After descending upon the city of Le Mans in 2014 in the form of Tom Kristensen, nine-time winner at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, who took a bit of a stroll between downtown and the 24 Hours circuit at the wheel of the Audi R18 e-tron quattro, the marque has moved to an online launch of the new R18 looking to score a 14th win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and looking to reclaim the World Endurance Champion title that has eluded it now for two seasons.

2013 was a great year indeed for Audi who won both at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and was awarded the World Endurance Constructors and Drivers titles thanks to the trio Loïc Duval, Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish. Though in 2014 the marque lost the Scot who retired at the top of his game - and who was relatively overcome in performance by Toyota and the TS040 Hybrid. The reliability of the R18 e-tron quattro nonetheless allowed Audi to save its year by winning for the 13th time in its history at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the now three-time winners Marcel Fässler, André Lotterer and Benoît Tréluyer.

In 2015, all was well for Audi who won at one the two first races of the season of the World Endurance Championship (WEC) at Silverstone and Spa. The R18 was as fast as the Porsche 919 Hybrid and much more so than the Toyota TS040 Hybrid. Unfortunately, the remainder of the season didn't measure up to Audi's expectations for the R18: for the first time in a long time it was in terms of reliability that Audi failied, unlike Toyota whose TS040 Hybrid was more reliable than fast.

The German company having racked up all the awards since the 24 Hours of Le Mans up until the closing bell at Bahrain, Audi decided to develop a new car for the 2016 season. The prototype is now called R18 diesel and it's still a flywheel hybrid system replaced by lithium-ion batteries to store energy recovered during braking. On the other hand, unlike Toyota and Porsche, Audi will still only use an energy recovery system which will allow it nonetheless to climb the ranks of the 6 Megajoules class, as Toyota moves to 8 and Porsche remains at 8, the maximum allowed per regulations.

Only a few more hours until we all get to see the new Audi R18 live at Audi's site audimedia.tv at 1:00 p.m. U.K. time. Info will also be available on Audi's Facebook page, Twitter feed and Instagram account.

Cécile Bonardel / ACO - Translation by Nikki Ehrhardt / ACO