If you’ve been watching the 24 Hours of Daytona, you may have been baffled by the speed of the Lamborghinis. Several drivers mentioned that the Lamborghini Huracán GT3s are significantly faster than the rest of the GTD class, but the two leading Lamborghinis solved that issue by taking each other out late at night.
In hour 11 of tonight’s Rolex 24, Bryce Miller in the No. 48 Paul Miller Racing collided with Justin Marks in the No. 16 Change Racing car while battling for the lead in the class. Motorsport.com reports that the two cars collided ahead of Turn 1, sliding across the infield grass and pit lane to impact the inside wall.
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Miller explained in a team statement that he feels as if Marks drove into him, as quoted by Motorsport.com:
It’s a real shame and it’s really unnecessary that our contention for this race is done at the halfway point. The other car really rammed into us; it wasn’t contact that you could attempt to recover from.
I was committed to a full braking zone, pulling downshifts and setting up for turn one, and he came from a distance back and did a banzai maneuver. The contact he made with the left-rear corner was really significant, enough to completely spin the car down the inside pit wall.
It really chewed the car up and we lost a lot of time in the garage. I feel really disheartened, I feel bad for the team and my co-drivers. This is going to be a really hard one to get over, knowing that we had such a good car.
Despite the fact that everyone was busted for underperforming, several people have been wondering if IMSA didn’t do enough to equalize the performance of the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 with the rest of the field. Did the Huracáns sandbag more than the rest of the field during the preseason tests? Did IMSA just underestimate their performance during the race somehow?
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“The Lamborghini is the fastest GT car by a mile, including LM,” said PC-class driver Johnny Mowlem on the race broadcast, as quoted by Tony DiZinno. GTLM is the faster of the two GT classes running tonight, or at least, it should be in theory. Either way, the Lambo’s lap times don’t back up Mowlem’s claim, but they’re definitely the fastest cars in GTD.
GTD-class driver Andy Lally has also been wondering what has been going on with the speed of the Lambos on the Magnus Racing podcast, as his Magnus Audi R8 LMS GT3 even shares several things in common with the Lambos.
Either way, it didn’t matter for these top two. Both cars had to head back to the garage after the incident, and No. 48 had to be towed there, as it couldn’t move under its own power.
The GTD-class Lamborghinis don’t seem to be making good use of their additional speed tonight. In hour 14, the No. 21 Konrad Motorsport Lamborghini collided with the No. 007 TRG-AMR Aston Martin Vantage GT3. TRG-AMR reports that their No. 007 is out of the race as a result.
Italian cars, man. At this rate, Ferrari’s probably glad we’re not talking about their cars in this context for a change.
Contact the author at stef.schrader@jalopnik.com.
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