The new Audi R10 has proven successful after three days of extensive Winter Testing at Sebring, Florida, making AUDI AG’s ambitious target of taking victory at the Le Mans 24 Hour Race with a diesel-powered sports car all the more promising.

With his best time of 1m 47.308s, Audi driver Dindo Capello displayed the full extent of the diesel sports car’s potential, beating the track record set in 2002, and was less than a second slower than the fastest lap time of the car’s predecessor, the R8 set during tyre testing last winter.

"I felt at home in the R10 after two laps,” said Capello, who drove the new diesel sports car for the first time at Sebring.

Audi driver, Frank Biela also achieved a personal best time of 1m 48.284s during testing.

Despite a few minor modifications required, Audi Sport’s development team were pleased that the cars ran almost trouble-free, completing 262 of the 400 test laps (2,380 kilometres).

"We had a few small problems which cost us time but we worked through a lot of the things we wanted to. We came to Sebring in order to uncover any teething problems with the R10, and that’s exactly what we did,” said Biela.