Emil Frey Racing Opens the GT Open Season with Two Wins from Deep in the Grid
Neither victory came from the front row. At the opening round of the 2019 International GT Open Championship at Circuit Paul Ricard, Emil Frey Racing’s Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo took both wins, and both times the car had to fight through traffic to get there. On Saturday, the #63 entry of Albert Costa and Giacomo Altoè started fourth. On Sunday, the #14 car of Norbert Siedler and Mikaël Grenier lined up seventh. Both pairs drove forward to win, revealing something specific about the car and the team: raw qualifying pace mattered less than race-long consistency, driver composure, and pit-wall execution.
Lamborghini says this marked the debut outing for the Huracán GT3 Evo in the series. Sweeping both rounds, against McLarens and Mercedes-AMGs that qualified ahead, suggests the combination of chassis balance and team preparation ran deeper than a lucky result.
The margins tell the story. Altoè won Race 1 by just over half a second from Henrique Cheves’ McLaren. Grenier sealed Race 2 by 0.607 seconds over Fabrizio Crestani’s Mercedes AMG. Close finishes, decisive outcomes. For anyone tracking Lamborghini’s motorsport trajectory, the Paul Ricard weekend offered an early signal that the Huracán GT3 platform still carried serious developmental headroom.
The Huracán GT3 Evo: Why the Platform Kept Winning
Built around Lamborghini’s naturally aspirated 5.2-liter V10, modified and restricted per FIA GT3 regulations, the Huracán GT3 Evo relied on throttle response and linear power delivery in an era when several competitors ran turbocharged engines. A naturally aspirated car rewards precise driver inputs and tends to behave more predictably at corner exit, exactly the kind of advantage that pays off in traffic and during overtaking sequences, the very situations that defined both Paul Ricard victories.
According to Road & Track, the V10-based racer competed for a full decade before its successor was announced. That longevity in a competitive racing class speaks to the fundamental soundness of the chassis architecture and Squadra Corse’s ability to extract incremental performance through aerodynamic and suspension refinements rather than wholesale redesigns.
The Huracán GT3 platform accumulated wins across the International GT Open, ADAC GT Masters, Super Trofeo series, and numerous other championships worldwide, suggesting its core balance of mechanical grip and downforce suited a wide range of circuits and conditions. That responsive V10 and predictable handling was the foundation on which drivers like Altoè could execute the aggressive, precise racecraft that won at Paul Ricard.
Race 1: Altoè’s Overtakes Tell the Real Story
Costa handled the opening stint in the #63 car, running a clean and measured race from fourth on the grid. The real fireworks came after the pit stop. Giacomo Altoè, just 18 years old and a graduate of the Lamborghini Squadra Corse Young Drivers Programme, rejoined without losing position and then passed the leading McLaren of Marcelo Hahn and the Mercedes of Miguel Ramos.
Consider what that requires. An 18-year-old, in a car making its competitive debut in this series, overtaking two experienced drivers in different machinery with 30 minutes of racing still remaining, then defending the lead against Cheves’ McLaren for the rest of the race, winning by barely half a second. The margin confirms the McLaren was genuinely quick. The result confirms Altoè was quicker when it counted.
Lamborghini designed the Squadra Corse Young Drivers Programme to identify and develop talent specifically suited to its racing machinery, giving young drivers seat time and coaching within the brand’s ecosystem. Altoè’s Paul Ricard performance validated the concept directly: a programme graduate winning an international race on his first outing with the team’s new car. Lamborghini’s approach of cultivating its own young professionals sidesteps the common problem of a fast amateur losing too much time alongside a professional, and the Paul Ricard result proved the pipeline could deliver under genuine competitive pressure.
Race 2: The Pit Wall Wins the Race
Sunday’s second race belonged to Norbert Siedler and Mikaël Grenier in the #14 Huracán GT3 Evo, but the real protagonist was the Emil Frey Racing pit crew. Starting seventh, Siedler ran closely behind Altoè in fourth during the opening stint. The transformation happened during the driver-change pit stops.
GT Open regulations impose handicap time penalties on leading cars during pit stops. Emil Frey Racing exploited this brilliantly: their pit work was fast enough, and their strategy timed well enough, that Grenier fed back onto the circuit in the lead. From seventh on the grid to first on the road, purely through pit-stop execution and regulatory awareness.
Grenier then managed the gap for the remainder of the race, crossing the line 0.607 seconds ahead of Crestani’s Mercedes AMG. He didn’t make a single error. Meanwhile, Altoè and Costa added a fourth-place finish in Race 2 to their Saturday victory, giving both Emil Frey Racing entries strong championship points.
