Former Formula 1 driver, Daniil Kvyat, has been announced as the latest addition to the Lamborghini Squadra Corse Factory Driver roster, where he will take on extensive testing of the firm’s LMDh prototype in 2023.
Kvyat is set to make his race debut in 2024, representing Lamborghini Iron Lynx in the WEC and IMSA Championships.
Kvyat joins the likes of Mirko Bortolotti, Andrea Caldarelli, and Romain Grosjean as newcomers to the Sant’Agata Bolognese outfit’s roster of Factory Drivers for the LMDh project.
A youth based in Rome, Kvyat made a quick rise through the karting ranks, up the junior single-seater ladder towards F1.
He won the Formula Renault Alps title and finished second in the Formula Renault 2.0 championship in 2012 before taking the GP3 Series crown a year later. Being a Red Bull Junior driver since karting, he was promoted directly to F1 with Scuderia Toro Rosso, where he impressed enough to graduate to Red Bull Racing in 2015.
Kvyat finished second in the Hungarian Grand Prix that year, before moving back to Toro Rosso 12 months later, where he scored another third place in the 2019 German Grand Prix.
In 2023, Daniil Kvyat’s programme will consist of a season in the World Endurance Championship, where he will race for PREMA Racing in the highly competitive LMP2 class, alongside Factory Driver Mirko Bortolotti and French driver Doriane Pin of the Iron Dames project.
Simultaneously, Kvyat will carry out extensive test and development work on Lamborghini’s LMDh prototype, in which he will contest the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship and the FIA World Endurance Championship in the Hypercar class next year. Kvyat will compete under an Italian race license.
Giorgio Sanna, Head of Motorsport at Lamborghini Squadra Corse, said, “As a group, we are thrilled to welcome Daniil to Lamborghini, and we believe he will be a strong asset to our LMDh project over the course of the 2023 season.
Daniil’s main role with us will be working closely with our engineers and mechanics on the prototype car, which will debut next year. Given his vast experience in other racing categories, I have no doubt that he will play a crucial part in us hitting the ground running in 2024.”
Commenting on his new role, Daniil Kvyat said, “I am very happy to have joined Lamborghini Squadra Corse, it is a great honour for me. Lamborghini is a very well-known Italian brand with a great history in the automotive world, and having grown up in Italy, this is an additional source of pride for me.
We hope to achieve many goals together, and I thank you for your trust in me. I look forward to starting work on the LMDh project later this year.”