Audi: Developing Torque Sensors for Macau “A Huge Challenge”

Audi Sport Asia’s head of customer racing has described the marque’s development of torque sensors to allow its teams to participate in this weekend’s FIA GT World Cup on the streets of Macau as a “massive challenge.”

With the FIA mandating the use of torque sensors, already widely used in the FIA World Endurance Championship and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, for this year’s World Cup, Audi has embarked on a rapid development program in order to allow its customers to contest the end-of-season East Asian street event.

The Ingolstadt marque is present with three cars for Christopher Haase, Joel Eriksson and Adderly Fong as it vies for a first Macau win since 2016.

Alexander Blackie, Head of Audi Sport customer racing Asia, revealed that the marque was able to use the final round of the GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS on the streets of Beijing to gather data with its new torque sensors ahead of Macau.

Blackie told Sportscar365: “Honestly speaking, we had to develop them from scratch, so hats off to everyone back in Neuberg who took the task and ran with it, to develop quite a challenging technical instrument from a standing start in a matter of months.

“It’s not just building and developing the torque sensors, you also need to ensure you understand the data behind it and how you manage it. That has been a huge challenge, because there are manufacturers that use them week in, week out.

“From Audi’s perspective, we’ve gone full pelt. We managed to do some testing, we tested them on the streets of Beijing during GT World Challenge during some of the preparatory sessions, to get some data from a bumpy track.”

However, Blackie said the development of torque sensors was not a decision made only for Macau, but also to cover the bases in any case any other championships or events Audi competes in opt to mandate the technology in future.

“We announced to our customers that we will support them until at least 2032, so that means having the ability to race in the biggest races in the world,” he said.

“We can’t predict the extent to which torque sensors will continue to be used. We just wanted to make sure we offered our customers the chance to race in Macau and in any other future events that may use the technology.”

Haase was the top Audi representative in seventh across Thursday’s two practice sessions with the seventh-fastest time in FP2 in the No. 45 FAW Audi Sport Asia car, with Eriksson ninth in the sister No. 46 Phantom Global-run Audi.

Silver-rated Fong, who is representing customer team Uno Racing, was 12th-fastest.

“Macau is the jewel in the crown, the one you look forward to and plan from a very early stage,” said Blackie. “We’ve won here on a number of occasions, so it’s really important that we come here with a lineup that respects the nature of the event.

“We always come with the best drivers available to us, and we want a balance between the international side and the Chinese side, which we have this time. From our perspective it’s a nicely balanced lineup and we hope we can do some damage.”

Blackie stressed the continued importance of motorsport to Audi even at a time that the R8 has faded from prominence in other parts of the world, following the end of the marque’s factory GT3 program at the conclusion of the 2023 season.

“We just unveiled the Formula 1 livery for next year and we can see the impact that had,” he said. “Motorsport is a massive topic for us. It’s in our DNA.

“You will continue to see R8s on the tracks of China and Asia next year and beyond.”