Raffaele Giammaria and Liang Jatong provided additional depth in the #19 Raton Racing by Target entry, finishing fifth overall and winning the Pro-Am class. Three Huracán GT3 Evos in the top five, including the class win, painted a comprehensive picture of the platform’s competitiveness across different team structures and driver pairings.
ADAC GT Masters: A Podium and a Puncture
The same weekend at Oschersleben, Lamborghini’s ADAC GT Masters campaign delivered a mixed result. Franck Perera and Rolf Ineichen earned a podium finish in their #82 Orange1 by GRT Grasser Lamborghini in the second race.
Their teammates Mirko Bortolotti and Christian Engelhart were less fortunate. Leading from pole in the #63 Huracán GT3 Evo, they suffered a puncture caused by debris on track and lost their commanding position. The result illustrates something important about the car’s pace: when the Huracán GT3 Evo ran clean, it led. Only luck intervened, a reminder that the consistency Emil Frey Racing demonstrated at Paul Ricard was not merely a nice quality but a decisive one.
Lamborghini Against the GT3 Field: Where the Huracán Stood
The Paul Ricard results placed the Huracán GT3 Evo directly against McLarens and Mercedes-AMGs, and the Lamborghini came out on top in both encounters. GT3 racing operates under a Balance of Performance system designed to equalize the cars, but BoP cannot equalize everything: chassis balance, tire management, cooling efficiency, and driver ergonomics all remain differentiators. The Huracán GT3 Evo’s naturally aspirated V10 gave it a distinctive character within the field, offering immediate throttle response where turbocharged competitors sometimes struggled with heat management and throttle lag in close racing.
One source reports that Lamborghini went on to win the overall International GT Open Championship title in 2019, making the Paul Ricard double victory the opening chapter of a dominant season rather than an isolated result. The brand also claimed titles in 2016, 2017, 2021, and 2022, establishing the Huracán GT3 platform as one of the most successful in the series’ history. Viewed against that record, the Paul Ricard sweep was not an anomaly but a continuation of a pattern.
From the Huracán GT3 Evo to the Temerario GT3: What Changes
The Paul Ricard victory occupies a specific place in a larger engineering narrative. The Huracán GT3 Evo represented the peak of Lamborghini’s naturally aspirated racing philosophy, a V10 platform refined over nearly a decade of competition. Its successor tells a different story.
The Temerario GT3, as reported by Car and Driver, will replace the Huracán GT3 Evo 2 as Lamborghini’s factory-backed GT3 contender and marks the first race car entirely designed and developed in-house at Sant’Agata Bolognese. It will run a modified twin-turbocharged V8, stripped of its road-car hybrid system per GT3 regulations.
That transition from a naturally aspirated V10 to a twin-turbo V8 means customer racing teams will need to adapt to fundamentally different powerband characteristics. The linear throttle response that helped Altoè execute those overtakes at Paul Ricard will give way to the surge and heat-management challenges of forced induction. Whether Squadra Corse can make the turbo V8 feel as intuitive as the old V10 in race conditions will determine whether the Temerario GT3 continues the Huracán’s winning legacy or requires a longer development curve.
Early adopters of the Temerario GT3 will be building setup knowledge from scratch, without the enormous library of circuit data the Huracán platform accumulated worldwide. Historically that means the first season favors experienced factory-supported teams over smaller privateers.
What Paul Ricard Proved About Lamborghini’s Racing Model
The double victory at Paul Ricard validated more than a single car. It validated a system: a competitive customer car, a structured young-driver development pipeline, and partnerships with professional teams like Emil Frey Racing and GRT Grasser that operate with near-factory precision.
The Huracán GT3 Evo’s reliability at Paul Ricard, two wins and a fourth place from two cars across two races, reduces the unexpected repair costs that can cripple a privateer team’s season budget. For Lamborghini enthusiasts who follow the brand primarily through its road cars, the motorsport program proves that Lamborghini’s engineering can survive the sustained abuse of competitive racing and provides a talent pipeline that occasionally produces drivers who go on to represent the brand at higher levels. Altoè’s progression from young-driver programme graduate to international race winner at 18 offered exactly that story.
The Huracán GT3 Evo’s competitive chapter may be closing as the Temerario GT3 approaches, but the engineering philosophy and team infrastructure that produced the Paul Ricard sweep remain the foundation for whatever comes next.
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