From Fourth to First: How Kroes Carved Through the Spa Field
Danny Kroes and Sergei Afanasiev now own the 2019 Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe season. Their third victory in four races, carved from fourth on the grid in Race 2 at Spa-Francorchamps, stretched the Bonaldi Motorsport pairing’s championship lead to 13 points over Imperiale Racing’s Vito Postiglione and Kikko Galbiati, who themselves recovered from a Race 1 retirement to salvage third. Three wins from four starts is not a streak; it is a statement of intent, and the manner of this particular victory underlined why.
Alberto Di Folco started from pole in the #9 Target Racing entry and controlled the opening stint with authority, building a gap of more than four seconds over Race 1 winner Stuart Middleton, also running under the Bonaldi Motorsport banner. Afanasiev held third in the #3, roughly three seconds further back, but by the time the pit window opened the leading trio had compressed together.
Once Kroes took the wheel, the complexion of the race changed entirely. Lamborghini’s event summary describes him as “easily the fastest driver on track,” and the results support that claim. He closed on Jack Bartholomew’s #32, then executed a decisive move around the outside at Les Combes with seven minutes remaining. Two laps later, he passed Davide Venditti, who had inherited the lead from Di Folco at the stops, on the inside of the same corner. From that point Kroes pulled away while Venditti came under sustained pressure from Bartholomew and the fast-finishing Postiglione, who made a late pass at Turn 8 to complete the podium.
Why Super Trofeo Still Matters in Lamborghini’s Motorsport Ladder
Winning at Spa makes a good headline. The deeper significance lies in what the Super Trofeo Europe championship represents inside Lamborghini’s competitive structure, because that role is shifting.
Established in 2009 and now one of the longest-running manufacturer one-make championships in GT racing, the series functions as a support category for the GT World Challenge Europe and runs at the same marquee circuits. It pairs gentleman drivers with aspiring professionals, all in identical Huracán Super Trofeo machinery, and culminates in the Lamborghini World Finals, where regional champions from Europe, North America, and Asia converge. For a driver like Kroes, consistent dominance in this environment is the clearest audition tape available for a step up to GT3 or factory-backed programs.
The timing of the 2019 season adds another layer. The recently debuted Temerario GT3 represents Lamborghini’s first competition car fully designed, developed, and built entirely in-house by Squadra Corse, as Autoblog reported when the car broke cover at Goodwood. That in-house capability did not appear overnight. Years of running the Super Trofeo infrastructure, managing customer teams, iterating on the Huracán platform, and developing race-specific engineering fed directly into the organizational muscle required to produce a bespoke GT3 contender. The Super Trofeo is not just a branding exercise; it is the operational backbone that taught Squadra Corse how to be a race car manufacturer. Drivers who prove themselves here are the natural candidates to fill those cockpits.
The Huracán Super Trofeo: Purpose-Built, Not Detuned
One common misconception worth correcting: the Huracán Super Trofeo is not a road car with a roll cage bolted in. It is a purpose-built, non-street-legal race car that shares its V10 engine architecture and basic silhouette with the road-going Huracán but diverges meaningfully in construction. The carbon fiber aerodynamic package, including the prominent rear wing and aggressive front splitter visible on the #3 car, generates downforce levels the road car was never designed to handle. The chassis sits on racing suspension, runs sequential gearbox software calibrated for competition, and rides on slick tires.
First unveiled at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show, the platform evolved through multiple iterations while maintaining the naturally aspirated 5.2-liter V10 that gives these cars their unmistakable voice from the grandstands. That sound, incidentally, is one reason the Super Trofeo series draws spectators who might otherwise skip a support race. The V10 at full cry through Eau Rouge is not something you forget.
For prospective competitors or collectors eyeing these cars on the secondary market, the practical reality is straightforward: this is track-only machinery. Autoblog documented one curious case of a Michigan dealer selling a road-titled Super Trofeo, but that is the exception that proves the rule. These cars exist to race, and their engineering reflects that singular purpose.
The Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo race car crosses the finish line on a cloudy day at the circuit.
Class Winners and the Depth of the Grid
The Pro class battle grabbed the headlines, but the supporting classes told their own stories, and their health matters to the series as a whole.
Shota Abkhazava and rookie Julien Falchero extended their winning streak to four consecutive victories in Pro-Am aboard the #12 ArtLine Team Georgia Huracán, starting eighth and holding station throughout. Consistency at that level, especially for a rookie co-driver, is the kind of quiet competence that teams further up the ladder notice.
The Am class saw drama when pole-sitters Mikko Eskelinen and Jake Rattenbury suffered terminal suspension damage following contact at the Fagnes chicane with the #21 GT3 Poland entry of Andrej Lewandowski. That opened the door for AGS Events’ Gilles Vannelet and Nicolas Gomar, who pulled away in the second stint to win by more than six seconds. Defending Lamborghini Cup champion Gerhard van der Horst inherited victory after Race 1 winners Benoit and Francois Semoulin received a pit-lane speeding penalty.
Grid depth matters because it demonstrates something manufacturer one-make series need to survive: enough competitive entries across enough skill levels to keep the racing interesting from the front of the Pro class to the back of the Lamborghini Cup. A thin grid kills a series faster than any regulation change, and at Spa the depth looked healthy.
Looking Ahead: Nürburgring and the Championship Math
Lamborghini says the penultimate round of the Super Trofeo Europe season takes place at the Nürburgring on August 30th and September 1st. With a 13-point cushion and three wins from four starts, Kroes and Afanasiev arrive in Germany with genuine control of the championship, but not a mathematical lock. Postiglione and Galbiati proved at Spa that they can recover from setbacks, and the Nürburgring’s tight, technical layout rewards a different driving style than Spa’s sweeping high-speed sections.
The question worth tracking is not just who lifts the trophy but which drivers emerge from the Super Trofeo pipeline ready for the next step. Squadra Corse now controls a GT3 program built entirely in-house, and the series that once looked like a gentleman-driver playground increasingly functions as a proving ground with real consequences. Kroes, at this rate, is making a compelling case.
