The Nürburgring Round and the Championship Picture So Far
Four rounds into the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe season, with Monza, Silverstone, Paul Ricard, and Spa already in the books, the series arrives at the Nürburgring for its fifth round on September 18-20 with a championship that looks deceptively settled. Bonaldi Motorsport’s Patrick Kujala sits atop the overall standings with six victories and a 34-point buffer over his nearest pursuers. Comfortable on paper, certainly, but the chasers tell a more compelling story.
The Antonelli Motorsport pairing of Daniel Zampieri and Roman Mavlanov, competing in their debut Super Trofeo season, cracked through for a win in the second Paul Ricard race. Rookies winning races in a one-make series built around identical machinery is exactly the kind of disruption that keeps a championship from becoming a procession. Team Lazarus veterans Sergio Campana and Fabrizio Crestani sit just two points further back, holding the PRO Class runner-up spot behind Kujala. With four rounds remaining after the Nürburgring, 34 points can evaporate across two bad weekends.
The PRO-AM Class battle is tighter still. Mikko Eskelinen holds a single-point advantage over Antonelli Motorsport’s Marco Moscato and Loris Spinelli, who returned to the top step at Spa Race 1 after breaking through at Silverstone. In the AM Class, Artline Team Georgia’s Shota Abkhazava carries a 17-point margin over Mark Lneichen of Konrad Motorsport. The Gallardo AM Class, still running the predecessor chassis, sees Imperiale Racing’s Andrea Palma and Carina Lima defending their lead against Bonaldi Motorsport’s Ricardo Vera and Andres Josephsohn.
More Than a One-Make Series: Super Trofeo as Lamborghini’s Strategic Backbone
Treating the Super Trofeo as a customer entertainment program, a way to sell track-only Huracáns to wealthy gentleman drivers, misses the point. Launched in 2009 with the Gallardo and expanded to Asia in 2012 and North America in 2013, the series functions as a structured competitive ecosystem that touches nearly every part of Squadra Corse’s operations. And the championship battles unfolding on track right now are what keep that ecosystem alive.
The format itself reveals the logic. Every competitor runs an identical Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2, powered by a 5.2-liter naturally aspirated V10 producing 620 horsepower, with a dry weight of 1,270 kg. That one-make parity strips away the engineering arms race and forces the championship to be decided on driver skill, team strategy, and pit-stop execution during the mandatory stop window in each 50-minute race. Lamborghini benefits because the series generates enormous quantities of data on tire degradation, chassis behavior, and driver development without the confounding variable of different car specifications.
The multi-class structure (Pro, Pro-Am, Am, and LB Cup) serves a commercial purpose that goes beyond entry fees. It creates a ladder. Bronze-rated drivers enter at the Am level, gain experience, and either progress upward or remain engaged customers who buy new-specification cars each time Squadra Corse updates the platform. The series turns motorsport participation into a long-term ownership relationship with the brand, which is precisely why a tight title fight like Kujala’s matters so much to Sant’Agata: it keeps every rung of that ladder populated.
From Huracán to Temerario: The GT3 Connection
The Temerario GT3, which Lamborghini debuted at the 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed, represents a genuine inflection point. It is Lamborghini’s first competition car to be fully designed, developed, and built in-house, a departure from the previous arrangement where external partners handled significant portions of race-car construction. That shift means the institutional knowledge accumulated through years of running the Super Trofeo, from understanding customer team needs to refining chassis setups across dozens of circuits worldwide, feeds directly into the company’s own engineering group rather than being filtered through a third party.
For teams currently racing the Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2, the eventual platform transition to a Temerario-based car will mean adapting to a fundamentally different powertrain philosophy. The Huracán’s naturally aspirated V10, with its linear power delivery and predictable throttle response, rewards a specific driving style. A turbocharged successor would demand different techniques for managing boost, heat, and torque delivery in close-quarters racing. The Super Trofeo grid, with its mix of professional and amateur drivers, will be the proving ground where Lamborghini discovers whether that transition works for the full spectrum of its customer base, not just the factory-supported professionals.
This is where the current championship standings become more than a sporting curiosity. Every lap turned by the current grid at circuits like the Nürburgring generates feedback that Squadra Corse can apply to the next generation of customer racing hardware. The series is, in effect, a continuous development program funded by its participants, and the closer the racing, the richer the data.
The Talent Pipeline and Drivers Worth Watching at the Nürburgring
Lamborghini uses the Super Trofeo as a talent identification system, and the current European grid illustrates how that works. Kujala, the 2016 European Super Trofeo champion, has also competed in the North American series and won races at circuits including Watkins Glen. His career arc, from Super Trofeo champion to multi-continental competitor, is the template Squadra Corse wants to replicate.
Edoardo Liberati offers another example. He will join Raton Racing’s second entry at the Nürburgring alongside Patrie Niederhauser, bringing form from the Lamborghini Blancpain Super Trofeo Asia series where he holds second overall with two wins in China and Malaysia. Cross-pollinating drivers between continental series tests their adaptability and builds the kind of versatile racer who can step into GT3 or endurance programs. Alberto Di Falco, determined to follow up his P1 in Belgium with a consecutive win at the Nürburgring in his Raton Racing entry, adds another subplot to a weekend already loaded with championship tension.
Isaac Tutumlu’s recent performance at the 24 Hours of Barcelona, where he finished P6 overall and won the SPX Class in a Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo 620-2, demonstrates that Super Trofeo machinery and drivers can be competitive outside the series’ own ecosystem. For a driver building a professional racing career, that kind of result on a broader stage carries weight that class wins in a closed championship cannot match.
The Vincenzo Sospiri Racing pairing of Kei Francesco Cozzolino and Shinya Michimi, with multiple podium finishes this season, and Imperiale Racing veterans Alberto Cerqui and Giacomo Barri round out a PRO Class field that mixes emerging talent with experienced hands. That blend is deliberate: rookies learn racecraft from veterans who know how to manage a 50-minute race, and the veterans stay sharp against younger, hungrier competition. The result is a grid that serves Lamborghini’s long-term interests whether or not any individual driver ever reaches GT3.
The Nürburgring Weekend: Schedule and How to Watch
The Nürburgring event opens with two one-hour free practice sessions on Friday, September 18. Saturday’s qualifying begins at 10:15 CET with two 15-minute sessions separated by a five-minute break, followed by Race One at 15:10 CET over the standard 50-minute distance. Race Two goes green on Sunday at 9:55 CET.
Both races will stream live on the Lamborghini Squadra Corse website, with television coverage on Nuvolari in Italy and Motors TV across Europe. For anyone following the championship from outside those broadcast territories, the Squadra Corse stream remains the most reliable option.
The season culminates in the Lamborghini World Final, an annual event since 2013 that brings together drivers from all three continental championships. The Nürburgring results will shape which drivers arrive at that finale with genuine title momentum and which need a miracle run to close the gap on Kujala. With the PRO-AM title separated by a single point, this weekend could effectively decide that class championship before the final rounds even begin.
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