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Autoblog's adventures at the Nurburgring 24-Hour race [spoilers]

The brand-new Audi R8 LMS, said to share 50 percent of its components with the street-legal R8 shown off at Geneva, has won its very first race at the 2015 Nurburgring 24-Hours. The No. 28 car driven by Christopher Mies, Edward Sandstrom, Nico Muller, and Laurens Vanthoor for the Audi Sport WRT team out of Belgium finished only 40.279 seconds ahead of the No. 25 BMW Sport Team Marc VDS Z4 GT3 in second place, for the smallest winning gap since the race began in 1970. Those two cars traded the lead throughout Sunday morning and were less than a minute away from one another for the last two hours. They were part of a total 35 lead changes during the entire race – a record for the event – and both did 156 laps. Third place went to the No. 44 Falken Tire Porsche 997 GT3, one lap down. The Audis did what they always do: lurked close to the front, stayed out of trouble, then pounced when everyone else faltered. For the opening stretches the BMW Z4 teams owned it, running 1-2-3 for a while, but all of them hit trouble. When morning came and the race got over its yellow-flag fever, the No. 28 Audi was in front and stayed there. It was the third Nurburgring 24-Hour win for Audi in four years, the brand's first win only coming in 2012. Last year's winner, the Phoenix Audi team that set a race record by doing 159 laps, had both of its cars retire. One hit an oil patch about 12 hours in, spun and was hit by another car behind, taking on too much damage to continue. The other retired with engine issues. Other Notes Three cars crashed out of the race while leading, after the rains that weren't supposed to happen, happened about 90 minutes in. The No. 20 Schubert BMW Z4 led the first 50 minutes of the race, hopped a crest at Pflanzgarten, landed in a pool of water, and hit the wall on the 30th lap. Then the No. 30 Frikadelli Porsche, with a driver team that included ex-'Ring Taxi driver Sabine Schmitz, hit the No. 31 Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 on the approach to Carrousel and crashed out. Then the No. 1 Phoenix Audi, last year's winning car, took the lead but hit the wall after that oil patch near Pflanzgarten and was out of the race. Aston Martin celebrated a class win in the SP8 category with the No. 49 Vantage GT4 N430. This being the tenth anniversary of the Vantage running the Nurburgring-24, this year's car was painted in the same colors as the racecar from ten years ago.

Audi kicks off ad campaign tonight with stirring new spot

Following last week's entertaining and wildly popular Spock vs. Spock video, Audi has come back with a bevy of videos for its new advertising campaign that will begin airing tonight in primetime and on cable.
There are five ads altogether, but the longest one, a 60-second spot titled It Couldn't Be Done, is our favorite by far. Set to a reading of the poem of the same name by Edgar Albert Guest, the commercial chronicles the history of Auto Union Deutschland Ingolstadt from the days of its founder, August Horch, through its many decades of innovation, competition and creativity. Indeed, watching the commercial gave us chills similar to when we first heard the Ram brand's Farmer commercial that aired during this year's Super Bowl.
The other four commercials are shorter 15-second spots that focus on such familiar themes as the company's Quattro all-wheel-drive system, the safety of its vehicles, their style and the company's advances in LED lighting. While less impactful than the longer ad, we think they effectively sound the drum beat of Audi's preferred tag line: Truth in Engineering. Scroll down to watch all five new ads, starting with the 60-second It Couldn't Be Done.

Audi A3 named 2014 World Car of the Year

As usual, the second press day of the New York Auto Show was kicked off by the World Car of the Year Awards. Rather than fluff things up, we'll cut right to the chase: top honors go to the brand-new Audi A3, which bested the Mazda3 and BMW 4 Series for the all-important award.
Of course, the wonderful thing about the World Car awards is that there isn't just one big announcement - other honors are given out for specific categories. Here are the other winners from this year's ceremony:
World Green Car of the Year: BMW i3