A Championship Decided by One Victory’s Margin
Andrea Caldarelli and Marco Mapelli, driving the #563 FFF Racing Lamborghini Huracán GT3, clinched the inaugural Blancpain GT World Challenge Europe title at the Hungaroring in September 2019. The way they won it tells you everything about how thin the margins are in GT3 racing: Lamborghini says both the #563 and the rival #4 Black Falcon Mercedes-AMG of Maro Engel and Luca Stolz finished the season level on points. The championship was decided on countback, with Caldarelli and Mapelli’s two overall victories trumping their rivals’ one.
For a brand that built its competition reputation through the Super Trofeo one-make series and individual race wins, this represented something qualitatively different. A season-long championship against Mercedes-AMG, Audi, Porsche, Aston Martin, and Ferrari machinery demands consistency across circuits, weather conditions, and pit strategy over months of racing. Winning on countback after a dead-heat points finish is about as close as motorsport gets to a photo finish stretched across an entire season.
The Hungaroring Weekend: Rain, Recovery, and a Two-Point Swing
Caldarelli and Mapelli arrived in Hungary holding an eight-point advantage over the Black Falcon Mercedes-AMG crew. Comfortable, but not safe. Variable weather hit Saturday’s qualifying and race, and the FFF Racing pair could only manage eighth on the grid for Race 1.
Heavy rain forced the opening race to start behind the safety car. Once green-flag racing began, Mirko Bortolotti in the #63 Grasser Racing Team Huracán GT3 proved the quickest Lamborghini, slotting into second behind the Akka ASP Mercedes of Raffaele Marciello. Mapelli, who started the car, worked his way through traffic to sixth before handing over to Caldarelli during the mandatory pit window.
The real damage came late. As the track dried, Christian Engelhart (who took over from Bortolotti in the #63) began struggling for grip, and Maro Engel pounced. Engel made several laps of pressure count by overtaking Engelhart around the outside of Turn 9 on the final lap to grab second place. That single position change slashed the championship lead from eight points to just two heading into the season’s final race. One bad qualifying session, one late-race overtake, and suddenly a comfortable cushion evaporated.
Race 2: Starting 13th, Finishing Champions
If Race 1 was uncomfortable for the #563 crew, qualifying for Race 2 bordered on alarming. Caldarelli and Mapelli could only manage 13th, while the Black Falcon Mercedes sat fourth. The math was brutal: with only two points separating the championship contenders, FFF Racing needed to claw back positions in a race where their rivals started with a clear strategic advantage.
Dry conditions at least removed the weather variable. Caldarelli jumped two spots off the rolling start, then benefited from a puncture for Dries Vanthoor’s Audi R8 and an assertive pass on Nico Bastian’s Mercedes to reach the points-paying positions in ninth. FFF Racing’s pit crew delivered a critical performance advantage: quick work during the driver change gained the #563 a full 2.5 seconds over the #63 Grasser car and leapfrogged two more competitors, including the Audi of Christopher Mies and Sven Muller’s Porsche.
Mapelli emerged from the pit cycle in fourth, with Bortolotti’s Grasser Huracán holding second. The final act of the championship came down to Bortolotti’s defense. Engel, knowing he needed to pass the Grasser car to gain the points required for the title, applied relentless pressure. Bortolotti proved fast enough in the circuit’s key sectors to keep the Mercedes behind him. The Akka ASP Mercedes of Marciello and Abril won the race outright for the second consecutive day, but Bortolotti’s second place and Mapelli’s fourth locked in the title for Lamborghini on that decisive countback.
FFF Racing: From Asian GT Newcomer to European Champion
Part of what makes this championship remarkable is the team behind it. FFF Racing, founded in 2014, built its reputation in Asian GT competition before making the leap to European racing. According to one report, the team won GT Asia in 2015, competed in the International GT Open in 2017, and swept Lamborghini Super Trofeo Middle East/Asia and Blancpain GT Series Asia titles in 2018. The 2019 Blancpain GT World Challenge Europe campaign marked FFF Racing’s first full season in European competition.
