The SMOG2 system of the LHCb detector enables the study of fixed-target ion–ion collisions at relativistic energies (~100 GeV). 3+1D hydrodynamic simulations, based on ab initio calculations of the ¹⁶O and ²⁰Ne nuclear structures, predict that the deformed shape of ²⁰Ne strongly enhances the elliptic flow (v₂) in Pb+Ne collisions compared to Pb+O. This sensitivity to nuclear geometry demonstrates that SMOG2 is a unique tool to probe nuclear shapes experimentally and to study quark–gluon plasma formation in a novel collision regime. The paper related to this work is available here: G. Giacalone et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 134 (2025)