Jordan Sherratt, Giorgio Simonini and Gianfranco Giglioli represented the Sant’Agata Bolognese brand in the competitive SRO Intercontinental GT Challenge Endurance Esports Championship at the opening round in Bathurst, Australia.
Sant’Agata Bolognese, 22 May 2022 - Automobili Lamborghini Esports Team drivers Jordan Sherratt, Giorgio Simonini and Gianfranco Giglioli took a lights to flag victory in the opening round of the SRO Intercontinental GT Challenge Endurance Esports Championship, taking place at Bathurst for the challenging 12 hour race.
Preparation for the event was meticulous with the team working with Squadra Corse staff to hone their package for the season opener where Giorgio Simonini made his race debut with the official Lamborghini Esports team. All three drivers fine-tuned the GT3 machine and came into the event confident that they could achieve a top result.
Qualifying took place with 47 cars on the challenging Australian circuit and working together with his Squadra Corse engineer to find the right gaps on track, Sherratt took a stunning pole position for the nascent Lamborghini Esports team with a time of 1.59.875.
As the lights went out at 5am virtual time, Giorgio Simonini made a perfect start to his factory Lamborghini Esports career, leading the entirety of his mammoth triple stint where he built up a gap of 25s to the 2nd placed BMW. Gianfranco Giglioli then made a clean and competitive double stint where the gap was reduced to 9s by the end of hour 5. Sherratt made his first appearance in the race in the 6th hour where he completed a super double stint to stretch out the gap to 26s once again – the largest margin the Sant’Agata had enjoyed thus far. Gianfranco then put in his best drive yet with the Lamborghini team to maintain a safe gap to the 2nd placed car to complete 4 hours of driving in the race.
With the BMW competition opting to go shorter on fuel trying to put pressure on the #63 car, the team, led by Team Principal Dan Wells with Brendon Leitch as race engineer, kept to their race strategy of minimising time in the pitlane which meant that after a strong stint in the 10th hour by Giorgio, it was left to Jordan to do a full hour before a ‘splash and dash’ in the final 20 minutes where he brought the car home to win the special endurance event, and Lamborghini’s first as a factory Esports squad.
Jordan commented, “I felt relatively confident coming into the weekend, but you never know how things are going to work out. Especially at Mount Panorama - which is such a difficult circuit, with a lot of walls very close by, but I’m fortunate to say we had a near perfect race. Taking the pole position was very special, but I had a lot of emotion at the end of the 12 hours! I hope we can continue this throughout the championship, and I’d like to thank all the team for their hard work to make this possible”.
Giorgio continued “I was so pleased to keep the car in the lead for the first stint, building up a 3s gap so I felt confident to start to push on and extend the gap. The car was a joy to drive and I’m just so glad that everything came together for us today. We had a few nervy moments with traffic and blue flags, but thankfully we were lucky and came away with this strong result.”
Gianfranco echoed “I did a lot of preparation coming into this event - sharing the car with Jordan and Giorgio was such a pleasure and I would like to thank the whole team for their support in the run up to the event to help me find my pace, I’m glad I did what I needed to do, as did everyone else, and that we got to enjoy the victory in our first race together!”
Team Principal of Automobili Lamborghini Esports Dan Wells shared his thoughts on the IGTCE season opener: “This was a great day for what is still a very new team. We devised a strategy which played to our strengths, and thankfully everyone executed their roles perfectly on the day. To take Lamborghini’s first Esports win as an official team is very special, especially considering this is just the third race for the team, and the season opener for the SRO Endurance category. I’d like to thank everybody for their hard work to achieve this result and we are looking forward to the coming races.”
The next round of the SRO IGTCE Championship takes place in at Spa Francorchamps for the iconic 24-hour race on June 18th. Before then, the team will be in action for the second round of the SRO Esports Europe Sprint series at Nürburgring on June 8th.