In 2002/2003 the Automobil Club de l'Ouest (the ACO, being the organizer of the 24 Hours of Le Mans) and the Federation International de l'Automobil (the FIA) agreed and defined a unified regulation for sports Prototype racing cars. The existing cars were esteemed to be not sufficiently safe. Therefore, significant changes were made to improve the aerodynamic stability and the driver's protection.

Cars homologated following the old technical regulations cannot be easily adapted to the new rules; only new projects will be able to bring to life cars which meet all requirements. For a transition period which ends 2006, existing cars will be tolerated, but they have to undergo certain modifications to meet the requirements of the new regulations. But these "hybrid" cars will have to run handicapped with lest and other restrictions, in comparison with the new cars. For that reason, only new cars will be highly competitive.

So the decision was to build a new car. Designed by Giovanni Lavaggi, a promoted mechanical engineer of the highly rated university "Politecnico di Milano" who is staying permanently in contact with both rules making bodies, the car is carefully exploiting the ACO/FIA rules to the limits. The car design is based on Lavaggi's vast experience in racing sports prototypes from '88 to '97 as a professional driver. In this role, Giovanni Lavaggi has participated not less than 7 times at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, he has claimed overall victory of the 24 Hours of Daytona, he has been a Formula One driver in 1995 and 1996, and, since 1998 up to now, he is running his own team as team owner, at the same time being one of the nominated drivers. For all these reasons, the car offers a maximum of on-track performance, and furthermore, it is designed and built "user-friendly" for the purpose of endurance racing, such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans

The first studies to build a race car which bears his name are dating back to late 2001, but Lavaggi and his staff of best-possible qualified engineers and designers kept waiting for the new rules to be officially confirmed and published before pushing the project hard to have the first two cars finished in time to run in 2006.

The category of sports prototypes is divided into two classes: