A Supercross Champion Clinches a Lamborghini World Title at Jerez
Chad Reed spent 22 years racing dirt bikes at the highest level, collecting AMA and World Supercross championships along the way. At Circuito de Jerez in Spain, he added something no one in the paddock could have predicted: a Lamborghini Super Trofeo LB Cup World Championship, won in a Huracán Super Trofeo EVO during his first season of four-wheel racing, roughly five months after his first test in the car.
The timeline makes the result almost absurd. Eight months before Jerez, Reed was sidelined with multiple broken bones from a Supercross crash. Three months after that injury, he was behind the wheel of a Lamborghini race car. By autumn, he was a world champion in it. Lamborghini says Reed won the first of two World Final races and finished second in Race 2 to clinch the title, adding a four-wheel championship to a career built entirely on two.
The story Lamborghini wants to tell here is clear enough: the Super Trofeo series can attract and develop genuine talent, not just well-funded amateurs looking for a weekend thrill. Reed’s result gives that argument real teeth, and the speed of his ascent raises a more interesting question about what the series actually measures in a driver.
From a Las Vegas Test to Watkins Glen in One Week
Reed’s path into the Huracán began through a connection with IMSA driver Ryan Hardwick, introduced via mutual friends. The pair headed to Las Vegas for Reed’s first test in a Lamborghini Super Trofeo race car with Dream Racing. According to Reed, Dream Racing owner Enrico Bertaggia approved him for racing after a five-minute evaluation. One week later, Reed was at Watkins Glen International in New York, making his debut in the IMSA-sanctioned Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America series.
Multiple reports indicate that Giorgio Sanna, head of Lamborghini motorsport, played a key role in arranging that initial test drive. The speed of the entire process is unusual. Most drivers who enter customer racing series spend months acclimating, often running private test days across several circuits before their first competitive outing. Reed compressed that learning curve into days.
He originally competed in the Pro-Am class alongside Hardwick. When Hardwick suffered a season-ending knee injury during a WeatherTech Championship practice at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, Reed transitioned to the LB Cup class in July. Paired with new co-driver Justin Price, he achieved four wins in eight LB Cup races before heading to Jerez for the World Finals. Reed and Price won the final race of the 12-round Super Trofeo North America season, and Reed then competed individually for the World Final title against Super Trofeo competitors from all three continental championships.
Reed did arrive with some prior four-wheel experience, having competed in Supercars in Australia and participated in the Monza Rally. But neither of those outings produced the kind of sustained, season-long competitive success he found in the Huracán.
What the Super Trofeo Actually Demands of a Driver
Understanding why Reed’s championship matters requires understanding what the car asks of its driver. The Lamborghini Super Trofeo is the brand’s dedicated one-make championship, organized by Squadra Corse and running across three continental series (Europe, North America, and Asia) before converging at an annual World Final. The series was established in 2009 with the Gallardo and now runs exclusively with the Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2, a track-only, non-street-legal race car derived from the road-going Huracán.
Drivers are categorized into classes: Pro, Pro-Am, Am, and LB Cup. The LB Cup sits at the entry tier, designed for drivers newer to the platform. But calling it entry-level undersells the car. The Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2 runs a 5.2-liter naturally aspirated V10 in rear-wheel-drive configuration, a combination that rewards precision and punishes laziness. Without the safety net of all-wheel drive, the car demands that drivers manage traction, weight transfer, and throttle application with discipline. For a rider accustomed to the violent, instinctive inputs of Supercross, adapting to that kind of sustained mechanical feedback over 50-minute races is a fundamentally different athletic challenge.
The one-make format is what makes Reed’s result genuinely interesting rather than merely feel-good. Every competitor runs an identical car. The variable is the driver. Four wins in eight races and a World Final title suggest that whatever competitive instincts Reed developed over two decades on motorcycles translated remarkably well to a machine that offers no shortcuts.
