Lamborghini used the occasion of July’s Goodwood Festival of Speed (at Goodwood Estate in the UK) to reveal its 2024 World Endurance Championship and IMSA GTP contender, the SC63 and to confirm its engine configuration.

Lamborghini notes that this is the 60th anniversary as a car manufacturer and the 10th anniversary for its motorsport arm, Squadra Corse. To date Squadra Corse has concentrated on GT racing and has taken three class wins at the Daytona 24 Hours. Its new LMDh car has been. developed on a chassis platform supplied by Ligier.

The engine, allowed to deploy up to 520 kW at the rear wheels (depending on Balance of Performance), will feed through the LMDh regulation Xtrac transaxle. It will be married to the spec 50 kW hybrid system that interacts with that transaxle, using a Bosch MGU/inverter and a Williams Advanced Engineering battery. The hybrid system power will not be allowed to increase the overall rear wheel deployment limit (of 520 kW or less).

The engine is a 3.8 litre V8 twin turbo with the turbo for each bank mounted outside the cylinder banks. Lamborghini explains that this is to minimise the engine’s overall centre of gravity height and ease servicing. While Lamborghini is associated with V12 and V10 road cars its Urus uses a V8 twin turbo, as is expected to be the power plant for the Huracán replacement. At the same time the marque is moving strongly towards hybridisation.

Lamborghini notes that this LMDh V8 is the first pure race engine developed by its Squadra Corse. Of course, back in the 1980s the late Ing Mauro Forghieri designed a 3.5 litre V12 Formula One engine for Lamborghini. That 3512 unit was used by the Larrousse team from 1989 through 1993 and by various other lower ranking teams from 1990 through 1992.

Then Lamborghini owner Chrysler negotiated for recent Grand Prix winner McLaren to use the engine in 1994. However, at the last minute the British team chose to go with Peugeot instead prompting Chrysler to pull Lamborghini out of Formula One. In 1994 Chrysler sold Lamborghini and these days the marque is owned by Volkswagen through its Audi division.

Lamborghini has committed one car each to WEC and the IMSA’s Michelin Endurance Cup next year. Those cars will be run by Iron Lynx, which is running the factory GT3 effort this season.