• Wayne Taylor Racing’s #45 Huracán GT3 EVO2, driven by Danny Formal and Trent Hindman, secured Lamborghini’s first IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship victory of the 2026 season in the GTD class at Laguna Seca.
• The new Temerario GT3 finished fifth in GTD Pro in only its third race, its strongest result since debuting at Sebring.
• At Laguna Seca, Lamborghini ran two distinct GT3 platforms in IMSA, a generational overlap that produced results on both sides of the garage.

Lamborghini says this marks the brand’s 15th overall victory in IMSA competition, and the way it arrived tells you more about modern GT racing than the final margin ever could. The two-hour, 40-minute sprint format at Laguna Seca produced only three full-course cautions, turning the race into a fuel-and-tire chess match where pit timing mattered as much as outright pace. Formal qualified the #45 car second, just 0.022 seconds off pole, then handed over to Hindman after the first hour. When the leading Ferrari slowed with a mechanical problem, Hindman inherited the lead and the Wayne Taylor Racing crew executed an overcut on the #19 Aston Martin at the penultimate stop, a move that also kept the #27 Aston Martin behind.

Formal described his opening stint as a “management job,” reading tire degradation and fuel consumption rather than pushing for heroic lap times. Hindman, who ran a double stint to close the race, called it an “incredible day” with “dicey” inter-class traffic but emphasized that patience and constant communication with the pit wall made the difference. The official winning margin ballooned to an unrepresentative 1 minute 20 seconds because the rest of the GTD field crossed the line behind the overall-winning GTP car, but in reality Hindman moved into the lead for the last 10 minutes and extended his margin over second place to over three seconds. For Formal and Hindman, this is their first IMSA win since their victory at Mosport last season.

Temerario GT3 Climbs to Fifth in Just Its Third IMSA Outing

The other half of Lamborghini’s weekend played out in GTD Pro, the higher-tier class where factory-backed entries from every major manufacturer fight for position. The #9 Pfaff Motorsports Temerario GT3, piloted by Lamborghini factory drivers Andrea Caldarelli and Sandy Mitchell, finished fifth. That result matters more than it looks on paper.

The Temerario GT3 — Lamborghini’s new GT3 car built to succeed the Huracán platform — made its global competitive debut at Sebring earlier this year. CEO Stephan Winkelmann reportedly said before Sebring that simply finishing the grueling 12-hour endurance race would be a “big achievement” for the new car. Laguna Seca was only its third race.

The race was not clean for the #9. Mitchell started sixth and held position through the opening stint, but after handing over to Caldarelli, the Temerario took contact from the #4 Corvette during a battle for position and dropped to ninth. A well-timed, fuel-only pit stop late in the race allowed Caldarelli to leapfrog several cars and recover to fifth. Caldarelli, who also contributed to the development of the Huracán GT3 EVO2, praised the Temerario’s torque delivery and improved drivability compared to its predecessor. That dual perspective — from a driver who knows both platforms intimately — carries weight when assessing where the new car stands.

The Temerario’s chassis architecture departs from the Huracán’s layout in meaningful ways. Where the Huracán GT3 EVO2 is built around a naturally aspirated V10, the Temerario’s powertrain package is turbocharged, which changes the character of the car at corner exit. Caldarelli has noted that the turbocharged delivery requires different throttle management, particularly on circuits with slow-speed hairpins where an early, aggressive application on the Huracán would simply translate into clean, linear thrust. On the Temerario, the driver learns to roll on power slightly earlier to account for turbo lag in a way the V10 never demanded. The Laguna Seca result, achieved despite the Corvette contact and despite the car still being on its third competitive outing, suggests the Pfaff team has already identified where those throttle windows open.

Two GT3 Platforms, Two Classes, One Deliberate Handoff

Running two different GT3 cars in the same championship is unusual, and the way Lamborghini has structured it reveals deliberate planning rather than accidental overlap. The Huracán GT3 EVO2 competes in GTD, the class that allows gentlemen drivers to share the cockpit with a professional co-driver. The Temerario GT3 runs in GTD Pro, the higher-tier class populated almost entirely by professional and factory-backed lineups. The class split lets both platforms accumulate race data and results without cannibalizing each other’s competitive position — the Temerario isn’t taking points from the Huracán because they’re racing in entirely separate battles.

