Audi team principal Wolfgang Ullrich has refuted suggestions that visibility issues with the R18 TDI prototype contributed to the huge accidents which forced the #3 and #1 out of the 2011 Le Mans 24 Hours.
Allan McNish crashed out in the first hour after making contact with a GTE car, while Mike Rockenfeller was lucky to survive a major accident in the eighth hour after also hitting a GTE entry.
Ullrich rebuffed suggestions that the closed-cockpit design of the R18 had contributed to the accidents.
"I was very disappointed [by the second accident]," he said. "At that point I had already seen Allan, who was standing beside me in the team hospitality, have a horrible accident from which he emerged OK. All I wanted to know was whether Mike was OK as well.
"Obviously the closed-cockpit design does not give as wide a field of view as the open prototype. But there are technical regulations we have to follow in the construction and the drivers were involved in the design from the earliest stages of development.I don't think that the accidents were related to visibility."