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Porsche wins the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans

The question going into this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans was whether or not the Porsche 919 Hybrid would be able to combine its qualifying pace with race reliability. After battling neck-and-neck with Audi's R18 for most of the race, the answer is a resounding yes. Not only did Porsche drivers climb the first two spots on the podium, they did so without any major mishaps on track. This win is the first overall trophy for Porsche since 1998. Audi previously won the last five races, and 13 of the last 15. Corvette also returned to the winner's circle, with the No. 64 C7.R taking winning the GTE Pro division. The victory is the first class win for Corvette since 2011. KCMG won the LMP2 class in ninth overall. With 45 minutes to go the No. 98 Aston Martin crashed out of first place in GTE Amateur, giving the class win to SMP Racing's Ferrari and second place to the Patrick Dempsey Racing Porsche 911 RSR. For the full list of official results, click here. The GTE Pro class proved to be just as exciting as the P1 class, with a four-way battle for first after four hours into the race. For most of the race, the battle at the top went back and forth between the two German manufacturers. An tire puncture in the No. 7 Audi gave up the lead to Porsche, and moments later a crash forced the No. 8 into the garage. But a three-minute replacement of the front and rear bodywork kept the Audi in contention. As the race wore into the night, Porsche maintained a slightly faster pace than Audi. Nick Tandy took the lead on Lap 253 early Sunday morning, and car No. 19 never gave up the top position. The win is the first for all three drivers of the No. 19 – Nico Hulkenberg, Earl Bamber, and Nick Tandy. A lap behind in second was the No. 17 Porsche. The Audis fought reliability problems late in the race but still finished third with the No. 7 R18. The GTE Pro class proved to be just as exciting as the P1 class, with a four-way battle for first after four hours into the race. As the Aston Martin cars dropped away, the lone Corvette Racing entry took over, followed by a charging AF Corse team Ferrari 458 Italia. The Corvette and Ferrari continued to trade places in the final hours until gearbox trouble forced the No. 51 Ferrari out of contention. It was eventually passed by the other AF Corse car, No. 71. Nissan experienced all the pain of a first-year effort with its front-wheel-drive GT-R LM Nismo.

Audi traffic light recognition could save 240 million gallons of fuel [UPDATE]

Any hypermiler will tell you that the way you drive your car has a huge impact on how much energy it uses. But these greenfoot drivers haven't had a car that's smart enough to tell them about the inner lives of traffic lights. That's what a prototype system in an Audi A6 Saloon that the German automaker recently tested in Las Vegas can do. Since the car can communicate with local traffic signals and is able to predict when lights will change, the car can help reduce CO2 emissions by up to 15 percent. Further, Audi says that the system could save some 238 million gallons of fuel (900 million liters), if deployed across Germany. We can only imagine what hypermilers could do with this. We got to drive the Audi Online traffic light information system prototype in January, but we focused more on how the system worked rather than the green aspect. Now that Audi has had a bit more time to crunch the numbers, it has released fuel economy information for the connected car. The key points for the eco-side of things are that the driver is told in the dashboard how fast/slow to go to hit the next green light. This can help prevent unnecessary speeding and or encourage drivers to go a bit faster in order to hit the green, thus preventing idling and wasted time. The system is too smart to let you idle for long. Except that Audi Online is too smart to let you idle for long. The Audi connect system can calculate how much longer the light will be red and can access the car's start-stop capabilities and will fire up the engine "five seconds before the green phase." That seems like an awful long time in a world where competitors have figured out ways to restart an engine in 0.35 seconds. We've asked Audi for an explanation on why this buffer is so lengthy, and will let you know what the reasoning is when we hear back. Despite the trials in the A6, Audi says the Audi Online traffic system could be integrated into any Audi model, "subject to the necessary government legislation." Aside from the Sin City tests, Audi is running trials of the connected car in Verona, Italy and Berlin, Germany. If you'd like to test it out yourself some day, take heart from this line in the press release, available below: "A market launch is currently the subject of intense analysis in the United States." *UPDATE: Audi's Mark Dahncke told AutoblogGreen that the five second window is meant, "To alert the driver that the light is about to turn green.

The hottest modern sports cars rendered as rally racers

The modern-day World Rally Championship a monumental amount of fun to watch – I should know, as I recently was lucky enough to head to the UK to watch WRC Wales Rally GB – but even the most monstrous of the current WRC cars are based on fairly pedestrian European hatchbacks. Back in the heyday of rally, the Group B era in the 1980s, much hotter cars were the basis of even more incredible competition machines, for the most part. Take the exotic Ford RS200, or the Lancia Delta S4 with its twin-charged engine. And the hatchback-based Group B cars were bonkers, too. So what would some of our favorite modern cars look like if Group B had never ended? A British site named CarWow hired an artist to reimagine everything from the Rolls-Royce Wraith to the Porsche 911 as a retro-inspired rally car, and they were kind enough to let us share the results in the gallery above. The gallery features an Alfa Romeo Giulia in Martini livery, an Audi TT in classic Ur-Quattro colors, a Fiat 500 Abarth sporting massive flares and a hood blister full of auxiliary lights, a new Ford Mustang in RS200 livery, a Lancia Delta in Alitalia colors, a Porsche 911 in Rothmans livery, a Renault-Alpine in classic blue, a Rolls-Royce Wraith tribute to the Jules cologne Corniche Coupe, and a relatively modern-looking VW Touran. So far, the favorite around the office is the incredible Mercedes-Benz S-Class that is an homage to the wonderful 300 SEL 6.8 AMG "Red Pig" that essentially put AMG on the map. Check out the gallery above and see which one you like the best. Related Video: