A fine Top 10 for Lamborghini in the Hypercar category
For its first-ever appearance at Le Mans with a prototype, Lamborghini ran a wise race without any major errors to score its first Hypercar points. The N°63 finished 10th, while the N°19, the IMSA guest crew, ended the 24 Hours in 13th place.
Lamborghini has come to fill a never-before-seen lineup in the premier category of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The SC63s from Sant’Agata Bolognese, despite the performance gap with the top cars, did a nice job, after a battle for points with the two Peugeots.
In the case of No. 63 (Kvyat/Mortara/Bortolotti), the race was conducted very wisely. It was necessary to outperform the No. 94 Peugeot with a good strategy in order to collect two points for the 10th place. The overall pace was good.
Daniil Kvyat does not take this result for granted, but it will undoubtedly boost the Italian troops. “It was quite an incredible race from our side,” says the former F1 driver. “It is a fair reward for the work that has been done. Now, there is still a lot of work to be done, as the ultimate goal is to win (…). When we have done everything necessary, we will fight for victories.”
More than just the drivers, it is all the Lamborghini troops who are rewarded by this arrival in the Top 10. The most important thing was to finish the race and we did it, says Edoardo Mortara. We spent a lot of time at Le Mans: we had to prepare with the mechanics, engineers, marketing and communication… And in the end, we reward them with this result.
Mirko Bortolotti, for his part, is delighted not only for his teams, but also for car N°19, which also finished the race. « I am very proud of everyone (Lamborghini, Iron Lynx, the chassis supplier, Ligier), we all worked very hard to get there. We finished with both cars even though they had only hit the track a year ago. We still have a lot of work to do, but we are looking straight towards the future. »
Number 19 also finished: a great success.
Car number 63 is the only Lamborghini entered in Hypercar in WEC. Car number 19 is invited and will head back to IMSA with high hopes of competing against Cadillac, BMW, Porsche, and Acura. And yet, the race was not a smooth ride, especially for Matteo Cairoli.
During my second relay, I felt nauseous, said the Transalpine. I told myself that we absolutely had to finish this race! We did it with both cars, ours not being far from the Top 10. This bodes well for 2025.
And on Andrea Caldarelli’s side, there is a bittersweet taste, as we thought we would have a better pace at the beginning of the race. But we achieved our goal: finishing with both cars!
Finally, Romain Grosjean experienced a race of redemption, he who had not finished his first appearance. Finishing, that’s really what I wanted to do. We had already finished Sebring, which is one of the toughest races, and we repeated the feat at Le Mans. It will give us a lot of things to learn for 2025.
