Lamborghini Iron Lynx completes historical debut race in Qatar
It was a historical weekend for Lamborghini Iron Lynx at the Lusail International Circuit. Not only did the Qatar venue note the highly-anticipated debut of the Lamborghini SC63 hybrid Hypercar, but the opening round of the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship also provided the team with extremely positive feedback and great promise for the future, less than seven months after the car completed its shakedown at Vallelunga.
Being an absolute first for the team and the manufacturer in the challenging Le Mans Hypercar arena, expectations were quite considerate at the beginning of a learning year. However, the #63 car left a strong impression, completing the full 10-hour distance. A remarkable achievement, considering the complexity of the project and the amount of mechanical, procedural, and human components involved.
In addition, drivers Daniil Kvyat, Edoardo Mortara, and Mirko Bortolotti all had smooth runs and were able to battle among competitors with years of experience. In the closing stages, handling concerns made it a bit more difficult at times for the drivers to use the full potential available, but lap times were still in line with the competition.
It was a testament to the work in integrating a new package that was racing for the very first time, but also to every team member who worked long hours with great passion to maximise the effort, as a mix of different technical disciplines came together at the pinnacle of endurance competition.
With a good foundation and competitive potential, the SC63 is already preparing for the flight home before running in round 2 at Imola. A lot of work is still to be done, especially in terms of pure performance, which was not the primary focus during development, and to further refine the driving feeling aspect. As FIA WEC now takes a break and will be back at the of April, the team moves to Sebring, where the American-liveried SC63 will be entering the 12-hour Floridian IMSA race on March 16.
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Mirko Bortolotti, Driver #63: “It was extremely important for us to finish the race and see the chequered flag, because we need to get a lot of information for drivers, engineers, and mechanics, and it all went according to plan. It's a good start. We had a strong foundation and a lot of work to do to get to the top, but I personally want to get there one day with this team, and the job starts today!”
Daniil Kvyat, Driver #63: “We can consider this a great start to the journey. Finishing the race was the target for today. It's been an extended practice session, as we were learning all weekend, but it's a good starting point, and we collected a lot of useful information for the future. We have a lot of work ahead of us, which we are happy to continue heading to the next rounds.”
Edoardo Mortara, Driver #63: “It's been a long week, and we had long hours of hard work, but in the end, we are extremely happy to have been able to finish this race, which was not an easy one for us. It was our first one in the FIA WEC, and we showed that we could compete with the others. Obviously, there are many things that we need to improve. At least in terms of reliability, we proved that we have a car that can finish the race without major issues and that, at some point, was competitive. Now we need to understand how to extract more performance out of our package. We are sure that we will have more long days ahead, but it's a fantastic project and personally, I enjoyed my first weekend in WEC with Lamborghini Iron Lynx very much.”
Emmanuel Esnault, Racing Director: “We are leaving Lusail with positive feelings from the outcome of today's race. Launching such a project required a massive effort from everyone involved, and I want to thank all our partners, drivers, team members, mechanics, and engineers for the brilliant effort and the long hours of work over the past weeks and months. This is the beginning of a learning season, but having such a solid foundation is very motivating considering the huge amount of work we have ahead of us. In a couple of weeks, we will be competing in the 12 Hours of Sebring, one of the world's toughest races. We need to extract the maximum benefits from what we are learning during race weekends to develop the car and further improve our trackside operations to provide our drivers with the best possible opportunities.” |
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