Lamborghini’s Record DTM Campaign: Second in Everything, Winners Five Times Over
Lamborghini Squadra Corse closed the 2023 DTM season at Hockenheim with a double podium finish, capping what the company describes as its most successful DTM campaign to date. Five race victories across the season, second place in the drivers’ championship for Mirko Bortolotti, second in the teams’ standings for the combined Lamborghini effort. All achieved with the Huracán GT3 EVO2, a naturally aspirated V10 race car competing in a field increasingly populated by turbocharged machinery.
That “second place” framing deserves honest context. Bortolotti arrived at Hockenheim trailing championship leader Thomas Preining by 10 points and fought until the final lap of the final race, finishing just over a second behind the eventual champion. This was not a comfortable runner-up position accepted months in advance. It was a genuine title fight that came down to the wire, and the fact that Lamborghini mounted that challenge only three years after entering the DTM with a modest two-car, single-team operation says something concrete about the trajectory of the program.
Lamborghini entered this championship in 2021 and expanded to five cars across two teams, SSR Performance and Grasser Racing Team, by 2023. That rate of growth, from curiosity entrant to championship contender in three seasons, is unusual in a series where BMW, Mercedes-AMG, and Porsche bring decades of institutional knowledge. For anyone tracking Squadra Corse’s broader ambitions, the 2023 DTM season stands as the clearest proof yet that the operation can sustain a championship fight against established rivals with far deeper motorsport histories.
The Huracán GT3 EVO2: Why a Naturally Aspirated V10 Still Works in DTM
The Huracán GT3 EVO2 occupies a peculiar and increasingly rare position in GT3 racing. Power comes from a 5.2-liter V10 producing 570 bhp, sent exclusively to the rear wheels, at a racing weight of 1,380 kg including the driver. In a paddock where Ferrari’s 296 GT3 runs a twin-turbo V6 and Mercedes-AMG fields a twin-turbo V8, the Huracán remains one of the last naturally aspirated holdouts at this level of competition.
Balance of Performance regulations exist precisely to level the playing field between different engine configurations, displacement sizes, and aerodynamic philosophies, so raw power figures never tell the whole competitive story. What matters more is how a car’s characteristics suit specific circuits and conditions. The 2023 results suggest the EVO2 found an effective operating window across a diverse calendar. Lamborghini says the car’s aerodynamic package and chassis refinements over its predecessor contributed to consistent qualifying pace, and Bortolotti’s multiple pole positions through the season support that assessment.
The V10’s linear power delivery, free of turbo lag or the complexity of boost management, gives drivers a predictable tool in wheel-to-wheel combat. That predictability proved especially valuable for less experienced pilots in the lineup, as Maximilian Paul’s rain-soaked Nürburgring victory demonstrated. When conditions turned chaotic, a car with transparent throttle response became an advantage rather than a limitation.
Customer teams evaluating GT3 machinery often weigh running costs, parts availability, and the learning curve for new drivers alongside outright pace. The Huracán GT3 platform, in various iterations, accumulated over a decade of development and operational data before this season. That maturity translates to a well-understood car with an extensive support network, a factor that rarely appears in spec-sheet comparisons but matters enormously when a team is deciding where to invest.
The number 94 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 navigates a turn during a DTM race.
Squadra Corse’s Strategic Expansion: From Two Cars to a Title Fight
The organizational story behind the 2023 results reveals how Lamborghini approaches motorsport differently from some of its competitors. Rather than running a single large factory team, Squadra Corse distributes its DTM effort across customer racing operations. SSR Performance fielded Factory Drivers Bortolotti and Franck Perera alongside Alessio Deledda. Grasser Racing Team, a long-standing Lamborghini partner, ran Austrians Mick Wishofer and Clemens Schmid, with additional drivers rotating through the season including Young Professional Driver Maximilian Paul, Factory Driver Andrea Caldarelli, and former GRT driver Christian Engelhart.
This structure accomplishes two things simultaneously. It develops the customer team ecosystem that Lamborghini relies on for GT3 programs worldwide, and it creates a broader data pool across different engineering philosophies and driver styles. When five cars generate race data across an entire season, the factory’s understanding of the EVO2’s behavior in varied conditions deepens considerably.
The driver development pipeline fed directly into the season’s most memorable result. Paul carried the “Young Professional” designation when he scored that extraordinary Nürburgring win, car number 71 threading through a rain-soaked field to take a result nobody predicted. A DTM victory on a debut weekend is the kind of outcome that validates investing in nurturing talent rather than simply hiring established names.
