A water pressure issue towards the end of the 8 Hours of Bahrain necessitated Lamborghini’s fifth retirement in their LMDh programme.
Lamborghini’s #63 SC63 suffered a water pressure issue during the final hour of the FIA World Endurance Championship season finale.
The matter ended their maiden WEC Hypercar season in unfortunate circumstances.
It also marked the third retirement in the past four races of their LMDh project across the WEC and IMSA SportsCar Championship Endurance Cup.
Recently-crowned DTM champion and #63 driver Mirko Bortolotti reflected frankly about the year.
“It’s definitely not the end to the season that we wanted this weekend as we had to retire with a technical issue.
“It’s been a really challenging and difficult season for us, obviously the first season for Iron Lynx and Lamborghini in the WEC and we expected to have some difficulties coming into the year, but I must say that towards the end of the year we were still struggling with the car.
“It’s been a disappointing year honestly, and we deserved to at least finish the final race.
“But anyway, the guys worked so hard all season, so thanks for their dedication and effort, and let’s see what the future holds.”
A hard-fought effort in Bahrain
Edoardo Mortara begun the race on hard slicks and ran an impressive first sequence of laps after starting in 16th position.
The Italian-French driver put the #63 as high as eighth during his opening stint in the 18-strong Hypercar category.
Along with the efforts of Daniil Kvyat and Bortolotti, they could not retain the pace through towards the end.
Daytime and night-time driving posed different temperatures for drivers to contend with.
Tyre management was a key factor in Bahrain and Lamborghini were not competitive in the latter half of the eight hours.
At the seventh hour, they ran last in the active running order of Hypercars.
The water issue forced the car into the garage during the final racing hour.
It returned to the track for one lap before retiring with 200 laps completed, just 35 less than the race-winning #8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid.
A spree of retirements at the WEC 6 Hours of Spa, Six Hours of the Glen, 6 Hours of Fuji and recently in Bahrain were all reliability-related.
The rain-soaked Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis, IMSA’s penultimate round, was an exception to reliability problems after they retired due to contact with another car.
Previously at last month’s 10-hour Petit Le Mans season finale, they finished 13 laps down to the winner.
Along with a difficult ending in Bahrain, further question will fall upon whether they will commit to IMSA or the WEC in 2025.
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