Lamborghini’s Motorsport Ladder and the Temerario GT3 Question
Reed’s success arrives at a pivotal moment for Lamborghini’s racing ambitions, because the Super Trofeo series functions as the first rung of a motorsport ladder designed to lead drivers toward GT3 competition and, ultimately, IMSA endurance racing. For a brand that built its customer racing program around the Gallardo and then the Huracán, the pipeline from Super Trofeo to higher-tier racing is a deliberate strategic tool.
The next chapter of that ladder is already taking shape. According to Autoblog, the Temerario GT3 is described as Lamborghini’s first competition car fully designed and built in-house, a significant shift from previous GT3 programs that relied on external constructors. If the Super Trofeo series continues to attract and develop talent like Reed, those drivers become potential candidates for Lamborghini’s expanding GT3 efforts.
Few competitors’ one-make series can point to a crossover story quite this dramatic. Ferrari Challenge and Porsche Carrera Cup both develop capable amateur and semi-professional drivers, but the narrative of a multi-discipline world champion arriving from an entirely different motorsport category and winning a world title in his debut season is rare. It validates the Super Trofeo as something more than a hospitality exercise with helmets. Lamborghini can now point to Reed as proof that the platform tests genuine racing ability, not just budget size.
As the brand transitions its customer racing backbone from the naturally aspirated Huracán to the twin-turbo hybrid Temerario, stories like Reed’s reinforce that the motorsport program itself, not just the specific car, is the asset worth protecting.
What Drives a 22-Year Veteran to Start Over
Reed’s own words reveal something more nuanced than a simple second-career narrative. At 37, he described himself as being at the tail end of his motocross career, with “life beyond motorcycles becoming more real each and every year.” But the language he used when discussing the Lamborghini was not that of a retiree looking for a hobby. It was the language of a competitor who found a new obsession.
“I re-watched the race. I got to watch it on TV and a lot of the battles I was in. With watching it, already your mind says, ‘Ah, I could do this better, I could do that better or I could approach this better.’ The competitive side of you, you’re always looking for more.”
That instinct, the compulsion to review and optimize after a victory rather than celebrate it, is what separates professional athletes from enthusiastic amateurs. Reed won the championship and immediately began cataloguing what he would change. Four races at Jerez instead of the typical two-race IMSA weekend format gave him double the seat time, and he described leaving Spain on “this high where, ‘When’s the next time I get in a car?'”
For anyone who follows customer racing closely, this kind of intensity from a newcomer is uncommon. Most drivers entering one-make series from outside traditional motorsport treat the first season as orientation. Reed treated it as a title campaign, and the results bore that out.
Reed’s Road to IMSA and What It Means for the Program
Reed’s stated goal is to return to Super Trofeo, potentially stepping up to the Am class, and then pursue IMSA GTD competition. He specifically mentioned Sebring, Daytona, and the Six Hours at Watkins Glen as events that appeal to him. That progression from LB Cup to Am to GT3-level IMSA competition is exactly the pathway Lamborghini’s motorsport ladder is designed to facilitate, and Reed appears intent on climbing it.
Lamborghini has not confirmed any formal arrangement with Reed for future seasons, and the financial commitments required to compete in a full Super Trofeo season remain undisclosed in official materials. What the source does confirm is Reed’s clear intent and the endorsement his rapid success represents for the program’s credibility.
For LamboCars readers considering the Super Trofeo as a competitive outlet, Reed’s trajectory offers a practical benchmark. The series accepted a driver with minimal four-wheel racing experience, provided a structured competitive environment, and produced a world champion within a single season. The car itself, a naturally aspirated V10 rear-drive race machine, rewards skill over electronics. Whether that platform transitions smoothly to the Temerario era remains an open question, but the competitive infrastructure Squadra Corse built around it is clearly functional.
Reed’s story also carries a quieter implication for the brand. Lamborghini’s customer racing program competes for participants against Ferrari Challenge and Porsche Carrera Cup, series with deeper histories and larger grids. Attracting a globally recognized athlete from outside the automotive world, and then watching him win a world title, is the kind of outcome that no amount of hospitality spending can replicate. Whether Reed’s IMSA ambitions materialize, and whether Lamborghini positions itself to benefit when they do, is the next chapter worth watching.
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