Perera’s season-opening pole and victory at Oschersleben set the tone early, demonstrating that the Lamborghini package could compete at the front from the first race. Bortolotti then carried the championship fight through the middle and late portions of the calendar, taking victories at the Nürburgring, Lausitzring, and Sachsenring. The wins were spread across different circuits and conditions, which argues against the idea that the EVO2 was a one-trick car suited only to specific track layouts.
The number 63 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 powers through a turn on the DTM circuit.
Nürburgring Rain and Hockenheim’s Final Lap: The Season’s Defining Moments
Two moments from the 2023 calendar crystallize what made this season distinctive. The first was the Nürburgring double victory, where Bortolotti won the opening race from pole position and Paul, a debutant, won the second race in deteriorating conditions. The contrast between those two victories tells you something about the EVO2’s breadth: it rewarded both the experienced factory ace extracting maximum pace in dry qualifying and the young driver making a bold strategy call to pit for wet tires when others hesitated.
Paul’s victory carried the kind of narrative weight that racing fans remember. A young German driver competing in the DTM for the first time, running a Grasser Racing Team car, holding off experienced competitors in heavy rain. Lamborghini says he was “living a boyhood dream,” and while that is the sort of phrase that usually belongs in marketing copy, the result itself was genuinely remarkable.
The second defining moment came at Hockenheim in the season finale. Bortolotti needed to overtake Preining to have any chance at the title and spent the entire second race pressuring the Porsche driver, finishing just over a second behind. The gap was small enough to suggest that with slightly different luck at the Red Bull Ring penultimate round, the championship outcome could have been different. That proximity to the title, rather than the second-place finish itself, is what gives the 2023 season its forward momentum.
GT3 racing functions as a brand credibility engine in a way that few other motorsport categories can match. The cars are close enough to their road-going counterparts in appearance and basic architecture that victories resonate with showroom buyers. When a Huracán GT3 EVO2 wins a DTM race, it reinforces the perception that the road-going Huracán, and by extension the broader Lamborghini lineup, possesses genuine engineering substance. Ferrari and Porsche both maintain extensive GT3 programs and treat customer racing as a strategic priority rather than a marketing afterthought. Lamborghini entering this conversation as a genuine championship contender, rather than a midfield participant, shifts the competitive dynamic. A brand that can fight for DTM titles while simultaneously developing its SC63 hypercar prototype program is signaling serious intent across the motorsport spectrum.
The comparison to Ferrari is particularly instructive. Both brands sell road cars that trade heavily on racing imagery and performance credibility. Both run customer GT3 programs as the commercial backbone of their motorsport operations. Lamborghini’s five DTM victories in 2023, achieved with a naturally aspirated V10 against Ferrari’s newer twin-turbo V6 GT3 platform, gave Squadra Corse a tangible competitive talking point. Whether that advantage persists under evolving Balance of Performance adjustments is always an open question in GT3 racing, but the 2023 results established a baseline.
A team member smiles brightly in the pit garage during the DTM season finale.
Looking Forward: The Temerario GT3 and What Changes Next
The 2023 DTM season now reads as both a high point and a farewell chapter. Lamborghini says the Temerario GT3, featuring a twin-turbo V8 rather than the Huracán’s naturally aspirated V10, will replace the EVO2 as the brand’s GT3 contender. According to Road & Track, the Temerario GT3 represents the first competition car designed entirely in-house by Lamborghini, a significant departure from the Huracán GT3’s development history.
That transition carries real implications for the customer teams that built their 2023 success around the EVO2’s characteristics. Switching from a naturally aspirated V10 to a turbocharged V8 changes everything: power delivery, braking points, tire management strategies, even the sound that helps drivers gauge engine load. SSR Performance and Grasser Racing Team will need to rebuild their operational knowledge from a substantially different starting point.
Lamborghini has not detailed specific performance targets for the Temerario GT3 in DTM competition, and Balance of Performance regulations will ultimately determine how the car stacks up against established rivals. What the 2023 season provides is organizational confidence. Squadra Corse proved it can run a multi-team, multi-driver DTM program at championship-contending level. The infrastructure, the relationships with customer teams, the driver development pipeline: all of that carries over regardless of which engine sits behind the cockpit.
For buyers and enthusiasts watching from outside the paddock, the practical takeaway is straightforward. Lamborghini’s motorsport division demonstrated in 2023 that it belongs in the same conversation as Ferrari and Porsche when it comes to GT3 racing. Five victories and a near-miss drivers’ championship, achieved just three years after entering the DTM, represent the kind of trajectory that suggests the Temerario GT3 era will begin with serious competitive expectations rather than the cautious optimism that accompanied the brand’s 2021 debut. Whether the new car can deliver on those expectations from its first season remains the open question, but the organizational foundation is no longer in doubt.
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