Audi

With thirteen outright victories, Audi is the second most successful manufacturer in the history of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, behind only Porsche. In fifteen participations between 2000 and 2014, the four-rings marque won the race thirteen times — a strike rate without equal in the modern era, built on a formidable alliance between Ingolstadt engineering and the operational mastery of Joest Racing. It all began with the R8, a prototype of legendary reliability that won in 2000, 2001 and 2002, then again in 2004 and 2005, launching Tom Kristensen's extraordinary Le Mans career along the way. Audi then revolutionised the discipline by making diesel win: the R10 TDI triumphed in 2006, 2007 and 2008, its eerie quietness unlike anything Le Mans had ever heard. The R15 TDI plus added a victory in 2010 — at the end of a memorable duel with Peugeot — before the R18 TDI won in 2011. Another technological breakthrough followed in 2012: the R18 e-tron quattro became the first hybrid car to win the 24 Hours, repeating in 2013 and 2014, the year of the brand's final success with André Lotterer, Benoît Tréluyer and Marcel Fässler. For fifteen years, Audi turned Le Mans into a full-scale technology laboratory, from diesel to hybrid power, from LED to laser lighting. At the end of 2016, the Volkswagen Group ended the LMP1 programme and redirected its resources towards Formula E, and later Formula 1, where Audi makes its debut as a constructor in 2026. The marque is therefore absent from this season's Hypercar grid, but its imprint on modern endurance racing is everywhere: in the reliability standards it set, in the culture of relentless innovation it embodied, and in the memory of a Le Mans crowd that watched the four rings rule the world's greatest race for a decade and a half. For many fans, the Audi years remain the benchmark against which every modern Le Mans dynasty is measured.

• Country : DEU
• Founded : 1909
• Le Mans wins : 13
• First win : 2000
• Last win : 2014