Loris Spinelli Earns Factory Driver Status with Lamborghini Squadra Corse for 2024
Lamborghini Squadra Corse confirmed Loris Spinelli as its newest factory driver for the 2024 racing season, a promotion that caps nearly a decade of the Italian spending his entire car racing career inside the Sant’Agata Bolognese ecosystem. The 27-year-old, who now resides in Florida, steps into an expanded GT3 roster alongside Sandy Mitchell, Marco Mapelli, Franck Perera, Leonardo Pulcini, and Jordan Pepper.
The announcement matters less as a single personnel move than as a statement about how Lamborghini builds competitive depth. Spinelli did not arrive through a free-agent bidding war or a borrowed seat in another manufacturer’s program. He entered through the Super Trofeo, climbed through GT3 customer racing, and earned the factory nod on the strength of results delivered in Lamborghini machinery. That trajectory, from one-make series to official factory backing, is precisely the kind of structured development pipeline that separates serious motorsport programs from marketing exercises.
From Shifter Karts to Petit Le Mans: Spinelli’s Climb Through the Lamborghini Ranks
Spinelli’s résumé reads like a case study in the ladder system Squadra Corse wants to promote. According to Lamborghini, he won European and world championships in shifter karting before transitioning to cars in 2015, making his debut directly in the Super Trofeo championship. He secured the Super Trofeo Pro title in 2017, and by 2022 he dominated Super Trofeo Europe convincingly enough to clinch the championship with a round to spare.
The GT3 progression followed naturally. Spinelli competed at the Daytona 24 Hours, Spa 24 Hours, and 12 Hours of Sebring, accumulating the endurance racing mileage that factory programs prize. His 2023 season in the United States provided the final proof: Lamborghini says he took overall pole position at Watkins Glen in the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship and then formed part of the winning GTD crew at the 10-hour Petit Le Mans season finale in October. That combination of raw qualifying speed and race-winning consistency in a major endurance event is exactly what earns a factory contract.
Spinelli also won the season-ending GT3 Junior driver shootout held at Vallelunga following the Lamborghini World Finals, a competitive evaluation process that pits the most promising GT3 talent against each other under controlled conditions. The shootout functions as Squadra Corse’s internal audition, a structured way to identify which drivers merit the resources and responsibility that come with factory backing.
Loris Spinelli walks along the race track, helmet in hand, ready for the challenge.
Why the Driver Development Program Matters More Than Any Single Signing
The broader significance extends well beyond one driver’s career milestone. Lamborghini’s Super Trofeo series, organized by Squadra Corse since 2009, operates across European, North American, and Asian championships. It exists partly as a customer engagement tool and partly as a talent incubator. When a driver like Spinelli enters at the bottom and emerges as a factory-backed GT3 competitor, it validates the entire structure.
That validation carries real commercial weight. Teams spending six figures on a Super Trofeo season want to know the series leads somewhere meaningful. Drivers investing years of their careers in Lamborghini machinery want a visible path upward. Spinelli’s trajectory provides that proof of concept in a way no brochure or sponsorship deck can replicate.
Lamborghini head of motorsport Giorgio Sanna framed the promotion in exactly these terms, noting that Spinelli’s speed across both European and North American Super Trofeo seasons, combined with his GT3 experience, demonstrated the effectiveness of the young drivers’ program within Squadra Corse. The subtext is clear: this is a system producing results, not a one-off favor.
How the Expanded Roster Positions Lamborghini for Its Next Competitive Chapter
Spinelli’s addition brings the GT3 factory driver count to six, complementing the LMDh lineup of Mirko Bortolotti, Andrea Caldarelli, Romain Grosjean, and Daniil Kvyat. That combined roster reflects a brand operating on two fronts simultaneously: the prototype endurance program at the top of the sports car pyramid and the GT3 effort that remains Lamborghini’s most commercially important racing platform.
The Huracán GT3 EVO2 proved the car could win at the highest level; the question now is whether Squadra Corse can consistently develop the human capital to match. One source suggests Spinelli will race the Lamborghini Temerario GT3 in the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup in 2026, which would place him at the center of Lamborghini’s next competitive chapter as the platform transitions away from the long-serving Huracán architecture. For teams and drivers who built their programs around the Huracán’s characteristics, that transition means adapting to an entirely new powerband, different weight distribution, and the complexities of a fresh homologation. Having factory drivers who already understand the brand’s engineering philosophy from years inside the ecosystem becomes a genuine competitive advantage during that kind of platform handover.
A Lamborghini GT3 factory driver sits at the starting line, helmet beside him, contemplating the race ahead.
What Comes Next for Spinelli and Squadra Corse
For the 2024 season, Spinelli will contest the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship with Forte Racing as an official Lamborghini factory driver. Lamborghini confirmed he will pilot the No. 78 Forte Racing Huracán GT3 EVO2, with teammates including Misha Goikhberg and Devlin DeFrancesco joining for the endurance rounds.
Several questions remain unanswered. Lamborghini did not detail whether Spinelli’s factory status extends to additional race programs beyond IMSA, or whether he will be deployed in any European GT3 events during 2024. The specific contractual benefits of factory driver status, such as engineering support, testing allocation, and data access, are also left undefined in official material. What the announcement does confirm is intent: Squadra Corse is building depth in its GT3 driver pool at precisely the moment it needs experienced, brand-loyal talent to manage the transition to the Temerario platform.
For anyone considering a Super Trofeo entry, or evaluating which manufacturer’s GT3 ecosystem to invest in, the Spinelli promotion is a data point worth weighing. A factory driver program that demonstrably promotes from within gives the Super Trofeo series a credibility advantage over one-make championships that function as dead ends. Squadra Corse is putting its money where its marketing is.
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