A Gearbox Failure, a One-Point Margin, and Lamborghini’s Third Italian GT Title in Five Years

Lamborghini Takes the Italian GT Endurance Crown at Monza

Reliability is the unglamorous virtue that wins endurance championships, and on October 9, 2022, at Monza, it decided the Italian GT Championship Endurance Cup in the cruelest way possible. Edoardo Liberati and Yuki Nemoto drove the #19 Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo to their second victory of the season, clinching the title for VS Racing. Their margin entering the finale was a single point over teammates Mattia Michelotto, Karol Basz, and Benjamin Hites in the #63 VS Racing entry. Two cars from the same team, running identical Lamborghini hardware, separated by the thinnest possible gap.

Regular co-driver Michele Beretta was absent, competing in the Intercontinental GT Challenge for K-PAX Racing at the Indianapolis 8 Hours, leaving Liberati and Nemoto to fight as a pair. Running a three-hour endurance race with two drivers instead of three puts more physical and strategic burden on each stint, a disadvantage that would shape the afternoon’s drama.

Rain, Slicks, and a Gearbox That Quit at the Worst Moment

Weather complicated the picture from the outset. The initial stages ran on a wet track, but a drying line appeared before the green flag, turning tyre selection into a high-stakes bet. One report indicates that most teams opted for slick tyres, with one notable exception. Benjamin Hites in the #63 was among those who gambled on slicks, and the gamble paid off early: Hites jumped into the lead at the start, which rolled behind the safety car.

Liberati, meanwhile, struggled with a physical issue in the cockpit. He dropped to fourth behind a Mercedes before handing the car to Nemoto during the first pit cycle. Nemoto rejoined in third, slotting in just behind Michelotto in the sister #63. The championship was playing out as a direct duel between two green Huracáns.

With just over 50 minutes remaining, Michelotto made an aggressive pass on the Honda ahead to take the race lead. The title looked like it was swinging decisively toward the #63 crew. Nemoto sat second, close but seemingly outgunned.

Then, with 27 minutes left on the clock, the #63 ground to a halt. Gearbox failure. The championship-leading car was done. A fourth safety car period followed, and when the field went green again, Nemoto had clear air ahead and the title in his hands. The overcut at the final pit stop had already moved the #19 into a winning position on strategy, but the mechanical failure made it definitive. The Huracán GT3 Evo proved the oldest truth in endurance racing: you have to finish to win.

Three Titles in Five Years: The Huracán GT3 Evo’s Quiet Dominance

Lamborghini says this championship represents the brand’s third Italian GT title in five years. Alex Frassinetti and Michele Beretta won in 2017, and Daniel Zampieri paired with current Lamborghini Factory Driver Giacomo Altoè to repeat the result in 2018. That Altoè graduated from customer racing champion to factory driver status tells you something about how Lamborghini uses this series as a development pipeline.

The Huracán GT3 platform debuted over a decade ago, and its longevity in competitive GT3 racing is remarkable. As Road & Track noted when the Temerario GT3 was revealed, Lamborghini ran the same basic Huracán racer through an entire era of GT3 professionalization. The class grew more factory-focused, more complex, and more competitive around it, yet the car kept winning.

The depth at Monza underscored the point. Imperiale Racing’s Huracán GT3 Evo of Daan Pijl, Mateo Llarena, and Raul Guzman finished third overall, putting two Lamborghinis on the podium. VS Racing also claimed the Pro-Am championship through Andrea Cola and Baptiste Moulin, while Bonaldi Motorsport’s Miloš Pavlović and Michael Fischbaum won the GT Cup Pro-Am title. Four trophies across three classes in a single weekend is the kind of result that customer racing programs exist to produce, and it speaks directly to the platform’s proven reliability across different teams and preparation levels.

Why Customer Racing Wins Matter More Than Factory Headlines

Prototype racing grabs the spotlight, but customer GT3 programs are where a manufacturer proves its hardware can survive real-world abuse, weekend after weekend, maintained by independent teams with their own budgets and mechanics. VS Racing is not a factory operation with unlimited resources. It buys cars from Lamborghini Squadra Corse, prepares them in-house, and competes against teams running Ferraris, Porsches, Mercedes-AMGs, and Audis. When a customer team wins a championship, the engineering has to speak for itself. No amount of factory backing compensates for a gearbox that fails at the wrong moment, as the #63 crew learned.

The irony of this particular title is that the same platform’s reliability decided the championship in both directions: the #19 survived, the #63 did not. Identical cars, identical preparation, opposite outcomes. That narrow variance is what separates a champion from a runner-up in endurance racing, and it is why the Huracán GT3 Evo’s cumulative record across multiple seasons and multiple teams carries more weight than any single result.

Car and Driver confirmed that the Temerario GT3 will be the first race car entirely designed and developed at Sant’Agata Bolognese, marking a significant shift from the Huracán era. The Temerario GT3 does not just need to match its predecessor’s pace; it needs to replicate this kind of reliability record across dozens of customer garages worldwide.

The Handover Begins

Monza 2022 functions as a bookend. The Huracán GT3 platform earned another title in the series where Lamborghini customer teams cut their teeth, and it did so in the most dramatic fashion the script could have produced: a one-point deficit overcome not through raw speed alone but through endurance, strategy, and the simple fact that the #19’s mechanicals held together when the rival car’s did not.

Lamborghini has not disclosed when the Temerario GT3 will formally replace the Huracán in Italian GT competition. The company confirmed that the new car moves to a twin-turbocharged V8 architecture, a fundamental departure from the naturally aspirated V10 that defined a decade of GT3 racing. For customer teams like VS Racing and Imperiale Racing, the transition will mean adapting to different powerband characteristics, revised weight distribution, and turbo management in wheel-to-wheel combat. The Huracán GT3 Evo’s final championship season, whenever it arrives, will carry the weight of this Monza result as its closing argument: a platform that won because it lasted.

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