It’s interesting to notice that Audi sees the Road Atlanta race partly as training for the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2010, a huge chance to collect real-world information about how their car races – and that they blame this year’s Le Mans failure on the little driving experience they had with this new car. That is, if you call a third place at the 24 Heures du Mans a failure….

This might look surprising, but if Audi didn’t manage to address technical and organisational issues that made them loose this year’s 24 Heures du Mans to Peugeot, they might decide not to expose themselves to another public defeat. After all Audi has a winner image to defend and why would they expose the marque to another defeat when they can just invoke poor economic conditions to stay home and better prepare yourself to smash the adversary the next season? Of course it’s not very sport, but with major auto builders entering competition to drive sales, car racing stopped being about sport a long time ago.

So will Audi pick up the gauntlet and take on Peugeot at Petit Le Mans? Will see.

Peugeot have won this year’s 24 Heures du Mans ahead of Audi, three years after returning to the mythical 24 hours long endurance car race, and they seem eager to confirm their victory, this time on American soil. But Audi has a lot of experience in the ALMS as they proved at the beginning of current season when they won Sebring ahead of Peugeot.

The french clean diesel prototypes will be driver by Pedro Lamy, Nicolas Minassian, Franck Montagny and Stephane Sarrazin.