[Don]

Ron....Audi below

It has also been speculated that to fill the 43 car field, there will be more regional Teams that cannot afford to travel and participate in each race and Teams that otherwise might not have the capability to qualify against the fully funded Teams. I believe in F1, the slowest qualifier has to be within X percent of the pole speed, but NASCAR currently does not have such a rule. It wasn't that long ago with the two open wheel series that there was a challenge to have 33 Indy cars start the Indy 500

In what can best be described as a surprise, Audi said on Friday that it will not be represented by its factory team, Audi Sport North America, in the 2009 American Le Mans Series. The company said it has decided instead to concentrate its motorsports efforts on the new R15 TDI sport prototype for the 24 Hours of Le Mans race. Also, Audi has reworked the racing A4 to compete in the German Touring Car series (DTM), and the company will focus its efforts on the newly developed R8 LMS for customer use in the GT3 class

http://www.autoweek.com/article/20081205/FREE/812059995