A Landmark First Visit to Elkhart Lake
In early August 2016, the Lamborghini Blancpain Super Trofeo North America series rolled into Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, for the first time. Road America’s 4.048-mile, 14-turn circuit had long been considered one of the fastest permanent road courses on the continent, and yet the series had never raced there. Rounds 5 and 6 of the 2016 championship changed that, pairing one of the quickest one-make series in motorsport with a venue built to reward precisely the kind of high-speed commitment the Huracán LP 620-2 Super Trofeo demanded.
The weekend ran from August 5 through 7, with two practice sessions on Thursday, qualifying Friday morning, and the main action split across two 50-minute sprint races: Race 1 at 5:50 p.m. CT on Saturday and Race 2 at 12:25 p.m. on Sunday. For a series that covered 10 rounds across five circuits that year, adding Road America was a statement about ambition. Lamborghini wanted its customer racers on tracks that tested both car and driver at the limit.
Road America’s character suits the Huracán Super Trofeo particularly well. Long straights like the Kettle Bottoms stretch reward the V10’s top-end pull, while the Carousel and Canada Corner demand genuine aerodynamic confidence. Bringing the Super Trofeo field here for the first time gave the 2016 season a venue that could genuinely separate the competitive tiers.
The Huracán LP 620-2: Built for Circuits Like This
The car at the center of the 2016 grid was the Huracán LP 620-2 Super Trofeo, a purpose-built race machine that shared its V10 direct injection engine with the road-going Huracán but diverged in almost every detail that matters on track. The engine produces 620 horsepower, managed not by the road car’s electronics but by a specialized MoTeC control unit tuned specifically for competition. That distinction matters: MoTeC systems allow race engineers to extract more precise calibration from the powertrain, adjusting fueling, ignition, and traction strategies in ways a road-car ECU simply cannot.
Lamborghini says the frame uses a hybrid carbon and aluminum construction, with modified geometries to accommodate an improved front radiator and a racing gearbox at the rear. Those structural changes also improve aerodynamic efficiency, a critical factor on a circuit with Road America’s mix of high-speed straights and technical corners. The large rear wings and aggressive front splitters visible on the grid cars generate the downforce that lets drivers commit to corners at speeds that would overwhelm a road car’s mechanical grip.
The Huracán Super Trofeo replaced the earlier Gallardo-based race car, and by 2016 the entire field had fully transitioned to the newer platform. With the car’s capabilities well understood by every team, the competition shifted from learning the machine to extracting every last tenth from it.
Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo race cars line up on the track, showcasing their dynamic liveries and readiness for competition.
Championship Drama at the Season’s Midpoint
Road America arrived at a pivotal moment in the 2016 standings. Shinya Michimi had won three of the first four rounds, and his Prestige Performance team was on a dominant run that included a 28-second margin of victory in Round 4 at Watkins Glen. That kind of gap in a one-make series, where every car runs identical hardware, speaks entirely to driver skill and team preparation.
The overall championship told a more complicated story. Craig Duerson and Trent Hindman, Michimi’s teammates at Prestige Performance, were tied for first in the standings with Brandon Gdovic, the 2015 Super Trofeo World Final Amateur champion. Duerson and Hindman had recorded two class wins and three podium finishes, but a DNF in Round 4 opened the door for Gdovic, who had been consistently collecting points without a single retirement. The dynamic heading into Road America was clear: Prestige Performance had the speed, but Gdovic had the consistency.
The Amateur division was even tighter. Damon Ockey led with 52 points, but the top four drivers sat within 10 points of each other. Rookies Luis Rodriguez Jr., David Askew, and James Burke were all in contention, with Askew and Burke picking up their first podium finishes at Watkins Glen. Meanwhile, Ross Chouest held a perfect score in the brand-new Lamborghini Cup division, a class designed for competitors at the start of their racing careers. The 2016 season was the inaugural year for that category, and Chouest’s clean sweep through the opening rounds gave it an immediate narrative.
With separate podiums for overall, Pro-Am, Amateur, and Lamborghini Cup, multiple championship battles played out simultaneously at every event, creating layers of competition that a single-class series cannot replicate. Road America, then, was not just one race weekend. It was the fulcrum on which four title fights could pivot.
The Racing Ladder and Lamborghini’s Bigger Motorsport Play
Lamborghini positioned the North American Super Trofeo as a stepping stone: give professional and aspiring professional drivers a competitive environment with equal machinery, then use the results to identify talent worth promoting into higher-profile series. By 2016, the concept was proving itself. Prestige Performance’s collaboration with Wayne Taylor Racing brought established team infrastructure to the one-make grid, and drivers who performed well in Super Trofeo competition gained visibility with teams running GT3 and endurance programs.
The 2016 season ended with the World Final at Circuit de la Comunitat Valenciana Ricardo Tormo in Valencia, Spain, where the North American, European, and Asian series converged. That global structure gave the series weight beyond regional bragging rights. A strong performance at Road America could lead to a World Final invitation, which in turn could lead to a GT3 seat. For drivers like Michimi and Gdovic, the 2016 season was about career trajectory as much as trophies.
The Huracán Super Trofeo’s role in this pipeline deserves recognition in the context of where Lamborghini’s racing programs stand today. The Temerario GT3, which Autoblog reports is Lamborghini’s first competition car fully designed, developed, and built in-house by Squadra Corse, represents the next generation of that same philosophy. The 2016 season at Road America was an early chapter in building the infrastructure, the team relationships, and the driver development pathways that feed into programs like the Temerario GT3. Customer racing is not a side project for Lamborghini. It is a deliberate, long-term investment in competitive credibility.
What the 2016 Road America Weekend Meant for the Series
Specific race results from the 2016 Road America rounds remain difficult to locate, even in historical databases. What the available record does confirm is that Prestige Performance went on to sweep all four divisional championships that season, a historic first for any team in the North American series. The dominance visible at Road America’s midseason point carried through to the finale.
For buyers and collectors, the Huracán LP 620-2 Super Trofeo from this era occupies an interesting position. These are pure naturally aspirated V10 race cars, built before the EVO update refined the platform further. Autoblog recently highlighted a near-new 2020 Huracán Super Trofeo EVO listed on Bring a Trailer with just 84 miles, underscoring the collector appeal of these machines even years after their competitive window closed. The LP 620-2 cars from 2016, having actually raced at circuits like Road America, carry a different kind of provenance: they were the tools that built the series’ credibility on American soil.
Road America became a recurring fixture on the Super Trofeo calendar in subsequent years, validating Lamborghini’s decision to bring the series there in 2016. That first visit was not a one-off experiment. It was the beginning of a relationship between the circuit and the championship that continues to benefit both. For anyone who followed the 2016 season, the Road America debut marked the moment the North American Super Trofeo stopped being a niche curiosity and started looking like a serious, permanent fixture in American sportscar racing.
