Lamborghini announced they’ve taken the Ring record from Porsche thanks to a cracker of a car and a racing master in Lamborghini factory driver Marco Mapelli.
Earlier yesterday (July 26, 2018) Lamborghini announced they took the Nurburgring production car lap record from the Porsche 911 GT2 RS. Behind the wheel of this raging bull that has yet to hit the market was the Lamborghini’s own factory driver Marco Mapelli. Here’s a little info on this master of the ‘Ring.
Marco Mapelli is a 30-year-old Lamborghini Factory driver racing for Lamborghini in Japan’s Super GT series, the Blancpain Sprint series and most recently with Audi and their Audi Sport Team MPC endurance team and Audi Sport Italia in the Italian GT Championship. Needless to say, his racing history is a testament to how good he is as a driver.
According to his bio on Lamborghini’s main website, he’s been racing since he was 10 years old starting off with karting. In 2005 he was the Official Birel and Top Kart driver Italian and European Championship runner-up for 100cc karts. This karting series was where lots of other successful drivers got their start including Formula 1 drivers like Sebastien Buemi, Nico Hulkenberg, and Will Stevens.
From there, Marco progressed through the ranks of closed cockpit and open-wheel racing with lots of endurance racing intermixed. Highlights from his racing record include,
- 2007 4th overall in Australian Formula 2
- 2008 4th overall in Italian Ferrari Challenge
- 2009 2nd overall in Italian Ferrari Challenge
- 2010 Overall winner at the 6 Hours of Vallenlunga, Team AF Corse
- 2010 Italian GT Championship GT Cup Champion, (5 wins), Team Vittoria competizioni (Ferrari F430 GTC)
- 2011 2nd overall in Porsche Carrera Cup Italia
- 2015 2nd Overal Liqui Moly Bathurst
Although his racing is filled with Ferrari success, he’s found his home with Lamborghini.
Mapelli lists the Nurburgring as his favorite track and it’s no secret. In 2015 he took the Lamborghini Aventador SV to the Nurburgring and set a time of 6:59.7. And it was only a year later that the Lamborghini’s Huracan snagged an even faster time with a 6:52.01 run. From the looks of things, the Radical SR8 LM’s record in 2009 of 6:48.28 was unbeatable until Porsche came in with their Porsche 911 GT2 RS and broke that time with a 6:47.25 run. Finally, Lamborghini and Marco Mapelli got to show what they could do and took the record from Porsche in no small part thanks to Marco Mapelli’s skill, not to mention the Aventador’s power and handling.
He doesn’t tweet much but he does post some nice Instagram pictures from time to time so definitely follow him on there. He’s only got a couple thousand followers on each so I’m’ sure an increase in followers would nudge him in the right direction to share more on social media maybe.
Only P9 for us today at Fuji with at least some points on an average race… https://t.co/RtNrzQV5Ib
— Marco Mapelli (@MARCOMAPELLI) May 4, 2018
Congrats Lambo and congrats to you, Marco!
