37 Seconds Over Ferrari on the Very First Try
On April 12, 2015, the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 rolled onto the Monza grid for its first competitive outing. Three hours later, the green #19 car fielded by GRT Grasser Racing Team crossed the line 37 seconds clear of the nearest competitor: a Rinaldi Racing Ferrari 458 Italia driven by Rinat Salikov and Norbert Siedler.
The winning crew of Fabio Babini, Andrew Palmer, and Jeroen Mul qualified third, then seized the lead around the 20-minute mark. Against a 60-car field stacked with established GT3 machinery and professional international teams, the trio never relinquished that position. Lamborghini says the Squadra Corse factory drivers “managed a perfect race,” and for once the PR language is hard to argue with. Winning on debut is rare in GT3 racing. Winning by more than half a minute, against a field that deep, borders on absurd.
One important caveat surfaced after the celebrations: one report indicates the #19 car was later excluded from official results due to a fuel-rig infringement, with Grasser Racing appealing the decision. The on-track performance, however, was never in question, and the engineering statement Lamborghini made that weekend stands regardless of the stewards’ paperwork.
That statement was not simply about speed. It was about origin. The Huracán GT3 was the first GT3 car Lamborghini claimed to have fully engineered, developed, and assembled internally, and Monza was the first public proof that bringing the program in-house could produce not just a competitive car, but a dominant one.
Why ‘Built In-House’ Changed Everything
Before the Huracán GT3, Lamborghini’s customer racing efforts relied more heavily on external constructors. The Gallardo GT3, for instance, generated enthusiast buzz and forum threads dating back to 2005, but the engineering chain ran through third-party specialists. Bringing the program inside Squadra Corse gave Lamborghini direct control over chassis architecture, powertrain calibration, and the integration of racing systems. It also meant that lessons learned at circuits like Monza could feed back into Sant’Agata Bolognese’s road car engineering pipeline without translation losses.
The collaboration with Dallara Engineering deserves clear framing. Dallara contributed to the aerodynamic bodywork, which was optimized for maximum traction on asphalt, and the firm brings deep expertise from programs including IndyCar. But the core structure, the aluminum-carbon chassis with its FIA-compliant roll cage, the modified subframes, the wiring harness designed specifically for racing applications, all originated inside Lamborghini. The distinction between “we built it with some aero help” and “a specialist built it for us” is significant. It signals organizational ambition, not just a marketing checkbox.
The car kept the road car’s naturally aspirated 5.2-liter V10, preserving the engine character Lamborghini owners know while giving customer teams a powerplant with a proven reliability baseline. A Bosch Motorsport control unit managed engine mapping, traction control, the sequential gearbox, and the dashboard, consolidating electronics into a single racing-grade brain. Specific engine output figures were not disclosed, as GT3 regulations use Balance of Performance adjustments that vary power by series and event.
A Race Car Shaped by the Customer Team Experience
Lamborghini says the Huracán GT3 tipped the scales at 2,731 pounds, roughly 400 pounds lighter than the standard Huracán. That weight came out through carbon fiber bodywork, a stripped interior with carbon-frame seats and adjustable pedals, and the conversion from the road car’s all-wheel-drive system to a rear-wheel-drive layout paired with a six-speed sequential gearbox.
Braking relied on 15-inch front discs with six-piston calipers and 14-inch rears with four-piston calipers. Both the rear wing and front diffuser were adjustable, and the aerodynamic package included fast fittings for quick removal during pit stops, a practical detail that speaks to how seriously Squadra Corse thought about the teams that would actually campaign the car. A pneumatic lift system handled pit lane transitions. Full LED lighting front and rear and an OMP-redesigned multifunction steering wheel rounded out the cockpit.
At 369,000 euros (approximately $427,000), the price bought a turnkey race car from a manufacturer willing to stand behind its own engineering rather than pointing customers toward a third-party builder’s phone number. Every detail, from the fast-release bodywork to the consolidated electronics, reflected a company that understood the difference between building a showpiece and building a tool that privateer teams could trust weekend after weekend.
Beating Ferrari at Monza and the Arc That Followed
Finishing 37 seconds ahead of a Ferrari 458 Italia GT3 on the car’s very first race weekend sent a message no amount of marketing spend could replicate. Ferrari’s 458 was an established, proven GT3 platform by 2015, campaigned by experienced teams worldwide. The Huracán GT3 was, functionally, a prototype in race trim. For Lamborghini enthusiasts who endured years of hearing that the Raging Bull was a road car company playing at motorsport, Monza offered a concrete rebuttal.
The Huracán GT3 program did not peak at its debut. The evolved GT3 Evo later secured the 2019 overall Blancpain championship, and Grasser Racing itself returned to win at the 2017 Blancpain GT Series in Barcelona, with factory drivers Mirko Bortolotti, Christian Engelhart, and Andrea Caldarelli instrumental in securing that year’s title. The pattern that emerged from Monza forward looks, in hindsight, like a deliberate competitive arc: debut win, iterative development through the Evo and Evo2 variants, sustained championship-level results. Lamborghini built a GT3 dynasty out of what started as a proof-of-concept weekend in Lombardy, and the foundation of that dynasty was the decision to do the engineering themselves.
What Monza Started
The Huracán GT3 program validated in-house development as a viable, winning strategy, and Lamborghini never looked back. Squadra Corse grew from a small operation into a genuine factory racing division, and the lessons from that V10 GT3 car now inform the next generation of customer racing hardware.
Lamborghini has not detailed exactly how GT3 development feeds into road car engineering at a component level, and anyone who claims a direct line from a specific Monza lap to a specific road car feature is speculating. What the record does show is that the organizational muscle Lamborghini built through this program, the in-house aerodynamic integration, the chassis expertise, the electronics calibration capability, became permanent infrastructure. A company that wins at Monza on its first try with its own car is a company that takes racing seriously enough to let it shape everything else it builds.
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