Audi shoots for high sales with new RS 3 LMS
Audi Sport customer racing has high expectations for its new RS 3 LMS, the successor to the outgoing first-generation RS 3 LMS. The new car is already twice a race winner in the WTCR – FIA World Touring Car Cup, and later this year the new sedan will be made available to customers outside of WTCR, with 100+ sales the goal.
The new RS 3 made its debut at its home race at the Nürburgring in June, a track where the road-going RS 3 now holds the compact class lap record around the iconic circuit.
Two race weekends later in WTCR, and in the hands of Audi Sport factory driver Frédéric Vervisch, the latest car became a race winner at the Aragon MotorLand circuit, with his privateer team-mate Gilles Magnus repeating the feat at the Hungaroring in August.
The car is therefore already a proven prospect, not that you would expect anything less from Audi Sport.
“With the Generation 1 car, we really had a rocket start,” says Detlef Schmidt, the Audi Sport RS 3 LMS technical project manager. “Right out of the box in Dubai in the 24-hour race, we were able to win, and then in the TCR International Series later in Georgia with Comtoyou Racing we also had a very good start - and now we’ve also had a good start with the Generation 2 car.”
“There is already great interest in the car,” says Dr. Andrea Milocco, the RS 3 LMS project manager. “You have to consider the TCR world has developed a lot since the first car. We have a lot of new manufacturers and new markets, such as TCR South America and New Zealand – but we are quite confident we will produce the volume of the new car into three digits.”
The sedan is back as the shape of choice
The RS 3 road car comes in both hatchback and sedan form; but the RS 3 LMS is exclusively a sedan car. The second-generation touring car again following the pattern of its predecessor.
In fact, when the original RS 3 LMS came out in 2017, it was a pioneer in the TCR market which had predominantly been focussed on the various ‘hot hatches’ produced by the manufacturers at that point.
The CUPRA Leon, Honda Civic Type R, and the Volkswagen Golf GTI two-box sporty hatchbacks made up the bulk of the TCR market, but Audi Sport came in with its RS 3 LMS sedan – and now four years later many of its rivals have followed suit, with Lynk & Co, MG, and Hyundai all building “three-box” shaped touring car racers.
“There are technical reasons we chose the sedan, but we see there is no right or wrong,” explained Milocco. “Both concepts have their advantages. We had great success with the Generation 1 car with a sedan, so we’ve continued with this, and our competition has also followed us and gone the same way.”
Built for endurance, and designed for sprint
The new Audi RS 3 LMS replaces the two preceding Generation 1 RS 3 models, which featured as options either a sequential gearbox or the Direct-Shift Gearbox (DSG) unit.
While the sequential gearbox car has been the preferred gearbox for touring car sprint racing, the low-running cost of the DSG has made the option the primary choice for those taking part endurance racing.
The second-generation Audi RS 3 LMS, like its cousin, the CUPRA Leon Competición, both run with a Hewland six-speed sequential gearbox, which replaces both the DSG and the Sadev sequential units in the range. The Audi Sport customer racing development team says this gearbox is the ideal choice for both racing formats.
“Hewland is a long-term partner of Audi; we have been together in the DTM for more than 15 years,” says Milocco. “We had a target to develop a gearbox for this generation which could cover both endurance and sprint racing, and offer our customers a product which is a sequential gearbox and also has the low running costs which were appreciated by our customers who had the DSG version.”
Switching to one common gearbox is designed to make it easier for Audi Sport’s customers, which compete in both types of racing, who had some challenges if they were competing in multiple disciplines.
“What’s happened is teams either had two cars (a DSG and a sequential), or they had to swap the gearboxes,” explained Schmidt. “So they had a DSG car, and to be competitive in sprint races, they had to change using the conversion kit. With the Generation 2, we focussed on one car which is competitive in all kinds of TCR racing; sprint and endurance, and the spec-sheet had to guarantee that the gearbox can do both – and we’re expecting this gearbox will make life easier for the customers.”
Worldwide support for customer racing
Audi Sport is very proud of its global customer racing programme. Already a powerhouse in sports car racing, the brand has also been a key part of the TCR success story since it joined in 2017. Through its global support network, it aims to continue to be strong in Europe, North America, and Asia, as well as grow its customer racing programme in TCR’s newer markets in Australasia and South America.
“It is very clear we have a big advantage in having the Volkswagen Group supporting our customers worldwide, so our customers benefit from this comprehensive network,” says Milocco.
“We’ll also improve this network by finding new partners in new markets,” he added.
“The feedback from our customers is they are confident with the brand, the support, and with the performance of the cars,” says Schmidt. “For us, we always see it as a complete package for the customer, and that’s why since the beginning, for now, and for the future, we are committed to customer racing – and TCR is pure customer racing.”
The article appears in the September 2021 edition of TCR World & Life, the official TCR series’ magazine.
