Sanna: “Still a Lot of Work To Do” After Banner Year for Lamborghini

After a banner year for the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 around the globe, Head of Lamborghini Motorsport Giorgio Sanna says the Italian manufacturer cannot afford to rest on it laurels as it continues to build its motorsports platform.

Between teams’ and drivers’ titles, the GT3-spec Huracan racked up eight championships in worldwide competition last year with around 60 of the cars regularly competing in international and national series.

Sanna said his group expects success and was not surprised by the marque’s rapid ascent given the amount of effort that is poured into its motorsports programs.

“For sure at Lamborghini, we work night and day to do our best and to achieve the best results,” Sanna told Sportscar365 at the Lamborghini World Final in Imola.

“It’s clear that when we talk about GT3 we’re talking about customer racing, so we don’t have factory teams.

“We try to support our best customer teams with our best, using factory drivers or drivers from our junior program. We expect results, positive results.

“In the first year ever of customer racing in 2016 we won two championships. In the second year, we won eight championships. Yes, we expect these kind of results.”

Now with championships in prestigious series like Blancpain GT to its name, Sanna said the next step for Lamborghini is to add a win at a prestigious endurance race, singling out the 24-hour races in Daytona and Spa as the prime targets.

“Let me say also that we are celebrating an important season with a lot of championships won, but there is a lot of work still left to do like, for example, to win a classic race,” he said.

“At the moment we don’t have it. We don’t sleep. We don’t feel satisfied 100 percent. We continue to work to improve ourselves.

“The next challenge has to be to be able to win, we’ve already been competitive, but to win an important, classic race.

“It’s always a matter of experience. We know that in the long distance races you also have to be a little bit lucky, but we are not waiting to be lucky.

“We are working to improve ourselves to win an important long-distance race.”

Sanna said that Lamborghini’s success in 2017 has proved their methods and approach to customer racing, but he stressed that his young organization still has much to learn.

“We have a very good and competitive car,” said Sanna. “We’ve done a good job in terms of car development and preparation but there is always something to learn.

“We started in 2014 and we were just three key people in Squadra Corse. Today we are 35 doing a business that is really important.

“We have hundreds of race cars sold, more than 100 Super Trofeo cars running worldwide, new important partners coming, many things that are part of the game.

“The nice part of this story, as I say to my guys, considering that we are young what is challenging is that we have a very nice book to write.

“At the moment we have the first page, and it is very nice, but now we have to do the rest of the book which is like the first page. That is the challenge.”

Lamborghini GTE Project Still Under Evaluation

Sanna said he had no updates on a potential Lamborghini GTE variant, but said that it was something the company is still evaluating closely.

“We are looking to see how the technical rules will change, how the sporting rules and the schedule will change from the ACO perspective,” he said.

“We don’t have a rush because we have a racing model that is working very well with Super Trofeo and GT3.

“Customer racing, when you’re talking about GTE, you’re talking about a premium category where we have many teams already interested.

“As I’ve said many times that we’re looking with interest to do something bigger than the GT3 in the GT scenario. It’s clear that GTE is a wish.

“If we can match the wish with a real chance to do it in a proper way, that means in any case to do it as a customer program, not as a factory program.”