Why doesn't Lamborghini have a race team? Or do they? I've never seen it.
Jay, when Ferrucio Lamborghini started the company he basically wanted to make road cars and keep from draining the resources to do racing. Only in the past decade did they have a bit of a presence as an engine supplier in F1 with the Lamborghini V12 (3.5 Litre) designed by Mauro Forgheri.
Lamborghini has been involved in F1 before: -First as engine supplier to Ligier, Larousse and Lotus teams. -In 1991, a F1 team ran as Lamborghini with Nicola Larini and Eric van der Poele as drivers.
Now with Audi in charge it is very possible we could see a Lambo F1 team again in the future,,,and, if they suceed like Audi has in other forms of racing...look out!
Sadly, it won't happen in the near future. Audi/VW's current management sees very little use of F1 racing technology as it translates to road cars; to their credit they did develop an awesome sportscar program including winning LeMans with the diesel.
Yup....the head honchos at Audi are doing just that....waiting for Ferrari, Mercedes, Honda, Renault, BMW and all the other factory teams to drop out of F1 one by one. Just like LeMans. Then they can beat the pants off of fourth tier teams driving utter ****boxes (Toro Rosso, Midland, Super Aguri...). Then the marketing juggernaut will take over and we will have Audi, Bentley, Seat, Lambo, VW, and every other maker under their umbrella win the F1 title.. Ain't gonna happen. Audi doesn't like competition !'
That's why I wish Ferrari would give Maserati or even Alfa some of their F1 technology so Maser or Alfa could mount a serious LeMans threat.... With all the racing history behind Maserati, Alfa and Lancia, it would be nice if they competed at the top levels of other forms of racing...Ferrari and Ducati are it for Italia...
yup. then he progressed to cranes, if i'm not wrong. he approached Enzo one day and ' advised ' Enzo how to build cars. Enzo then brushed him off rudely, saying that he should just stick to tractors and that he knew nothing about cars... the rest, my friend, is history...
You guys beat me to it!!! The rest of the story is that old man Lamborghini was so insulted that he vowed, to build better, faster cars. Enzo never gave Lambo any respect, until the day he died, he called them a tractor company. He really got under Lamborghini's skin, such that it became an obsession for him. All the while, Enzo was smiling from behind his black shades.... Quite hillarious, IMHO.
The Murcielago in the 2003 FIA GT championship was a disaster IIRC. Not sure if it did any better more recently.
http://www.imca-slotracing.com/2005-JGTC.htm scroll down about halfway Image Unavailable, Please Login
Lamborghini's motto was road car built for the road, and Ferrucio didn't like the fact that Ferraris were toned down race cars, hence it was comfortable enough, and therefore, his vowed his cars would never go into racing. ironically Lamborghinis were known to be uncomfortable, until Audi took over...
Correct. Lamborghini made his money early on providing air conditioning to Italy. He had a monopoly on the industry when it first came out. Later, after the war, he purchased military vehicles and fitted their engines into farm tractors and made a small fortune doing that. The tractors were known for their bullet proof in reliability. The rest of the story, where he had an FCar and did not like the fit and clutch and wanted to talk to Enzo is true. When Enzo brushed him off he decided to built his own car that would beat a Ferrari. He felt Enzo was only interested in racing and the only purpose for production cars was to support his racing efforts. Contrary, Lamborghini wanted to build a car for drivers and did not care about racing. I was told be a very credible source, who claims to have seen the document, that when Lamborghini sold the company he added a stipulation that the company would never sponsor a factory racing team the way Ferrari does. This does not mean a private party could not build a team, but not a factory team. Since then, the company has been sold 3 times... I doubt if that provision is still in the contract... It seems that Audi will stay the course with ALMS and it's new diesel that has shattered records.
If I recall correctly Mr Lambo actually made his money from Air-conditioning units not tractors. The Tractor company came along much later, its just ppl make a big deal about it due to the encounter with Mr Ferrari. Lambo did have they one make Diablo series a few years back and they all won The series even made it to Australia one season to complement the F1 in Melb and they were lapping only a few seconds slower then our premier V8Supercar championship. Also here in Australia we had a series called the Nations Cup which involved Ferraris, Porsches, etc and a Lambo Diablo SV-R then later GT-R which won the series in 2003 I think. While Lamborghini as a company has never really put much effort into road racing, usually giving factory support to privateers or having a join venture with another team then doing it themselves there engines have excelled in the offshore power boating series winning the prestigious series at least 4times. If you go to the Lambo museum they have a few of those engines on display as well as all 5 F1 cars. edit: seems like FL355 types faster than I do, his 2 posts didn't exist when I started typing but thanx for confirming the Aircon story
Also, if you get the game called GTR or the latest version GTR2 by Simbin, you get to drive the 2003 and 2004 Murcielago R-GT in the game(as well as the rest of the cars from those 2 seasons of the GT series). Its pretty realistic simulation(until u have an accident), it even has the option of installing MoTeC i2 Pro for that extra realism of perfecting the setups. Its the type of game to get the most out of it involves buying a steering wheel. There might be a thread about it elsewhere on this forum I haven't looked I just thought to mention it if you want to race/drive a virtual Lambo
Wonder why its dead. Very uninspiring. especially when they had the Holden 427s, that was a disgrace in Australian Motoring History. In Nations Cup, there was no real competitors with the Lambos, the 550 LM wasn't setup properly but FF would say something else, so was the 360GTs, the only thing has a real go at the lambos were the Vipers. then the 427 came, and killed everything. but then again, i'd suspect the 427 would perform similar to the LeMan spec Corvett or the Aston Martin DBRS
They have been racing in FIA GT this season, Murcielago in GT1 and Gallardo in GT3. Although they are not doing so well but it's great to see them racing. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Lambo doesn't have a race team because Lambo doesn't have a car that can be easily set up to race. Some privateers have entered cars in some series (see posts above) that tend to be mid-pack runners because the cars themselves are are just (relatively) heavy cars with big engines - not really a recipe for success in racing. Audi on the other hand are masters at building race cars, and they can badge them any way they want -witness the Le Mans Bentley, which was really a reskinned Audi. So a reskinned Audi badged as a Lambo is certainly a possibility. However I believe that Audi want to get into F1, but there is really no sense in wasting the marketing advantages on a tiny brand like Lambo.
