As Lamborghini celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, it’s gearing up to take on the ultimate challenge for a sportscar manufacturer: a bid for outright honours at the Le Mans 24 Hours. The attack on the centrepiece round of the World Endurance Championship with a new LMDh prototype run by the Iron Lynx team will be the first such campaign in those 60 years. It’s been a long haul to endurance racing’s top table for the marque, both in the context of its storied existence and the project that has resulted in the prototype racer we now call the SC63.
Ferruccio Lamborghini, who branched out from producing tractors and farm machinery, shied away from motor racing. He built his first sportscar as a result of dissatisfaction with his Ferrari road car, believing that the focus of the Prancing Horse was distracted from creating the ultimate gran turismo by its racing efforts. This antipathy was probably tinged by his own unsuccessful exploits in competition. He crashed a modified Fiat Topolino on the 1948 Mille Miglia, his machine ending up inside a bar!
