Lamborghini’s Squadra Corse: A Motorsport Division Born at the Right Moment
In 2013, Lamborghini did something it arguably should have done decades earlier. The company formalized its entire motorsport and driver engagement operation under a single banner, Lamborghini Squadra Corse, creating a structured division responsible for everything from introductory driving events to professional GT3 competition. The timing was deliberate: Lamborghini launched Squadra Corse during its 50th anniversary year, a period when the brand was actively rewriting the narrative about what a Lamborghini could be and who could drive one competitively.
For most of its existence, Lamborghini’s relationship with organized motorsport was, to put it charitably, complicated. Ferruccio Lamborghini famously built road cars, not race cars, and while various privateer efforts and one-off factory experiments dotted the brand’s history, nothing resembled a coherent racing strategy. Ferrari operated Corse Clienti. Porsche built an entire customer racing pyramid. Lamborghini, for all its visceral road car appeal, lacked an equivalent structure. Squadra Corse was the answer to that gap, positioned not as a tentative experiment but as a permanent, multi-tiered commitment.
What set this apart from previous Lamborghini motorsport dalliances was the scope. Squadra Corse managed the full spectrum: casual brand experiences for prospective buyers, serious driver training academies, a dedicated one-make racing series in the Super Trofeo, and a GT3 customer racing program for professionals. The division created, in effect, a ladder. A curious enthusiast could enter at the bottom rung and, if talent and ambition aligned, climb all the way to international GT3 grids carrying the Lamborghini name. That single organizing idea, a continuous path from showroom to starting grid, is what gave Squadra Corse its strategic weight and what continues to shape the brand today.
The Motorsport Ladder: From Esperienza to the GT3 Grid
Lamborghini structured Squadra Corse’s offerings as a clear progression, and the logic of that progression is what separates it from a simple collection of branded events.
The entry point was the Esperienza program, a series of curated driving events designed to give enthusiasts and prospective buyers their first taste of a Lamborghini on a closed course. These were not track days in the traditional sense. They functioned as controlled introductions, letting participants experience the cars’ capabilities without the pressure of competition or the chaos of open lapping sessions.
Above that sat the Lamborghini Academies, offered in two distinct flavors: track and ice. The track academies provided structured driver coaching on circuits, teaching car control, racing lines, and the fundamentals of high-performance driving. The ice academies, held in alpine settings, added a layer of low-grip skill development that translates directly to wet-weather racing confidence. Forum discussions from early participants describe the ice program as genuinely challenging and distinct from anything offered by most competitors at the time.
The Super Trofeo series occupied the next rung. Lamborghini positioned it as the ideal first competitive racing experience for young drivers and gentleman racers alike, a one-make championship where everyone races identical machinery and the emphasis falls on driver skill rather than engineering budgets. The series ran across multiple continental championships in Europe, Asia, and North America, with a World Final bringing all regional champions together.
At the top of the ladder sat the GT3 program, aimed at experienced racers who wanted to compete internationally under the Lamborghini banner. This was the most serious competitive tier, placing Lamborghini customer teams on grids alongside Ferrari, Porsche, McLaren, and Mercedes-AMG entries in major endurance and sprint series worldwide.
The strategic beauty of this structure was that each level fed the next. An owner who attended an Esperienza event might enroll in an Academy. An Academy graduate might buy a Super Trofeo car. A successful Super Trofeo competitor might step up to GT3. Lamborghini built a pipeline, not a menu, and that pipeline gave the brand something it had never possessed: a self-sustaining motorsport ecosystem.
Competing with Ferrari’s Corse Clienti and Porsche’s Racing Pyramid
Squadra Corse did not emerge in a vacuum. By 2013, Ferrari’s Corse Clienti program was already well established, offering XX program track days, Challenge series racing, and GT competition support. Porsche’s customer motorsport operation was arguably the most comprehensive in the industry, with the Carrera Cup, Supercup, and a deep bench of GT machinery available to privateer teams. Both brands had spent years cultivating ecosystems where ownership extended naturally into competition.
Lamborghini’s challenge was catching up without looking like it was copying. The Squadra Corse structure mirrored the general shape of these rival programs, but Lamborghini leaned into two differentiators. The ice academies offered an experience neither Ferrari nor Porsche replicated at the factory level in the same way. And the Super Trofeo series, which predated Squadra Corse’s formal establishment (the series launched in 2009), gave Lamborghini a proven one-make championship to anchor the new division’s competitive credibility from day one.
The competitive comparison illuminates why Squadra Corse was a strategic necessity, not a marketing exercise. Without a formal motorsport division, Lamborghini risked being perceived as a brand that built spectacular road cars but lacked the infrastructure to support owners who wanted to race them. For a company selling six-figure supercars to buyers who often own Ferraris and Porsches as well, that perception could erode loyalty over time. Squadra Corse addressed the problem directly, and the ladder concept gave it a coherent identity rather than a patchwork of borrowed ideas.
Super Trofeo and GT3: The Competitive Core
The 2013 Super Trofeo season opened at Monza, and the grid told the story of who this series was built for. Returning champion Cedric Leimer anchored the field alongside established competitors like Adrian Zaugg and Andrea Amici in the PRO-AM category, while Roberto Tanca and Andrea Mame represented the Amateur ranks. The mix of professionals and gentleman drivers was the point: Super Trofeo existed to give both groups a competitive outlet within a controlled, single-marque environment.
