Kujala’s Dominant Double at the Nürburgring
Patrick Kujala, the 19-year-old Finn who seems to treat podium lockouts as routine, collected his third double victory of the season at the Nürburgring. That brings his win tally to eight from ten starts, a conversion rate that borders on absurd for a driver still too young to rent a car in most countries. This latest result follows double victories at Monza and Silverstone, which means Kujala now owns the season’s narrative in a way no rival can credibly contest.
Daniel Zampieri, driving the Antonelli Motorsport Huracan GT3, twice finished second and proved the closest thing to a consistent threat. His teammate Roman Mavlanov featured prominently in the opening laps before handing the wheel to Zampieri. Patric Niederhauser and Edoardo Liberati completed the podium in third, finishing just ahead of their Raton Racing teammate Alberto Di Folco.
The racing was far from processional. Sergio Campana and Fabrizio Crestani of Team Lazarus were fighting for top positions early before contact with Milos Pavlovic forced them into retirement. Pavlovic, who shared the Sportec Motorsport entry with Roberto Pampanini, received a drive-through penalty for the incident. That kind of attrition is standard GT3 fare, but it underlines a point worth noting: the Huracan GT3 grid remains deep enough that mid-pack battles generate genuine consequences.
From Super Trofeo Champion to GT3 Steamroller
Kujala’s dominance reads less like a breakout and more like the logical conclusion of a career that Lamborghini Squadra Corse carefully cultivated. According to a 2015 report, Kujala and Alberto Di Falco debuted the Huracan GT3 in the Blancpain Sprint Series as part of Lamborghini’s Young Drivers Program. That same year, one report notes, Kujala won eight out of ten races in his first GT racing season after a two-year stint in GP3, and was crowned PRO Class champion of the Lamborghini Blancpain Super Trofeo.
The trajectory from single-seater refugee to GT specialist is not uncommon in modern motorsport, but the speed of Kujala’s adaptation was unusual. He started karting in Spain at four years old, moved through French F4 and Formula Renault, then spent two seasons in GP3 before pivoting entirely to GT machinery. What made the difference was the structure waiting for him on the other side. Squadra Corse’s pipeline gave Kujala a competitive car, meaningful seat time, and a clear ladder from the one-make Super Trofeo series into full GT3 competition. Few manufacturers build this kind of escalator with the same deliberateness, and the results speak through drivers like Kujala who graduate into dominant GT3 seasons.
Why the Huracan GT3 Keeps Winning
The Huracan GT3 platform, first unveiled in January 2015, now carries nearly a decade of iterative development. Engineers reportedly focused on increasing the car’s drivability to help gentleman drivers get up to speed more comfortably, a design philosophy that simultaneously benefits professional drivers by offering a predictable, confidence-inspiring baseline. One driver’s account describes the Huracan GT3 Evo as capable of generating over 2.5 Gs of lateral grip, which puts it firmly in the upper tier of current GT3 machinery.
The naturally aspirated V10 at the car’s core remains a competitive and characterful engine. In real-world IMSA competition, multiple enthusiast discussions describe it as a “very well balanced car” and consistently the “best sounding car on track.” Sim racing communities paint a more nuanced picture, with some finding the car demanding and unforgiving of mistakes, but that characteristic seems to reward skilled drivers disproportionately. Kujala’s results suggest he falls squarely into that category.
What separates the Huracan GT3’s record from mere longevity is breadth. The platform competes across multiple continental GT series, endurance events, and one-make championships. Customer teams run it in configurations ranging from sprint to 24-hour racing. That versatility means Lamborghini accumulates data and development insight at a pace that benefits every team on the grid, not just the factory-supported entries. When a 19-year-old can win eight of ten races, the car’s underlying competence is doing a significant portion of the work.
The Customer Racing Equation
The grid diversity visible at the Nürburgring tells an important commercial story. The variety of team liveries, from Antonelli Motorsport to Raton Racing to Sportec, reflects a customer base that trusts the Huracan GT3 platform enough to build entire racing operations around it. That trust translates directly into parts availability, engineering support, and the kind of institutional knowledge that makes running a privateer GT3 effort less financially terrifying.
Lamborghini’s model works because the Super Trofeo series acts as both a feeder category and a revenue engine. Teams and drivers enter the one-make series, develop their skills and relationships with Squadra Corse, and then graduate to GT3 competition while staying within the Lamborghini ecosystem. The manufacturer sells cars, spare parts, and trackside support at every level. Kujala’s own path through this system illustrates how tightly the layers connect: a young driver enters the Super Trofeo, proves himself, and within a short span is dominating GT3 grids in a car backed by the same engineering and logistics network that supported his development from the start.
Setting the Benchmark for the Temerario Era
Kujala’s season of dominance arrives at an interesting inflection point. The Huracan GT3, described as an evolution of the multi-championship-winning original, will eventually yield its position to a successor based on the Temerario. That transition will mark the end of naturally aspirated V10 power in Lamborghini’s GT3 program and the beginning of something fundamentally different: a twin-turbocharged V8 architecture adapted for customer racing.
For teams and drivers who built their programs around the Huracan’s characteristics, this shift means adapting to an entirely new powerband, different weight distribution, and the complexities of turbo management in wheel-to-wheel racing. The Huracan’s reputation for drivability and predictability took years to establish. Replicating that quality with a turbocharged engine, while meeting evolving FIA GT3 regulations, will be Squadra Corse’s most significant engineering challenge in recent memory.
Eight wins from ten starts in a mature platform tells the next generation of Lamborghini GT3 machinery exactly what standard it needs to meet on arrival. Competitors are not standing still: Ferrari’s 296 GT3 and Porsche’s 911 GT3 R represent newer architectures already gaining traction in global GT racing. Lamborghini cannot afford a slow start with the Temerario GT3 if it wants to maintain the kind of customer confidence that fills grids like the one at the Nürburgring. The broader signal from this season is that Lamborghini’s motorsport infrastructure, from driver development to customer support to platform engineering, functions as a cohesive system. Kujala’s dominance validates every layer of that system simultaneously. Whether the Temerario can sustain that validation will define Squadra Corse’s next chapter.
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