Shanghai Showdown: Cozzolino and Yazid Crowned in the Rain
Kei Cozzolino and Afiq Yazid did not merely win the 2017 Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia championship. They obliterated it. Driving the #11 Huracán Super Trofeo for Clazzio Racing, the pair clinched the title at the Shanghai International Circuit with a full round still remaining, their eighth consecutive Pro class victory leaving no statistical room for argument.
Race 1 at Shanghai, the fifth round of the Asian series, unfolded on a soaked circuit that should have been the great equalizer. Cozzolino started from pole and defended the lead through a contested first corner against Edoardo Liberati in the Emperor Racing #19, then pulled away on a solitary run at the front. After the mandatory driver change, Yazid maintained the gap to the checkered flag. Dennis Lind, the 2016 Super Trofeo World Champion sharing Emperor Racing’s #63 with 2015 World Champion Patrick Kujala, finished second following a late battle with Arthur Janosz of Team Lazarus #3. Janosz and teammate Sowery completed the podium, while Liberati and co-driver Andrea Amici, the 2016 GT Asia Series champions, slotted into fourth.
The quality of opposition is what elevates this streak beyond a statistical curiosity. Two former World Champions, a GT Asia title-holder, and multiple well-funded Emperor Racing entries could not break the Clazzio sequence across five rounds and ten potential race starts. That consistency points to something deeper than raw pace: it reveals a team and driver pairing that had mastered the Huracán Super Trofeo platform in every condition the Asian calendar could throw at them.
The Huracán Super Trofeo: Purpose-Built Hardware, Proven in the Worst Conditions
First shown at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show, the Huracán Super Trofeo strips the road car down to a single purpose. Rear-wheel-drive, naturally aspirated V10, emphatically not street-legal. Carbon fiber body panels, a prominent rear wing, Öhlins dampers, an X-Trac sequential gearbox, and Brembo racing brakes replace the road car’s compromise-driven hardware.
In a one-make series where every entry runs identical machinery, wet conditions like those at Shanghai expose the margins that actually matter: driver skill, team preparation, and the ability to extract grip from a chassis that behaves very differently on standing water than on dry tarmac. Softer spring rates, adjusted tire pressures, revised brake bias are all standard wet-weather tools, but execution separates the field. Cozzolino and Yazid’s dominance in the rain, against drivers with World Championship pedigrees, suggests Clazzio Racing’s engineering approach to the platform was exceptionally well-calibrated.
For Lamborghini, the Huracán Super Trofeo’s reliability and competitive relevance across Asia’s diverse circuits, from Sepang’s tropical heat to Fuji’s technical demands to Shanghai’s autumn rain, validates the platform as more than a gentleman-racer’s toy. It functions as a serious proving ground for both hardware and human talent, and the 2017 Asia season demonstrated that the car rewards the teams willing to do the deepest preparation work.
From Regional Title to Global Stage: The Road to Imola
Winning the Super Trofeo Asia championship is not the end of the competitive season. It is the qualifying round. The Lamborghini World Finals, scheduled for November 16 to 19 in Imola, bring together champions and top finishers from all three continental series (Asia, Europe, and North America) for sprint races that crown an overall world champion.
For Yazid in particular, the Imola trip carries weight. One report indicates he previously participated in the Lamborghini Squadra Corse Young Driver Program, positioning him as exactly the kind of talent the series was designed to develop. A regional championship validates the investment, but a strong World Finals result could open doors to higher-tier GT racing within Lamborghini’s ecosystem. The question hanging over the Clazzio garage is whether a team that perfected its approach across Asian circuits can replicate that form against European and North American champions on unfamiliar ground.
Other class titles decided at Shanghai add depth to the series’ talent pipeline. Andrew Haryanto of X-One Racing team #69 secured the AM category championship mathematically, also with races to spare. In the Lamborghini Cup, Supachai Weeraborwornpong of Top Speed Racing prevailed over Gabriele Murroni of Petri Corse. The Pro-Am class saw Rik Breukers and Nigel Farmer of GDL Racing #37 take the Race 1 win after a strong second-stint charge by Breukers.
Developing Tomorrow’s Talent Across Multiple Classes
The multi-class structure of the Super Trofeo is deliberate, and it connects directly to why a season like Cozzolino and Yazid’s matters beyond the trophy. Pro, Pro-Am, AM, and Lamborghini Cup categories create entry points for drivers at different stages of their careers. A gentleman driver can enter the AM class, learn the Huracán platform, and progress toward Pro-Am or full Pro competition over successive seasons. The structure mirrors what Ferrari does with its Challenge series and what Porsche accomplishes with the Carrera Cup, but Lamborghini’s version funnels directly into its own World Finals rather than feeding into an external championship hierarchy.
That keeps the entire competitive ecosystem within Squadra Corse’s control. The series attracted over 254 drivers from 30 nationalities since its 2012 inception, according to one report, and the participant count continues to grow. For Lamborghini, that represents a captive audience of high-net-worth individuals who buy race cars, consume hospitality, and often become road-car customers as well. The commercial logic runs parallel to the sporting logic.
The practical takeaway from the 2017 Asia season reinforces both: the series rewards consistency and preparation above raw speed. Cozzolino and Yazid did not win eight races by being the fastest on any single lap. They won by being the fastest combination across every condition, every circuit, and every driver change, a pattern that only emerges when a driver development platform is working as intended.
What This Championship Means for Lamborghini’s Motorsport Future
The Super Trofeo Asia operates in a region where Lamborghini’s commercial ambitions are growing rapidly. Rounds in Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, and China expose the brand to markets where supercar demand is accelerating, and a visible racing presence reinforces the performance credibility that drives showroom traffic.
The Huracán Super Trofeo’s role as Lamborghini’s one-make racing backbone will eventually transition. According to Autoblog, the Temerario GT3 will be Lamborghini’s first competition car fully designed, developed, and built in-house, a significant shift from the outsourced development of previous race cars. When that transition occurs, the lessons learned from seasons like this one, about wet-weather setup, driver development pipelines, and the commercial value of a well-run one-make series, will carry forward.
Cozzolino and Yazid’s dominance, sealed on a rain-soaked Shanghai circuit with former World Champions in their mirrors, proved the concept works. The Super Trofeo Asia is producing results competitive enough to matter at the global level. Whether that translates into World Finals success at Imola remains the next question, but the foundation built across eight unbroken victories suggests Squadra Corse’s proving ground is doing precisely what it was designed to do.
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