Two entries at Monza stood out for different reasons. Lamborghini fielded a VIP car, the #1 entry, for celebrity guests partnered with factory driver Mario Fasanetto. Italian television personality Jimmy Ghione occupied the seat for the opening round, a move that generated media coverage well beyond the motorsport press. At the other end of the experience spectrum, 16-year-old Alessandra Brena made her Super Trofeo debut in the #36 Autocarrozzeria Imperale entry alongside Oscar Ortfeldt. A celebrity and a teenager on the same grid captures the breadth of the series’ appeal more efficiently than any marketing brief could.
The Super Trofeo championship operates across three continental series (Europe, Asia, and North America), with each series running six double races of 50 minutes per event. Multiple driver categories, including PRO, PRO-AM, AM, and Lamborghini Cup, ensure competitive racing across different skill levels. The season culminates in a World Final that brings regional champions together for a single showdown. Notable circuits on the calendar include Monza, Spa-Francorchamps, Silverstone, Laguna Seca, Watkins Glen, and Sepang.
The series now features over 30 Huracan Super Trofeo Evo2 race cars, each producing over 600 horsepower. Luxury watchmaker Roger Dubuis partners with Squadra Corse for the championship, reflecting the kind of premium brand associations that reinforce the series’ positioning above grassroots club racing but below factory-backed professional endurance programs.
Lamborghini continues to announce annual Young Driver Programs lineups as part of its motorsport commitment, actively nurturing talent that could eventually move into GT3 competition. For buyers considering the Super Trofeo as their entry into racing, the practical takeaway is straightforward: the series offers a genuinely structured competitive environment with factory support, consistent regulations, and a clear path upward. It remains one of the most accessible ways to go racing in a supercar, assuming you can afford the entry.
Fifty Years of Performance: Squadra Corse as a Legacy Builder
Launching Squadra Corse in the 50th anniversary year was a calculated act of brand storytelling. Lamborghini used the milestone to reframe its identity: not just a maker of outrageous road cars, but a company with legitimate competitive ambitions and the organizational structure to pursue them.
The anniversary timing also gave Lamborghini permission to address its own history honestly. The brand’s motorsport past included brilliant but scattered efforts, from the Formula One engine program of the late 1980s and early 1990s to various GT campaigns that lacked sustained factory commitment. Squadra Corse represented a clean break from that pattern. By consolidating everything under one division with clear leadership and a defined mission, Lamborghini signaled that motorsport was no longer a side project but a permanent extension of the ladder philosophy.
Owners and enthusiasts who followed Lamborghini through the Gallardo and Murcielago eras will remember that the brand’s track credibility often rested on individual car performance rather than organized competition success. The Gallardo was a weapon on a track day, but Lamborghini did not offer the same depth of factory racing support that Porsche provided to its 911 GT3 Cup buyers. Squadra Corse changed the equation. Buying a Lamborghini suddenly meant access to a racing ecosystem, not just a fast car.
The ripple effects of that shift continue to play out. Autoblog reported that the Lamborghini Temerario GT3, revealed at the 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed, represents the brand’s first competition car fully designed, developed, and built in-house. That milestone would not exist without the organizational foundation Squadra Corse laid in 2013. The division gave Lamborghini the institutional knowledge, the engineering feedback loop, and the customer relationships needed to justify building a bespoke race car rather than modifying a road car for competition.
What Squadra Corse Means for Lamborghini Enthusiasts Going Forward
The practical question for Lamborghini fans and prospective buyers is whether Squadra Corse delivers real value or operates primarily as a brand-building exercise. The honest answer is both, and that is not a criticism.
For owners who want to race, the value proposition is concrete. The Super Trofeo series provides factory-supported, regulation-governed competition on world-class circuits. The Academies offer professional coaching that genuinely improves driving skill. The GT3 program connects customer teams with Lamborghini engineering support at the highest level of production-based racing. Used Huracan Super Trofeo EVO models remain available on the secondary market, which means the barrier to entry, while still substantial, does not require buying a brand-new race car.
For enthusiasts who will never race, Squadra Corse still matters because it shapes the road cars. Technologies, calibration strategies, and aerodynamic lessons developed through competition filter back into production models. The Huracan STO and Performante both drew directly from Super Trofeo and GT3 development. The upcoming Temerario GT3 will likely accelerate that feedback loop as Lamborghini’s first fully in-house competition platform.
Lamborghini has not published detailed pricing for its Esperienza or Academy programs, and participation costs for the Super Trofeo series remain something prospective entrants typically discuss directly with authorized teams rather than through public price lists. What the company has made clear is that the ladder exists and that each rung is designed to feel like a natural next step rather than a disconnected product.
The broader strategic picture is worth watching. As Lamborghini transitions its lineup toward hybrid powertrains, Squadra Corse will need to evolve its racing machinery accordingly. The Temerario GT3 represents the first chapter of that transition. Whether the Super Trofeo series eventually adopts hybrid technology, and how that affects the driving experience and cost structure, remains an open question that will shape the division’s relevance for the next decade.
What started in 2013 as a formalization of scattered motorsport efforts now functions as a core pillar of Lamborghini’s identity. Squadra Corse gave the brand something it never consistently had: a structured, credible, and accessible path from the showroom to the starting grid. For a company that spent its first fifty years defining itself through road cars, that shift may prove to be one of the most consequential decisions in its history.
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