WEC | Ups and downs Lamborghini: “Performance goes by moments”

Lamborghini Squadra Corse is trying to look at the glass half full, after a Lone Star Le Mans that gave them little satisfaction in this sixth seasonal round of the FIA ​​World Endurance Championship.

The SC63 prepared in collaboration with Iron Lynx on the Circuit of the Americas continued to struggle a lot against its rivals, something that had been foreseen by technicians and drivers before flying to Texas, admitting that it would have been more useful to think about themselves.

Unfortunately, the LMDh del Toro driven by Daniil Kvyat, Mirko Bortolotti and Edoardo Mortara tried to keep its constant pace throughout the race, without ever having technical problems, but suffering a lot on the overall pace within the HYPERCAR Class.

The Balance of Performance had allowed the Sant’Agata Bolognese car to run without ballast; in Free Practice the focus was on how to set it up for the race and in Qualifying Kvyat placed himself at the back of the group.

From there, Mortara got off to a flying start, reaching the Top 10 in just a few corners, then came a 5″ penalty to be served at the pit stop for an overtaking move carried out while going beyond the track limits, which, added to two Drive Throughs (infringement of the Full Course Yellow regime and track limits not respected), made the SC63 drop back down the order to 14th place, denying what could potentially have been a Top 10.

The main problems of the Lamborghini are now known to those who have to deal with them and future updates will be aimed at solving them, but several clues are still missing to fully understand the situation and this is demonstrated by the words of the trio #63, who underline the current continuous ups and downs of the prototype.

“Overall it was a complicated weekend, but once again we managed to achieve the minimum goal of finishing the race without problems, in extremely demanding conditions,” admits Bortolotti.

“The high temperatures put a lot of strain on the team, the car and obviously us drivers inside the cockpit, so I’m very happy that we managed to have a solid pace during the race. We’re still struggling on pure performance, there’s still work to do to improve in this area.”

Kvyat highlights the sacrifices that the drivers are also making: “All three of us and the whole team showed our fighting spirit, it was fantastic. It was a very tough race, we still have some things to fix on the car and we are working to collect more data, sometimes at the expense of being comfortable in the cockpit”.

“I was happy with my qualifying lap and we were close to some Porsche drivers this weekend, but this is our level at the moment and we are a bit off the pace. There are some moments during the race where we are as competitive as the others and sometimes we are even ahead, but it is not consistent enough.”

“We know that if we make updates in the areas where we need to improve, we can make a huge step forward.”

#63 Lamborghini Iron Lynx Lamborghini SC63: Mirko Bortolotti, Edoardo Mortara, Daniil Kvyat

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Mortara added: “It’s not quite the result we wanted to achieve, we expected to be more competitive initially, but there were some positives throughout the race. We had a great start, overtaking a lot of cars from behind, and we were basically fighting for the top 10 for the whole six hours, although unfortunately we made some mistakes that cost us a few seconds.”

“The goal will be to be more precise and get the maximum potential out of the car. I think there is still a lot to do, obviously it was a difficult weekend because we wanted to finish in the top ten. We are fighting and we are getting there.”

Emmanuel Esnault, Iron Lynx Race Manager: “We are making progress in our learning year and we continued this trend on the Circuit of The Americas, maintaining the trend we have had since the beginning of the season. Proportionally we are still struggling a bit more in qualifying set-up, while in the race we are definitely closer to the front, although obviously there is still a lot of work to do.”

“We knew the heat would be a problem here, our drivers and crew did an amazing job in such difficult conditions. We are looking forward to the next round in Fuji to continue working and improving.”