Lamborghini Seeking “Right Partner” to Restart SC63 Effort

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

Lamborghini is seeking the “right partner” in order to restart its SC63 LMDh program for 2027 according to Automobili Lamborghini President and CEO Stephan Winkelmann.

Announced last month, the Italian manufacturer will pause its racing activities with the Ligier-chassied prototype, after scaling back to an IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup-only program this year with a single works GTP entry operated by service provider Riley.

Winkelmann and Lamborghini chief technical officer Rouven Mohr both said at the start of this year that its factory effort was only a short-term solution to keep the car on the track following its off-season split with former partner Iron Lynx, which ran the car in both the FIA World Endurance Championship and the long-distance WeatherTech Championship races in 2024.

Speaking to selected reporters during last weekend’s Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Winkelmann admitted a return to the top-class prototype grid in 2027 is currently “hypothetical” with Lamborghini not able to make any guarantees unless it’s able to find a suitable new partner team that would bring both qualified experience and sufficient budget to the table.

“We need to find the right partner,” he said. “This is, in my opinion, the biggest thing.

“We are constantly looking for somebody who could step in and do it on the race track. This would be one of the biggest things we’re looking into. If you ask me if we want to come back, it’s a clear ‘yes’. If you ask me if this is going to happen, I don’t know.

“[We are looking for] a partner that is able to understand that this type of racing, which is much more complicated than what we had in the past, who has the financial power to lead it, and also has the knowledge in terms of how to deal with a team and to have the right drivers to do so.”

Mohr reiterated that the evolution in the sporting regulations, particularly with the WEC’s mandate for two-car Hypercar teams that came into effect this year, has made it unviable for Lamborghini to continue in its current form without a new partner.

“Our interpretation at the beginning when we started to jump into this program was more was that in the future it’s a top-end customer racing approach,” he said.

“Based on this assumption, at the end of the day, this was our philosophy behind it.

“It would make sense from our side, if we find a partner that we can activate the program with the technical support from our side, but in a sense that we activate today in other customer racing series.

“For sure it will never be on the same financial level, this is clear because the running costs of these cars are always higher.

“It’s natural because the complexity and so-on. To come back, for sure, we would need a team that is seeing this also as a kind of investment to do a factory-oriented customer racing.

“A pure factory racing [program] was never our intention.”

When asked by Sportscar365 which series they see as their best chance of making a program happen in 2027, Mohr indicated the WeatherTech Championship, for a number of reasons.

“If I judge the situation now it’s clear that first of all, IMSA is super important because it’s our most-important single market,” he explained.

“Secondly, IMSA, from my point of view, also from the motorsport approach, from the show, what they do, is a fantastic race series, a good partner, also on the GT3 side.

“And we have to be honest, if I only count the facts, WEC is much, much more expensive on top.

“If we have not solved the problem for IMSA, we will also not solve it for WEC. Not because we don’t like WEC. Le Mans is one of the biggest races that you can have in the world but unfortunately it’s much more expensive.”

Mohr admitted the Asian Le Mans Series, which will adopt a Hypercar class for privateer entries beginning with the 2026-27 season, could also be an option, although Lamborghini currently doesn’t have any ledes in the region.

“Asian [Le Mans Series] would also be interesting but at the moment if there would be the right partner, for sure it would be great also for us,” he said. “But at the moment we are not able to find the proper partner.”

Lamborghini debuted its first Evo joker for the SC63 last weekend at The Brickyard, featuring a rear suspension upgrade that is expected to provide significant gains, particularly on bumpy circuits.

Mohr said they have other developments earmarked for the car, should the program be restarted.

“To be competitive in this category of cars you need a super professional race team,” he added. “You need someone who is executing on this operative level.

“Therefore the right partner… at the moment we don’t have the right one. Also, it’s not that we didn’t check for 2026. But in this category, there’s not so many teams that could do it.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John