Rolls ownership, and returned the marque to its traditional stomping ground of Le Mans in 2000, with two beautiful metallic racing green GTP entrants.

The best Bentley was placed 3rd in 2001, producing lots of publicity on their return to La Sarthe.

The Audis returned in 2002 and steamrollered their way to sportscar domination, unseen for many years, with a 1-2-3 result. The Bentleys were hampered by narrower tyres. However, one of the Bentleys was placed 4th as a 'best of the rest' to make VAG's days complete.

The Audi R8s were sold into private hands at the end of 2002 and raced in the ALMS series in the US and sportscar series in Europe. They also returned to Le Mans, but in 2003, were beaten to the overall win by unexpected unreliability, accidents and t the VAG steamroller, in the form of Bentley's first win in 73 years!

The Bentleys took a dominant 1-2 to complete their reputation rebuilding exercise.

Sadly, the great looking Bentleys were retired after winning Le Mans and, in 2004, the battle for the Le Mans honours was between the Audi R8 entries of Japanese Goh Team, The US based Champion team and the two car entry of Audi UK.

Against expectation, it was the Japanese team who took the victory, but Champion won the ALMS series, whilst Audi UK, took the LMES title.