A First for Italy at Donington Park
On a rain-lashed August afternoon in 2020, Andrea Caldarelli climbed out of the #18 WPI Motorsport Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo at Donington Park as the first Italian driver ever to win a round of the British GT Championship. The detail that makes the result genuinely remarkable: Caldarelli, a Lamborghini factory driver drafted into the WPI squad as a late addition, had never turned a single lap of the former grand prix venue before that weekend.
His co-driver Michael Igoe started the two-hour opener from ninth on the grid in conditions so poor that race control sent the field away behind the safety car. Within the first ten minutes of green-flag running, Igoe gained four positions to slot into fifth, keeping the Huracán competitive through standing water and limited visibility. After the mandatory driver change, Caldarelli inherited a car in contention and set about reeling in the leaders on a circuit he was learning in real time, at racing speed, in the rain.
Five years later, this result reads less like a one-off upset and more like an early proof point for the engineering philosophy Lamborghini Squadra Corse built into the Huracán GT3 platform. The car’s wet-weather composure that afternoon, amplified across three Huracáns in the top five, revealed something fundamental about the chassis that no dry-weather victory could have shown as clearly.
Why the Huracán GT3 Evo Worked in the Wet
Caldarelli’s own assessment after the race was characteristically direct. According to Lamborghini’s account of the event, he said: “We knew that the Huracán is always quick in the wet, we have very good confidence with the car.”
That confidence had engineering behind it. The Huracán GT3 Evo, first revealed in 2018 as an evolution of the original Huracán GT3, carried significant aerodynamic revisions including carbon fiber bodywork elements, a revised front splitter, and a central protrusion on the front bumper derived from the Huracán Super Trofeo Evo to improve radiator cooling. Its naturally aspirated 5.2-liter V10, with direct injection and dry sump lubrication, delivered power without the throttle-response lag that turbocharged GT3 rivals sometimes exhibit in low-grip conditions. On a soaking circuit where the gap between grip and disaster narrows dramatically, that linear throttle response becomes a genuine competitive asset.
Squadra Corse also offered the Evo as an upgrade package for teams already running the original GT3, meaning privateer outfits like WPI Motorsport could adopt the latest aero and mechanical improvements without purchasing an entirely new chassis. GT3 customer racing runs on budgets, and the ability to evolve an existing car rather than replace it kept more Huracáns on grids worldwide, building the kind of field depth that turns a single wet-weather win into a pattern.
The Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo, number 18, navigates a challenging wet turn on the racetrack, showcasing its racing prowess.
Caldarelli’s Late-Race Chase and the Pass That Mattered
Igoe’s opening stint kept the #18 car in the fight, but Caldarelli’s closing stint turned a solid result into a historic one, and the way it unfolded illustrates exactly why factory driver programs create value for customer teams.
After the pit stop, Caldarelli found himself behind Sandy Mitchell in another Huracán GT3 Evo, running for Barwell Motorsport. Mitchell, competing in the Silver Cup category, yielded second place to the factory driver in the closing stages, a sensible piece of team awareness that allowed Caldarelli to focus entirely on the leading Mercedes of Patrick Kujala. Lamborghini says Caldarelli was lapping more than a second faster than the Mercedes at points, a substantial margin on a circuit where standing water punished every misjudged input. He took the lead with just nine minutes remaining and held it to the flag.
Barwell Motorsport placed two more cars in the top five: Phil Keen and Adam Balon finished fourth, with Mitchell and Rob Collard taking fifth. Three Huracáns in the top five, all in conditions that punish chassis instability and reward driver confidence. That concentration of results tells you something about the platform’s baseline behavior, not just one driver’s brilliance.
The shorter one-hour second race, run in similarly miserable weather, saw Caldarelli and Igoe carry a success time penalty added to their mandatory pit stop. They finished seventh. Keen and Balon improved to second, reinforcing the point that the Huracán’s wet-weather competence was not confined to a single car or crew.
British GT as a Proving Ground, Then and Now
The British GT Championship runs a Pro-Am format that pairs experienced professionals with gentleman drivers, which means a car’s inherent drivability matters enormously. A nervous, unpredictable chassis can cost a team minutes during the amateur stint, regardless of how fast the professional drives. Donington 2020 demonstrated the Huracán GT3 Evo’s ability to inspire confidence across the driver skill spectrum, from Igoe’s composed opening stint to Caldarelli’s surgical charge through the field, and that quality proved to be no fluke.
Lamborghini’s 2020 season extended well beyond Donington. One report indicates the Huracán GT3 Evo swept the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship’s driver and team titles in both full-season and endurance standings with Paul Miller Racing that same year, while also claiming a class victory at the 24 Hours of Spa. Barwell Motorsport went on to secure Lamborghini’s first British GT title with the platform. Each result reinforced the same thesis the Donington rain had exposed: the Evo’s competitiveness held across circuits, conditions, and regulatory environments because its fundamental balance was sound.
The Huracán GT3 EVO2, a subsequent evolution based on the Huracán STO and built to comply with 2022 FIA technical regulations, carried that engineering lineage forward. Barwell Motorsport achieved a British GT victory at Spa-Francorchamps as recently as 2026 with the EVO2, confirming that the platform’s competitive relevance outlasted any single season. For teams and enthusiasts tracking Lamborghini’s motorsport trajectory, the through-line from the original GT3 through the Evo, EVO2, and now the incoming Temerario GT3 represents a continuous thread of development rather than a series of clean-sheet restarts.
What the Donington Win Still Means for Lamborghini’s Racing Identity
Caldarelli’s 2020 victory matters in retrospect because it demonstrated something spec sheets cannot fully communicate: the Huracán GT3 platform produced consistent, repeatable performance in the worst possible conditions, across multiple cars and driver pairings, on the same afternoon. Customer racing lives and dies on that kind of reliability. A team considering a GT3 purchase is buying a tool it needs to trust for years, not a trophy for the showroom.
As Car and Driver reported, the Temerario GT3 will replace the Huracán GT3 EVO2 as Lamborghini’s factory-backed GT3 effort, making it the first race car entirely designed and developed at Sant’Agata Bolognese. That transition from a naturally aspirated V10 to a twin-turbocharged V8 architecture represents the most significant engineering shift in Lamborghini’s GT3 history. For customer teams accustomed to the Huracán’s throttle characteristics, the adaptation will be substantial.
Whether the Temerario GT3 can replicate that all-conditions confidence with a completely different powertrain philosophy remains the most interesting open question in Lamborghini’s customer racing future. The benchmark, set on a soaking Donington afternoon five years ago, is clear: when the rain came down and stripped away every advantage of raw power, the Huracán GT3 Evo’s fundamental balance carried three cars into the top five and handed an Italian driver a piece of British GT history.
