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"Photos:    What a perfect Florida evening. Last glow of a tropical sunset fading behind palm trees rustling in a light breeze, and me pulling into Gate 2 at Sebring in a borrowed black Audi TT RS with red-striped wheels. Racing cars were already out on the track for night practice, shrieking around the course like animals caught in a small room and wild to get out, yellow headlights slashing the warm dusty night. Exciting stuff.   Audi&amp;#039;s Sarah Toycen met me at the registration building and had me follow her golf cart out to the motorhome at Turn 15 that would be my home for the next three days. Actually, there was a whole row of motorhomes, as Audi had invited most of the American press to witness what they hoped would be a 1-2-3 team triumph\u2014and to attend the unveiling of their new R18 e-tron Quattro hybrid/racing/motorsports/race-car-test-audi-r18-e-tron-quattro-hybrid-race-car&amp;quot; target=&amp;quot;_self&amp;quot;&amp;amp;gt;R18 e-tron Quattro hybrid prototype and its non-hybrid lightweight sister car, the Ultra, soon to be run at Spa and Le Mans.        Two of the Audi R18s leading the field.    Barring bad-luck crashes or weird parts failures, no one seriously expected Audi to lose. It promised to be more a command performance than a race: &amp;quot;Come and see the Rolling Stones in a fantastic Battle of the Bands! They&amp;#039;ll be up against the Velvet-Tones from Hoboken!&amp;quot; That sort of thing.   I threw my suitcase into the motorhome and began walking down toward pit row to see what was shaking. All three Audi R18s were out there, hitting their automatic headlight flashers to warn slower traffic out of the way. And\u2014as I would soon learn\u2014almost everything was slower by at least a full second. Their main competition and last year&amp;#039;s winners, the Peugeot team, were not there. Citing financial woes, Peugeot had abruptly pulled the plug on its entire endurance racing program in mid-January, with cars already at Sebring and drivers reportedly in mid-flight from Europe. Welcome to Florida. Now go home.        Nose to tail, an Audi chases an Oreca.    As I walked toward the pits, the track PA suddenly squawked that all three Audis had been involved in a spin/shunt passing accident on one of the corners. Yikes! And me having just arrived...   I hotfooted it over to the Audi pits, but no one seemed terribly flustered. Crew chief Brad Kettler told me the damage to the cars was fairly light. &amp;quot;We have plenty of spares,&amp;quot; he said, and assured me all the cars would be going back out before practice was over.   Plenty of spares, indeed. These cars are built like Lego toys, whole front and back ends ready to bolt up and go in only a few minutes. Quick disconnect fluid lines everywhere. Rows of new bodywork, ready to snap into place. And I was told that Team Audi Sport Joest brought 129 crew members to Sebring. These guys don&amp;#039;t play to lose.        Audi R18 number 3 dives inside a Lola-Toyota.    And, frankly, I didn&amp;#039;t want them to. I&amp;#039;m usually averse to the effect an overdog team can have on racing, but Audi&amp;#039;s protean ability to adapt to new restrictions and still triumph is one of the few things that keeps me\u2014and a lot of other fans\u2014interested in this side of the sport.   Outlaw Group B rallying? No problem. Audi proceeds to dominate the U.S. Trans-Am and IMSA GTO series, then puts away the Quattros and has Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich turn his attention to endurance racing. Le Mans-winning R8s too fast and dominant? Okay, we&amp;#039;ll build a 5.5-liter R10 turbodiesel and win with that\u2014which everybody says can&amp;#039;t be done. Engine too big? We can win with a 3.7-liter TDI with better aerodynamics. Since 2000, Audi had won Sebring nine times and Le Mans 10, always pushing new technology. And, perhaps best of all, the cars are always beautiful. As Dr. Ullrich said in a recent interview, &amp;quot;Ugly cars have never been fast.&amp;quot;        Two of the Audi R18s work through traffic.    Now there&amp;#039;s a rule of physics you probably don&amp;#039;t hear much in engineering school. But you do strain yourself trying to think of an exception.   When the cars went back out for the last Thursday night session, I hiked down to the very fast Turn 1 for awhile. Much blatting and downshifting as most of the pack came through, but the Audis sounded like whistling death, soaring past visibly faster than the other cars in a rush and rustle of wind and tire noise. This lack of deafening engine racket is supposed to take something away from the experience, but I find it oddly thrilling in an unearthly sort of way, like being mugged by a ghost. The cars emit shock waves more than noise. Maybe stealth is the new evil.        