Lamborghini’s decision to join the sportscar prototype ranks was a long time coming. Achieving board sign off took longer than expected but, once it was given, the team wasted no time in commissioning French company, Ligier, to build a new chassis, and it worked with long-time engine partner, Autotecnica Motori, to build a completely new 3.8-litre, twin-turbo V8 engine for it.
The manufacturer says it will only run a factory team in the next four years, something of a blow to its customers who may have wanted to step up from the Lamborghini Trofeo or GT3 series. The factory cars will be run by the Iron Lynx team, managed by former racer, Andrea Piccini, on both sides of the Atlantic.
An intensive development programme will start in August and is planned for the remainder of 2023, with a view to being ready for the first race of the WEC, in Qatar in March 2024. It is not currently planned to contest the Daytona 24-hours; Qatar is only one third of that race distance and the team wants to start carefully in order to be ready for a full attack on Le Mans.
With such a long lead up to the decision being taken, much of the design work was already done by the time the button was pushed to go ahead with the programme. However, quite quickly there were some changes to the original plan, notably to the engine concept. The idea was to develop a new road car-based engine that would also power the Huracan’s successor, but that plan was shelved relatively early on due to the complexities
