2003 Lamborghini Murciélago R-GT GT1

There are few categories throughout motor sport history that produced so many legendary cars as the GT1 class. It was a category that delivered cars such as the McLaren F1 GTR, Mercedes CLK GTR, Maserati MC12, Porsche 911 GT1 and so many more. However, one car that flies under the radar is arguably the best sounding GT1 car ever created, and certainly one of the most dramatic looking. The car in question is the Lamborghini Murcielago R-GT. Raced in GT1 throughout its most competitive era, the R-GT not only competed against, but on occasion conquered the might of Maserati and Aston Martin in both Japan’s Super GT and FIA GT championships.

When Lamborghini finally decided it was time to enter the world of motorsport with a car available for customers to purchase, they chose the FIA’s immensely popular GT1 class. Jointly developed by Audi Sport and Reiter Engineering, the new R-GT was unveiled at the 2003 Frankfurt Auto Show. The first complete chassis was suppled to the Japanese Lamborghini Owners Club (JLOC) and sent over to Japan along with three other chassis. The remaining chassis were split between Barber Krohn Racing in America and DAMS in Europe who took on the might of Ferrari, Aston Martin, Chevrolet and Maserati. With a total of three class wins and a further two class podiums in major championships (Le Mans Series, FIA GT, American Le Mans Series) over its lifespan in GT1, the Murcielago R-GT proved its ability to not only compete against, but beat the major manufacturers. Lamborghini racing cars are rare since the marque didn’t go racing until the 1990s, and GT1 examples exceptionally so with just 16 existing across the Diablo and Murcielago models. History would have many believe that the R-GT was not the most successful version of the Lamborghini’s GT1 cars, but what it does not tell you is that the R-GT produced significantly faster lap times in period when compared to its later R-SV successor. This is due to it participating in the fastest era of GT1, whereas the later R-SV raced in the slowest era of GT1 but yielded more success.

JLOC Racing was founded in 1993 by the Japanese Lamborghini Owners Club. Founder Isao Noritake decided he wanted to go racing with his favorite manufacturer and grouped together with other founder members to assemble a team. Their first car was a self-developed Countach, which didn’t yield the success they’d hoped for. So they approached Lamborghini and convinced them to develop a GT1 car based on the Diablo. In early 1995, Lamborghini conducted rollout tests for JLOC of the new Diablo Jota which JLOC intended to race in the JGTC. Significantly, the car in question also raced in the 1996 BPR Global GT round at Suzuka, making it the very first Lamborghini to race in the GT1 class anywhere. JLOC campaigned their Diablo for some years, albeit with little success until 1998, before progressing to a subsequent heavily modified Diablo until 2000.

Soon after Lamborghini announced that a race variant of the new Murcielago would be built for the GT1 class, to be called the R-GT. JLOC immediately placed orders, eventually purchasing four in total. On top of full Super GT campaigns the small but passionate team set their sights on the biggest race of them all, the Le Mans 24 Hours. JLOC finished their GT1 journey with a total of four Le Mans starts.

The Lamborghini R-GT is one of the most competitive cars in the GT1B category in the highly successful series ‘Endurance Racing Legends’. People often forget about the speed of the Murcielago GT1s due to the relative lack of trophies they earned in period. However, there is no denying that the Lamborghini GT1 can compete against its rivals. In the most recent Endurance Racing Legends event on the 2024 spa 24hr weekend, the Lamborghini GT1 came home 2nd in race 1, beating every MC12. In race 2, they went one better as the car came home 1st in class.

Unsurprisingly the first thing you may notice about this unique Lamborghini GT1 car is that it wears number plates. This is because the present owner wanted this to not only be the ultimate weapon when put in its natural habitat on a racetrack, but to also show the world that a GT1 race car can truly be a usable road car.

After taking delivery of 1061, JLOC began campaigning the car in Japan’s legendary Super GT championship. Whilst its racing life in Super GT is believed to be extensive, success largely eluded the JLOC team. In the most part this was because its rivals were in the most part silhouette GT cars developed by the might of Japanese manufacturers such as Toyota, Honda and Nissan. Then in 2009 chassis 1061 was solely responsible for bringing JLOC and Lamborghini their only championship win in the GT1 era when the chassis won the inaugural Asian Le Mans Series’. Not only did 1061 bring Lamborghini a championship win, it also gave Lamborghini the opportunity to go back to Le Mans in 2010 as a prize for their title. 1061 concluded the Asian Le Mans series with 2 podiums including a class win at Okayama 1000km with their all-Japanese driver lineup. For their subsequent Le Mans effort JLOC elected to use a sister chassis, 1063.

After its racing days concluded, 1061 was kept by JLOC until some years ago when it was acquired by a Dutch collector to join his collection of iconic GT racers. In recent years it was then purchased by it’s current owner, who wished to use this incredible car on the road. And so 1061 was entrusted to the renowned historic motorsport team BBM Sport for conversion into the incredible road car you see today. This road car conversion is not a permanent change, and a mere two weeks of work are all that is required to return it to full track specification, ready to compete once again against its former rivals in a series such as the popular Endurance Racing Legends