Winning a continental championship in your debut European season is unusual in any racing category, let alone one populated by established operations running Mercedes-AMG, Porsche, and Ferrari hardware. The team’s pit strategy in Race 2, where that 2.5-second advantage during the driver change effectively made the championship, illustrates the operational precision that separates title contenders from midfield runners.
FFF Racing’s success extended beyond the overall title. Hiroshi Hamaguchi and Lamborghini Factory Driver Phil Keen claimed the Pro-Am category championship in the #519 Huracán GT3, giving the team a double in the series. Their Pro-Am title fight mirrored the overall championship’s drama: the pairing lost the class win in Race 1 on the final lap to the Akka ASP Mercedes of Jean-Luc Beaubelique and Jim Pla, then won Race 2 and the championship. Two last-lap heartbreaks in Race 1, two recoveries in Race 2. The pattern held across both FFF Racing entries.
The Huracán GT3 Proves Its Worth Against Established Rivals
GT3 racing operates under Balance of Performance regulations designed to equalize different manufacturers’ cars, which means raw power figures matter less than chassis balance, driver confidence, and team execution. Within that framework, the Huracán GT3 proved it could match the Mercedes-AMG GT3, the dominant force at the Hungaroring through Akka ASP and Black Falcon, across a full season of varied circuits and conditions.
What the Hungaroring weekend revealed is that the Huracán GT3’s strengths played out over race distance rather than in single-lap qualifying pace. Caldarelli and Mapelli qualified eighth and 13th across the two races, yet their race-day execution, combined with Bortolotti’s consistently strong performances in the Grasser car, proved decisive. Bortolotti’s ability to defend second place against Engel in Race 2, maintaining speed through the Hungaroring’s technical sections, speaks to the car’s stability under sustained pressure.
Beating a field that included Mercedes-AMG (through both Black Falcon and Akka ASP), Audi (with the R8 LMS), Porsche, and Aston Martin entries over a full season, even on countback, validates the Huracán GT3 as more than a one-race wonder. Customer teams could buy the car, run it competitively, and fight for titles against factory-backed rivals. That is the entire point of a GT3 customer racing program, and Lamborghini’s Squadra Corse operation delivered exactly that.
Beyond Hungary: The Broader 2019 Campaign
The World Challenge Europe title at the Hungaroring turned out to be the opening act of a larger 2019 story. Andrea Caldarelli and Marco Mapelli became the first drivers to hold three championships simultaneously, a distinction that underscores how dominant the Caldarelli/Mapelli and FFF Racing combination proved across the Blancpain GT calendar that year. Orange1 FFF Racing later secured both the Blancpain GT Series and Endurance Cup crowns at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, completing an unprecedented sweep.
Meanwhile, Emil Frey Racing’s Giacomo Altoè and Albert Costa extended their International GT Open championship lead with a double victory at Silverstone, taking a nine-point advantage into the penultimate round at Barcelona. Lamborghini says the pair took pole position on Saturday morning and cruised to a comfortable one-two finish alongside teammates Norbert Siedler and Mikaël Grenier, with only a late safety car intervention tightening the gap to the third-placed Mercedes.
The cumulative picture from 2019 is one of a manufacturer whose customer racing infrastructure matured rapidly. Lamborghini’s Super Trofeo one-make series, launched in 2009, served as the foundation. The Huracán GT3 program built on that base by giving customer teams a platform capable of winning in open competition. This season of GT3 dominance established the credibility that Lamborghini’s Squadra Corse operation would carry into its subsequent programs, including the development path that eventually led to the Temerario GT3 as the Huracán’s successor. As Road & Track noted when covering the Temerario GT3’s development, Lamborghini soldiered on with the same Huracán racer for ten years through an era when production-based sports car racing became more professional and more factory-focused. That longevity, anchored by results like the 2019 Blancpain title, is what gives the next generation of Lamborghini racing machinery its credibility before it even turns a wheel in anger.
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