Insight: How Lamborghini is Preparing for its Top Class Le Mans Debut
Sportscar365 examines Lamborghini’s progress ahead of the SC63’s first outing at Circuit de la Sarthe…
Lamborghini has spent the past couple of decades building a well-earned reputation as a strong brand in global sports car racing. In the U.S., the ‘Raging Bull’ has taken class wins in the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. In Europe, it won the overall title in Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS twice.
Yet for all its success, there’s one race that the Italian brand has so far not been able to conquer: the 24 Hours of Le Mans. To date, Lamborghini has never made a top-class appearance in the French endurance classic. It came closest with the Countach QVX, a privately developed Group C car that showed flashes of promise but ultimately never made it to Le Mans.
More broadly, its most meaningful presence at the event came between 2006 and 2010. Both JLOC and IPB Spartak Racing made appearances with a Reiter Engineering-built Lamborghini Murcielago in the GT1 class. Reliability concerns plagued the cars, with early drivetrain issues resulting in a first lap retirement for JLOC on two separate occasions.
It’s a record that Lamborghini will hope to improve on when the SC63 debuts at Le Mans in just over a month’s time. Two of the Ligier-chassised prototypes will take to the Circuit de la Sarthe for the 92nd running of the event, with the full-season WEC trio of Mirko Bortolotti, Edoardo Mortara and Daniil Kvyat joined by their IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship counterparts Andrea Caldarelli, Matteo Cairoli and Romain Grosjean.
It is quite a contrast that, given Lamborghini’s less-than-ideal track record on reliability at Le Mans, that it is exactly that attribute that seems to inspire the most confidence in chief technical officer Rouven Mohr. “You should never say it too early, but at the moment, we are quite optimistic,” says Mohr, who also doubles up as the brand’s interim head of motorsport in the wake of Giorgio Sanna’s departure in March.
“But we have to say that, for instance, our long run in Portimao that we planned and that we did was unfortunately completely wet from the weather conditions.
“So, from the pure durability learnings, we learned a lot on the traction control and setup in wet conditions but if you are honest, on the really long run perspective, it was a disadvantage.
“Therefore for sure Le Mans is the real proving mark for the reliability, because the car so far never ran a race for 24 hours on this performance level.”
Mohr has good reason to be cautiously confident, as the SC63 completed its debut outing in the Qatar 1812km as well as the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring and the 6 Hours of Imola without any significant mechanical issues. “But you can never be 100 percent sure,” the German admits. “This is also a little bit the thrill of Le Mans. That for sure, you are scared until the end, until the last minute if you're able to finish or not.”
Even with the SC63’s thus far solid reliability, Mohr acknowledges that there is still work to be done for Lamborghini to close up to its Hypercar rivals. Although it scored points in both Qatar and Imola, the SC63 has yet to record a top-ten finish or punch through into Hyperpole as part of WEC’s revamped qualifying format. As Mohr puts it: “At the moment, we are still at the beginning in the understanding of the car.
“The main thing that we are doing at the moment is evolving the best combination of aero balance [and] how we manage the ride height,” he adds.
“The ride height is related to the damper setup, the chassis setup and the chassis setup is related to mechanical grip and the mechanical grip influences the traction management because you have this kind of monitoring of the torque and you should not overshoot too much because otherwise you risk getting a penalty.
“These three aspects: aero, mechanical grip and traction control, to find the optimum of this triangle, this is a huge job that is much bigger than in a GT3, for instance.
“Because these cars are on one hand quite heavy for the category, they're much heavier than the old LMP1s, but on the other hand, they also have huge downforce levels.
“So you combine a little bit the world of the GT3 with the old LMPs and this generates new challenges from the pure setup understanding. This is also [why] in the last season for sure we were also carefully following what our competitors are doing.
“[We are] trying to understand really the best setup of the car especially dedicated to the race track because also on some race tracks it's also the first time for us to run and knowing how complicated the setup philosophy is, you need at least one season in learning, it's clear. And the setup is the main focus of the development.”
Although Lamborghini itself has relatively little experience racing at Le Mans, it can take confidence knowing that some of its partners in the venture have taken on the event before with some success.
Iron Lynx, which operates the Hypercar entry, has competed at Le Mans for several years with Ferrari and Porsche machinery and took a GTE-Am class podium in 2021. Supporting partner Prema, meanwhile, used a two-year stint in LMP2 to gear up for the top-class effort and finished second in LMP2 a year later behind JOTA Sport.
While Mohr doesn’t shy away from the fact that Lamborghini faces a tough challenge for the SC63’s Le Mans debut, he’s quick to highlight the positives. “The main strength is for sure that the drivability is good,” he says.
“You also see this if you compare the lap time of the different drivers, how they manage the car, this is really on a very close delta. This is always a good indication that the car is easy to drive based on the different driving styles.
“I also think, to be honest, on the pure aero performance, we are also strong.
“At the moment, we are not showing the full potential because, again, we have not yet found the optimal compromise between mechanical grip, aero and traction control.”
However, there’s no doubt that all of the lessons learned by the team so far will be put to the most serious test to date at Le Mans. Few circuits are as historically punishing to new cars as the Circuit de la Sarthe. It’s a new chapter in Lamborghini’s storied racing history - one that will take place with the whole world watching. Will the SC63 be up to the challenge? Just over a month to go until we find out.
Photos: DPPI, MPS Agency, Lamborghini