For customer teams considering a Lamborghini GT3 purchase, this dual-platform moment is significant. The Balance of Performance settings — the adjustments IMSA and other sanctioning bodies make to equalize different cars’ competitiveness, typically by adding ballast weight or reducing boost pressure — are still being calibrated for the Temerario based on early race data and dyno figures. Customer teams evaluating the new car will be watching its performance trajectory closely over the next several races, because BoP adjustments can swing a car’s competitiveness by half a second per lap.

Caldarelli’s involvement on both sides of this transition is a detail worth noting. He helped develop the EVO2 and now races the Temerario, which means Squadra Corse — Lamborghini’s motorsport division — has a factory driver who can directly benchmark the new car against the old one in terms of throttle response, braking feel, and chassis behavior. That kind of direct comparative feedback accelerates development in ways that telemetry alone cannot replicate. Real competition surfaces problems that testing never does. When Caldarelli tells an engineer that the rear end on the Temerario settles differently through Laguna Seca’s Turn 8 compared to the EVO2, that observation carries the authority of someone who has driven both cars in anger at the same circuit.

STO DNA: Why the Huracán GT3 EVO2 Still Wins Races

The Huracán GT3 EVO2 draws its foundation from the road-legal Huracán STO — Super Trofeo Omologata, meaning homologated for the Super Trofeo one-make racing series — Lamborghini’s track-focused road car that Road & Track once called “the Lamborghini formula perfected.” It shares rear-wheel drive and a naturally aspirated V-10 engine with the STO, a powertrain configuration that gives the race car a throttle response advantage over turbocharged competitors. Without turbo lag, the driver gets immediate power delivery at corner exit. At a technical circuit like Laguna Seca, with its elevation changes and the famous Corkscrew — a blind, downhill left-right chicane at Turn 8 and 9 where the track drops roughly 59 feet in a single sequence — that immediate response translates into confidence under braking and precise mid-corner adjustments.

The most distinctive engineering transfer from road car to race car is the air intake system. The EVO2 features a hexagonal air scoop and rear fin derived directly from the STO, with the air scoop connected to a snorkel that replaces side air intakes. This channels airflow directly into the engine from above, reducing turbulence and improving volumetric efficiency at high RPM. The 5.2-liter V10, fitted with titanium valves, also benefits from 10 electronically actuated throttle bodies. In practical terms, each throttle body controls airflow to a single cylinder independently, rather than grouping cylinders behind a shared plate. That granularity means the engine management system can tailor the fueling and combustion in each cylinder individually as rpm climbs, which is part of why Caldarelli praised the unit for delivering “much better throttle responsiveness” and adaptability to “every kind of driving style demands.” A customer driver with a less aggressive pedal technique gets the same linear power delivery as a factory pro — the engine manages the transition, not the driver.

Aerodynamic efficiency improved through a new front splitter, rear diffuser, and carbon fiber floor. The rear wing sits on aluminum alloy pillars inspired by the STO’s design, allowing more precise angle adjustments between sessions. Squadra Corse also developed new brake calipers and pads optimized for both endurance and sprint formats, addressing a common customer complaint with earlier GT3 cars where brake performance degraded significantly in longer stints — a problem that manifests as increasing pedal travel and reduced bite point consistency as the pads heat-cycle repeatedly. Giorgio Sanna, head of Lamborghini Motorsport, described the EVO2 as “not just an evolution” but “a brand-new car,” and the depth of the mechanical changes supports that characterization. The brake upgrade alone required the team to run different pad compounds in qualifying versus the race for the first two seasons, until the new calipers proved stable enough to run a single spec across both.

The road-car connection runs deeper than the STO. The Huracán GT3 EVO2 is a racing derivative of the Lamborghini Huracán Evo — the road-going version that sits above the base Huracán in Lamborghini’s lineup and was designed by Centro Stile Lamborghini, the brand’s in-house design studio. That lineage matters because GT3 homologation requires a demonstrable relationship between the road car and the race car — you cannot homologate a racing machine that shares nothing with a showroom product. The Huracán Evo’s 5.2-liter naturally aspirated V10, which produces 640 hp in road trim and accelerates the car from zero to 100 km/h in 2.9 seconds on its way to a 325 km/h top speed, is the engine architecture that the GT3 program draws from. The road car weighs 1,422 kg dry, giving it a weight-to-power ratio of 2.22 kg/hp — numbers that explain why the race car’s naturally aspirated character translates so directly from road to track. When you start with a road car that already behaves like a focused sporting instrument, the engineering path to GT3 specification is shorter and the DNA transfer more complete.