Audi is dominating the race.    And the R18s do look evil, in the best possible sense. With those long stabilizing fins, podlike cockpits and lobster-claw front fenders, they somehow remind me of man-made sea monsters, like Captain Nemo&amp;#039;s Nautilus from the Disney version of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Which, as a kid, I thought was one of the most captivating machines I&amp;#039;d ever seen. Purpose with style and a touch of malevolence.   When this night practice session was over, Audi didn&amp;#039;t put the cars away. Instead they stayed in the pits and rehearsed quick driver changes. Audis before the R18 were all open cars so that valuable seconds could be saved during driver changes, but a revision of the tire change/air gun rules had mandated more time in the pits. Hence the enclosed cockpits.        Audi is dominating the race.    On Friday came the unveiling of the new in the Audi hospitality tent. Lovely thing, essentially a more aerodynamic and lighter R18 with a braking energy-recovery system built into the front axle. Braking energy is fed into an electric flywheel accumulator that sends energy back into the front axles at speeds above 74 mph (by regulation). The rear axle remains a conventional TDI setup, unconnected to the front.   The Ultra car is identical, but without the front axle wizardry. Both chassis are lighter because the Automobile Club de l&amp;#039;Ouest and FIA have tried to slow the Audis down by adding ballast and intake restrictors and reducing boost and fuel capacity. Their attempts to limit the Audis before have simply resulted in faster cars using a higher level of technology, so we&amp;#039;ll see how it works at Spa and Le Mans this year.        Easily quickest cars in the race are the Audi R18s, driven by Andr\u00E9 Lotterer, Benoit Tr\u00E9luyer and Marcel F\u00E4ssler, which started from the pole.    In the meantime, the &amp;quot;old&amp;quot; R18s certainly worked well in their swan song appearance at Saturday&amp;#039;s 60th running of the Sebring 12-Hour/racing/motorsports/sebring-history-truth-in-12&amp;quot; target=&amp;quot;_self&amp;quot;&amp;amp;gt;Sebring 12-Hour.   To cut to the chase, they finished 1st and 2nd overall, 4 laps ahead of the field. The No. 1 car had trouble with an electric shifter servo and finished well down after several long pitstops. The winning car was driven across the line by Allan McNish, who co-drove with Tom Kristensen and Dindo Capello. (I later had a chance to sit with McNish at the victory dinner and found him to be a lively, funny guy of great intelligence and insight. And, like most proper gentlemen, a former dirt bike, kart and Formula Ford racer. Now I feel a personal obligation to root for him at Le Mans.) The GT race was a door-banging cliffhanger, however, ending with a BMW M3, a Corvette and a Ferrari 458 Italia only seconds apart.        Audi is dominating the race.    After the race, I wandered over to the winner&amp;#039;s circle and watched the jubilant Team Audi Sport Joest take their trophies. After that, there were so many classes and hat-changes for photos that even the half-drunk St. Patrick&amp;#039;s Day fans from the infield began to drift off, glassy-eyed with confusion. I did too.   Walking back to the motorhome after the long day, I could feel my arteries suddenly starting to unclog, so I stopped at a food booth advertising &amp;quot;Stuffed Pizza and Stromboli,&amp;quot; and ate what was probably the last slice of pizza in Sebring. Almost still partially warm.        Andr\u00E9 Lotterer, Sebring 2012 pole winner (center), with teammates Marcel F\u00E4ssler (left) and Beno\u00EEt Tr\u00E9luyer.     Properly stuffed, I went back to the motorhome and was lulled to sleep by the chorus of generators, amid sprawling acres of race cars, transporters, paddock lights, stuttering air tools, golf carts and air conditioned hospitality suites. It felt like the very vortex of the world&amp;#039;s energy drain. And yet Audi was using this series to test fuel-efficient turbodiesels, lightweight materials and, now, a new hybrid with energy recovery in the front axle.   Redemptive or not, I do love living in an era where this kind of technology really does make it from the racetrack to the showroom, a time when fun and laser-like speed can be had without just bolting on another huge 4-barrel carburetor. Sometimes the past is right where it belongs. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a18211/a-tdi-weekend-at-sebring/>