We might tend to think of Ferrari and Lamborghini as peas in a proverbial pod, but there’s one major difference that has separated them throughout most of their history – and that’s racing.
While Ferrari is a racing team first and foremost, Lamborghini has traditionally stayed away from the race track. But that’s been changing of late, with a new world championship going to show that the boys from Sant’Agata can build a competitive racing car, too.
The Grasser Racing Team running the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 won the drivers’ championship in the highly competitive Blancpain GT Series, edging out Bentley Team M-Sport for the top honors. The order was reversed, however, in the teams’ championship, which went to Bentley, with GRT/Lamborghini in second place – following hot on the heels of Bentley’s British GT Championship.
It wasn’t the first title for the Huracan GT3, which won the International GT Open last year with Team Lazarus. But while both use similar machinery on European circuits, the Blancpain series is considered the higher-level championship.
GT3 is the highest level at which either Lamborghini or sister-company Bentley compete, their programs centered principally around selling their competition machinery to privateer teams. Compared to Bentley, which has won the 24 Hours of Le Mans outright several times, Lamborghini’s highest-level motorsport program came when it supplied F1 engines in the early 1990s to teams like Larousse, Ligier, Minardi, and even Lotus… albeit largely without success, just a single podium finish to its name.
With former Scuderia Ferrari chief Stefano Domenicali calling the shots, the Raging Bull marque also runs its own spec racing series, and has been rumored to be considering a step up to GTE-class competition at Le Mans – also based on the Huracan platform.
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