Lamborghini punished for Daytona 24 Hours sandbagging

A penalty of five minutes has been added to the final race time of each of the GT Daytona class Lamborghini Huracan GT3s that took part in the opening round of the IMSA SportsCar Championship.

The penalty drops the best-placed of the Lamborghinis, the #28 Konrad Motorsport car, from fifth to 10th position.

The O'Gara entry, which finished 10th in class, is now classified in 15th.

The penalties have been imposed under an attachment to the IMSA sporting rules, which concerns the Balance of Performance process.

IMSA explained that it had invoked paragraph 2.9 of this appendix, which is a catch-all clause conceived to penalise sandbagging.

It reads: "Any competitor or manufacturer who deliberately gives false information, attempts to influence the BoP process or displays a level of performance beyond the expected result may be issued a penalty prior to, during or after a race of a minimum stop plus five minutes."

The Huracan was the fastest GTD car during the 24 Hours on January 30/31.

The fastest GTD lap was set by Richard Antinucci in the O'Gara car on a 1m45.873s.

Three of the other cars lapped in the 1m46s, while no other GTD entry broke the 1m47s barrier during the race.

The class-winning Magnus Racing Audi R8 LMS ended up with a fastest race lap of 1m47.216s.

Lamborghini's hopes of winning the class at Daytona were hit in the 11th hour when the Paul Miller Racing Huracan and the example run by the Change Racing team collided.

The Konrad car took the lead in the final stages before factory driver Fabio Babini made what turned out to be an unnecessary stop for fuel.

Lamborghini has also been fined $25,000.

The Italian manufacturer said that it would release a statement concerning the penalties later today.