Four Classes, Four Winners, and Plenty of Chaos at Vallelunga
The sixth Lamborghini World Final opened on November 17, 2018, at Vallelunga’s tight, technical layout outside Rome, and the day’s racing proved a single thesis over and over again: in a one-make series where every car is identical, the championship is decided not by who is fastest but by who survives the chaos. Across PRO, PRO-AM, AM, and Lamborghini Cup, four different winners emerged from four different continental programs, and in every case the result turned on penalties, mechanical failures, or split-second decisions rather than outright qualifying pace.
Kei Cozzolino and Afiq Yazid of Clazzio Racing inherited a PRO victory nobody predicted at the start. Loris Spinelli and JC Perez of P1 Motorsport controlled PRO-AM. Ryan Hardwick of Dream Racing Motorsport pulled off a last-lap pass to win AM, while his teammate Justin Price took the Lamborghini Cup in what Lamborghini says was his very first season of car racing. North American teams claimed three of those four class wins, a detail that underscored how far the Super Trofeo series had grown beyond its European roots. Yet the real story was not geography. It was the way the format punished aggression and rewarded composure, a pattern that repeated in every class.
A Race Won on Penalties, Not Just Pace
The combined PRO and PRO-AM race told the most complicated story of the day, and the clearest illustration of the survival thesis. Giacomo Altoe, the freshly crowned European champion driving for Antonelli Motorsport, started from pole and looked comfortable at the front. Then the pit window opened, and the race unraveled. His teammate Daniel Zampieri was hit with a drive-through penalty for a pit-stop irregularity, then stacked a 20-second time penalty on top of that for overtaking under yellow flags. That double punishment effectively ended the Antonelli car’s challenge.
Bonaldi Motorsport‘s Kelvin Snoeks, who had taken over from James Pull, fared even worse. A drive-through penalty escalated to a black flag, removing the car from the race entirely. Lamborghini’s official account does not specify the infraction, but a black flag at a World Final is severe enough to suggest something beyond a routine procedural error.
With the frontrunners penalized or disqualified, Cozzolino and Yazid found themselves in clean air. Second place went to the Leipert Motorsport crew of Ben Gersekowski and Richard Muscat, with their teammates Niels Lagrange and Frederik Schandorff completing the podium. Cozzolino was candid about the circumstances:
“At the start, I tried to overtake Altoe, but I was in the dirty part of the track, therefore I had to give up and stayed behind for a long time. Maybe, we also had a better pace and in the end Yazid did a great job, bringing home this victory.”
The PRO-AM race within the same event was more straightforward, though not without its own turbulence. Spinelli made an excellent start and controlled the opening stint, but a slow driver change cost the P1 Motorsport crew roughly five seconds. Perez returned to the track in second and fought back to win. Behind them, Lorenzo Bontempelli and Emanuele Zonzini recovered from early contact to finish second for Iron Lynx, while Andrej Lewandowski’s VS Racing entry was knocked out of the race by a separate incident after Edoardo Liberati had been the fastest PRO-AM qualifier. Even in the class where the winner led most of the race, the margin came down to pit-lane execution and the ability to absorb setbacks.
The AM Battle: A Last-Lap Pass at Roma Curve
The AM and Lamborghini Cup race produced its own defining moment, and once again the outcome hinged on composure under pressure rather than raw speed. Manuel Lauck of Dorr Motorsport took pole and led convincingly through the first stint, handing over to Florian Scholze with a comfortable margin. Scholze held the lead until two laps remained, when Hardwick caught and passed him at the Roma curve, one of Vallelunga’s trickiest braking zones.
Hardwick’s win carried extra weight. Lamborghini says his Dream Racing Motorsport team had already won the North American AM championship the day before, making this a back-to-back triumph on consecutive days. His post-race comments reflected the kind of confidence that comes from a full season of momentum:
“I knew I could do it. My team gave me a great car all year long.”
In the Lamborghini Cup, Justin Price completed a Dream Racing Motorsport double. The American benefited when Brett Meredith, who had set the fastest qualifying time and led most of the race, was forced to retire with two laps remaining. Behind Price, Joseph Collado of AGS Events finished second, with European champion Gerard Van der Horst rounding out the podium. Price’s reaction captured something genuine about the Super Trofeo’s role as an entry point for drivers who would otherwise never find themselves on a World Final podium:
“I took my first win ever in a World Final. This is my first season in car racing and the first time here in Vallelunga.”
The Huracan Super Trofeo as Equalizer
Every car on the Vallelunga grid was an identical Huracan Super Trofeo, and that uniformity is precisely what made the day’s chaos so revealing. Strip away horsepower advantages and aero loopholes, and the variables that remain are the person behind the wheel, the team’s setup choices, and the strategy around pit stops and tire management. The car itself, with its naturally aspirated V10 and purpose-built aero package visible in the large rear wings and aggressive front splitters across the grid, is designed to be reliable enough for privateer teams to maintain yet fast enough to reward genuine skill differences.
This one-make philosophy is central to what Squadra Corse built the series around. The class structure (PRO, PRO-AM, AM, Lamborghini Cup) sorts drivers by experience level, but the machinery is the constant. That is how someone like Justin Price, in his first season of car racing, competes on the same equipment as multi-year veterans and still wins when circumstances align. For prospective participants wondering about accessibility, Reddit users who attended past World Finals at circuits like Jerez have described the events as surprisingly intimate, with free entry, open paddock access, and the ability to talk directly with drivers and mechanics between sessions.
The series also functions as a proving ground for Lamborghini’s broader motorsport ambitions. Drivers who sharpen their craft in Super Trofeo often progress to GT3 competition, and the operational knowledge Squadra Corse accumulates from running hundreds of customer cars feeds directly into its factory programs. According to Autoblog, the Temerario GT3 represents Lamborghini’s first competition car fully designed, developed, and built in-house, a milestone that builds on the institutional knowledge accumulated through years of supporting customer teams in exactly this kind of series.
What Day 1 Set Up for the Championship Battles
The opening day’s results reshuffled the championship picture heading into Sunday’s decisive races, but they also confirmed the pattern that ran through every class: the teams that managed risk, not just speed, were the ones positioned to walk away with titles. Altoe and Zampieri’s penalty-laden Day 1 did not prevent them from ultimately being crowned PRO class world champions by the event’s conclusion, according to one report. Spinelli and Juan Perez claimed both the European and North American PRO-AM titles, while Hardwick’s Day 1 win proved to be the start of a double championship haul in the AM class. Joseph Collado reportedly won his first Lamborghini Cup title by the end of the weekend.
The World Final’s two-race format across a single weekend rewards consistency more than any single qualifying lap or race-day heroics. A 20-second penalty or a mechanical failure with two laps remaining can undo an entire season’s worth of points advantage. That volatility is exactly what makes the format worth watching, and it is exactly what Vallelunga’s opening day demonstrated in every class. The fastest car did not always win. The smartest team did.
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