Head of Lamborghini Motorsport Giorgio Sanna believes its decision for having an all-factory driver lineup in this year’s Blancpain GT Series is paying dividends both in results as well as strengthening its customer support to teams and its GT3 Young Drivers initiative worldwide.
Grasser Racing Team currently still leads the overall teams’ championship, with Mirko Bortolitti and Christian Engelhart slipping to second in the drivers’ title race following last month’s Total 24 Hours of Spa, which saw the No. 63 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 contend for the win until dropping out with brake-related issues with less than seven hours to go.
The duo, who have a series-high four victories so far this year, including two with fellow factory driver Andrea Caldarelli, have helped put Lamborghini back at the forefront, with Sanna admitting the recent increased level of competition in the series as a determining factor for its new approach.
“The last few years showed to everybody that if you don’t have pro drivers or factory drivers in the car, you don’t have a chance for the overall [win]. That’s simple,” Sanna told Sportscar365.
“You can like it or not but that’s the reality. We are here as all the others to compete for the win and for this reason we decided to put three factory drivers in the car.
“All of the other Lamborghini teams were aware of this strategy; everybody knows we have this advantage in the No. 63 [car].”
Sanna feels the the lineup in the No. 63 GRT Lamborghini has already had a positive benefit on the rest of the customer teams, not only competing in the Pro class, but also Pro-Am and Am categories.
The Austrian squad has provided an open-book of data to other drivers, particularly those in Lamborghini’s GT3 Junior Driver program, to help make gains for all of the Italian manufacturer’s customer teams.
“Absolutely because we share the telemetry with the other pro drivers or young drivers,” Sanna said.
“It’s clear the team, the car preparation and the driver’s performance are to be a reference to everybody who are interested to learn.”
While being the second-most represented manufacturer on the Blancpain GT grid, Sanna said that Lamborghini has not underestimated the achievement of success, in what’s turned into arguably the most competitive GT3 championship in the world.
“In terms of performance, if you look every race, there’s 30-40 cars in just one second,” he said. “It’s something you can’t see anywhere else.
“Being top-10 here, you have to be really well-prepared. Our job is to support our customer teams and to support them to improve.”
Sanna, meanwhile, said he’s been pleased with the progress made so far this season, in the second year of Lamborghini’s GT3 customer program, which has seen more far-reaching success around the world.
“For the moment we’re satisfied, more or less a half season in,” he said. “Last year we won two championships, GT Open and GT Asia. At the moment we’re leading the Blancpain GT, British GT, GT Open and Michelin Le Mans Cup.
“We are in the most important championships. We are very well spread and have reference teams everywhere and we are supporting our GT3 Junior drivers a lot. We have all our drivers spread in different championships, including Asia and America.
“We have to continue this way. The target is to consolidate what we have done in the last two years and try to do better.
“It’s like for the performance of the drivers; the most difficult part is always to define the details over the first experience. Now we are in this moment step by step trying to do fine-tunings to what we need.”