Inside the Strategy: How Wayne Taylor Racing Built the Win

With only three full-course cautions across the entire race, long green-flag runs meant that pit stop sequencing determined track position more than raw pace. The #45 car’s strategy centered on staying within striking distance during Formal’s opening stint, then using Hindman’s double stint to execute the overcut.

An overcut works like this: instead of pitting when the cars ahead pit, you stay out on older tires for a few extra laps, banking on the “in-lap” and “out-lap” time loss your competitors absorb during their stop. If your pace on worn tires is strong enough, you emerge ahead when you finally pit. Wayne Taylor Racing timed this move against the #19 Aston Martin at the penultimate stop. The fuel advantage the #45 held over the #19 and the #120 Porsche in the closing stint meant Hindman could manage his pace without defending aggressively, moving back into the class lead for the final 10 minutes.

The overcut’s success at Laguna Seca was not simply a matter of tire management — it required the Huracán EVO2’s braking system to hold up through an extended stint without the performance drop that plagued earlier GT3 iterations. Hindman was able to run consistent sector times through the Andretti Hairpin at Turn 2 and the late-braking zone into the Rainey Curve complex on older rubber, which meant the car arrived at its pit window with tyres that had degraded predictably rather than collapsed suddenly. That predictability is what gives a strategist the confidence to extend, because you can model degradation you can see. The Squadra Corse brake development paid out directly at the moment the overcut decision was made.

The #9 Temerario’s recovery told a different story. After the Corvette contact dropped the car to ninth, good timing of the final fuel-only pit stop allowed Caldarelli to leapfrog several cars and recover to fifth. For a car in only its third competitive outing, the ability to run competitive lap times in the closing stages suggests the tire window is wider than early testing indicated — an encouraging sign for Pfaff Motorsports as the season continues.

A Decade of GT3 Wins, and What Comes Next

The Huracán GT3 platform’s IMSA history stretches back to 2016, when the original car replaced the Gallardo FL2 race car and entered the GTD class. Earlier iterations of the Huracán GT3 secured three consecutive Rolex 24 at Daytona victories from 2018 to 2020, along with back-to-back manufacturer championships in 2018 and 2019. Those three Daytona wins represent the longest winning streak any single GT3 platform has managed at that race in the modern era — a stretch of dominance that established Lamborghini’s customer racing program as one of the most serious in GT3 competition. The EVO2 variant first competed at the 2023 Rolex 24 at Daytona, carrying forward the road-car connection that defined the platform from the beginning.

The Laguna Seca result also adds a footnote to the Huracán EVO’s road-car story. Test drivers including Leonardo Pulcini, Johann Zarco — the MotoGP rider who brought a two-wheel perspective to Lamborghini’s evaluation program — and Michele Pirro contributed to the road car’s development validation. The Duke of Richmond, owner of the Goodwood circuit, and artist Paolo Troilo also took the Huracán Evo through its paces in evaluation contexts that ranged from track circuits to road routes. That breadth of evaluator input shaped a car whose character reads consistently across driving styles, which is exactly the quality Caldarelli described when he praised the GT3 EVO2’s throttle adaptability.

The question Lamborghini enthusiasts should be asking is not whether the Temerario GT3 will eventually win, but how quickly the handoff happens. The BoP adjustments will continue evolving as IMSA gathers more data, and Pfaff Motorsports will accumulate the kind of race-specific setup knowledge that only comes from competition miles. Lamborghini’s dual-platform approach means the Huracán GT3 EVO2 keeps banking wins and championship points for customer teams while the Temerario matures. No customer team gets left without a competitive car during the transition, and Lamborghini gets real-world development data for its next-generation racer without the pressure of needing it to win immediately.

The Laguna Seca result crystallizes what this dual-platform moment actually is: a controlled handoff between a platform that has proven itself across a decade of professional racing and a successor that is being pressure-tested in live competition with factory support. The Huracán GT3 EVO2 won because a decade of accumulated knowledge — in strategy, in brake development, in tire behavior across circuits — was available to Wayne Taylor Racing when the decisive moment arrived. The Temerario’s job right now is to start building that same body of knowledge, race by race, from Sebring to Laguna Seca and beyond. Sant’Agata is running both cars at once, and that patience is the only way a GT3 program gets built to last.

Gallery

The post Huracán GT3 EVO2 Wins at Laguna Seca While the Temerario GT3 Posts Its Best IMSA Finish Yet appeared first on LamboCars.