Back to Where It All Started
Twelve months ago, the Lamborghini SC63 rolled onto the concrete of Sebring International Raceway for its first competitive outing on American soil. It finished seventh, stayed on the lead lap, and scored points. For a car making its US debut against established GTP machinery, that was a quietly impressive marker.
Now the SC63 returns to the same Florida circuit for the 12 Hours of Sebring, round two of the 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. The context has shifted. Lamborghini says the Sebring weekend could suit the car better than Daytona did, and the team needs that optimism to land, because the 2025 campaign opened at the Daytona 24 Hours in January with mechanical trouble forcing the car into retirement inside the opening hour. One race, one DNF. Sebring offers a chance to reset the narrative at a venue that already holds a positive memory for the program.
Factory drivers Mirko Bortolotti, Romain Grosjean, and Daniil Kvyat will share the #63 prototype. All three bring Sebring experience. Bortolotti is a three-time GTD podium finisher at the circuit, including a victory in 2019. Grosjean was part of Lamborghini’s GTP crew at Sebring last year. Kvyat, the former Formula 1 driver, rounds out a lineup that blends prototype instinct with deep familiarity of this particular track’s demands. Whether that combination can translate into the kind of clean, points-scoring run the program desperately needs will define the weekend.
Three Huracán GT3 EVO2s Add Depth to Lamborghini’s Sebring Presence
The SC63 is the headline act, but Lamborghini’s Sebring weekend extends well beyond a single prototype. Three Huracán GT3 EVO2s will contest the GT classes, and their Daytona performances suggest genuine pace even when results did not fully materialize.
In GTD Pro, the #9 Pfaff Motorsport entry pairs full-season drivers Andrea Caldarelli and Marco Mapelli with former IndyCar driver James Hinchcliffe, who is committed to the full Endurance Cup campaign. Pfaff brings a professional operation that demonstrated competitive speed at Daytona before circumstances intervened, and as Lamborghini’s professional-class GT standard bearer in IMSA, the team carries added weight.
The GTD class features two more Huracáns. Wayne Taylor Racing’s #45 car fields Danny Formal, Graham Doyle, and Trent Hindman, a former Super Trofeo World Finals winner. Formal and Doyle are pulling double duty at Sebring, splitting their weekend between GTD and the opening round of the Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America season. That kind of scheduling commitment speaks to driver dedication and the depth of Lamborghini’s customer racing ecosystem. Completing the GTD lineup, Forte Racing’s #78 entry of Mario Farnbacher, Misha Goikhberg, and Parker Kligerman arrives looking to improve on last year’s fifth-place Sebring finish.
At Daytona, Lamborghini says all three Huracáns showed the pace to fight for top results. The #45 was tracking toward a likely podium before a suspension failure in the final hour ended that bid. The #9 and #78 were similarly undone by incidents outside their control. The speed was real. Converting it over 12 hours at Sebring is the next test, and a strong GT result would reinforce the broader case that Lamborghini’s racing presence runs deeper than the prototype alone.
Why Sebring Punishes Everything
Sebring International Raceway is a former airfield, and it behaves like one. The surface is famously bumpy, and those bumps are not cosmetic annoyances. They impose real mechanical strain, particularly on transmissions, and force teams to run higher ride heights than they would prefer on a smoother circuit. For any car, the compromise between protecting hardware and extracting aerodynamic performance is a constant negotiation over 12 hours.
Florida humidity compounds the toll, especially during daytime stints. Cockpit temperatures climb to extremes that turn every stint into an endurance event within the endurance event. The race begins at 10:10 Saturday morning and runs into the evening, meaning crews face the full spectrum of daylight heat and the cooler, faster conditions after sunset. Practice sessions on Thursday span morning, afternoon, and evening specifically to give teams a representative feel for how the car and track evolve across the day. Qualifying follows on Friday.
For the Huracán GT3 EVO2, a car built around a naturally aspirated V10 and years of GT3 development, Sebring’s punishment is familiar territory. Customer teams know what to expect and how to prepare. For the SC63, a more complex prototype still building its competitive identity, Sebring’s relentless surface and thermal demands represent a different kind of proving ground. After the Daytona retirement, the question is not just whether the car is fast enough but whether it can endure. The fact that it survived this environment last year and finished on the lead lap is worth remembering, because reliability over 12 brutal hours may matter more than outright pace in determining whether the SC63’s Sebring return counts as redemption or another frustration.
What to Watch For
The practical question for anyone following Lamborghini’s racing efforts is whether the SC63 can build on what it showed at Sebring 12 months ago, or whether the Daytona mechanical failure signals deeper reliability concerns. Lamborghini has not disclosed whether specific changes were made to the car after the Daytona retirement, so the Sebring weekend will speak for itself.
In the GT classes, the storyline is more straightforward. If even one of the three Huracán GT3 EVO2s can avoid the kind of late-race misfortune that struck the #45 at Daytona, a strong result looks plausible. Pfaff Motorsport’s GTD Pro effort, bolstered by Hinchcliffe’s endurance commitment, and the two GTD entries from Wayne Taylor Racing and Forte Racing all showed undeniable pace in January. Twelve hours at Sebring rewards consistency as much as speed, and that is where the Huracán’s maturity as a GT3 platform could prove decisive.
The double-duty schedule for Formal and Doyle, racing both GTD and Super Trofeo in the same weekend, underscores how Lamborghini’s racing ladder functions. The Super Trofeo North America series opens its 13th season at Sebring this same weekend, and the overlap between customer racing and professional IMSA competition creates a pipeline that few manufacturers replicate so directly at the same event.
Across multiple classes and series from Thursday through Saturday night, Lamborghini will be visible at every level of competition Sebring offers. The SC63 carries the founding year on its flanks and, for now, carries the weight of proving that Lamborghini’s prototype ambitions belong at this level. A clean 12 hours would go a long way.
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