AUDI has revealed details of its R18 entry for this year's FIA World Endurance Championship and the Le Mans 24 Hours race.

The Audi R18 that has been redesigned from scratch has almost nothing in common anymore with its predecessor.

It features a more radical aerodynamics concept including a new safety cell, its hybrid drive system is battery-operated for the first time, the V6 TDI engine has been revised and new system solutions have been added.

As a result, Audi's LMP1 sports car is a vehicle that is more powerful and more efficient than its predecessor.

While the new R18 is Audi's strongest race car to date, it consumes less fuel than any of the generations before it.

Power output of more than1,000bhp is delivered by the diesel-hybrid powertrain with ten per cent less fuel consumption than before.

FIA regulations have been providing automobile manufacturers with incentives to build increasingly efficient race cars since 2014.

Starting in the 2016 season this competition will intensify with the upper limit for fuel consumption considerably decreased.

Dr Wolfgang Ullrich, head of Audi Motorsport, said: "The result is a race car that manages energy even more effectively than before. This is an objective we're pursuing for our road-going automobiles as well."