Race One at Buriram: Heat, Strategy, and a Decisive Late-Race Pass
Round 2 of the 2017 Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia series brought the Huracán Super Trofeo grid to Thailand’s Chang International Circuit in Buriram on May 20, a venue Lamborghini says meets the FIA’s and FIM’s top facility grades. The 50-minute format, with mandatory driver changes and timed pit stops, rewards strategic thinking as much as raw pace. Race One proved why this combination makes the Super Trofeo more than a gentleman-driver parade: it is a proving ground where brand loyalty gets forged under pressure.
Cozzolino Kei, piloting Clazzio Racing’s #11 entry, controlled the opening stint from pole, building a nine-second cushion before pitting on lap fourteen. Lamborghini says track temperatures peaked at 55 degrees Celsius midway through the race, conditions that punished tire management and rewarded composure. After the pit window closed and driver changes shuffled the order, GDL Racing’s strategy briefly put them within five seconds of the lead, but Afiq Yazid, now at the wheel of the Clazzio car, proved untouchable. Toby Sowery of Lazarus finished second, Rory Collingbourne of Leipert third.
The real entertainment came further back. In PRO-AM, Spike Goddard of FFF Racing executed a clean pass on GDL Racing’s Nigel Farmer under braking at turn twelve on the final lap to steal the class win for the Schreiner/Goddard pairing. Andrew Haryanto and Doyun Hwang from X-One Racing Team led the AM class, while Thai favorite Supachai Weeraborwornpoing of Top Speed Racing survived a late spin to hold on for the Lamborghini Cup victory. Four classes, four different stories, and exactly the kind of close-quarters drama that turns spectators into customers and customers into repeat buyers.
Why Lamborghini Keeps Investing in Asia’s Customer Racing Calendar
The grid at Buriram tells a story that extends well beyond the checkered flag. Lamborghini runs three continental Super Trofeo championships, in Europe, Asia, and North America, and funnels them all into a single World Final. The logic is brand cultivation in markets where supercar sales growth matters most.
The 2017 Asia calendar makes the strategy legible: Sepang, Buriram, Suzuka, Fuji, Shanghai, then Imola for the World Final in November. Every stop sits in a market where Lamborghini competes for high-net-worth buyers against Ferrari, McLaren, and Porsche. Staging a professional racing series at these circuits does something a static showroom event cannot: it puts the brand’s engineering credibility on display in front of the exact clientele most likely to sign a purchase order. European and Middle Eastern teams lined up alongside local Asian entries, creating a genuinely international grid that reinforces Lamborghini’s global ambitions rather than treating Asia as a secondary market.
The four-class structure, PRO, PRO-AM, AM, and Lamborghini Cup, is the commercial engine of the program. It allows gentleman drivers and aspiring professionals to compete on the same weekend, on the same track, in identical machinery. A wealthy enthusiast who races in the AM class at Buriram in May is far more likely to order a road-going Huracán or Aventador than one who simply attended a cocktail reception. Accessibility at the track translates directly into engagement at the dealership.
The Huracán Super Trofeo: GT3-Level Performance, Controlled Costs
Every car on the Buriram grid was a Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo, a purpose-built race car that shares its V10 engine architecture with the road car but little else. Lamborghini specifies 620 horsepower, a dry weight of 1,270 kg, and a power-to-weight ratio of 2.05 kg/hp. Power reaches the rear wheels through a six-speed XTRAC racing gearbox, and the aerodynamic package was developed in collaboration with Dallara, the Italian motorsport engineering firm responsible for some of the most successful single-seater and sportscar platforms in racing.
The car delivers GT3-level performance while offering significant savings on running costs compared to a full GT3 campaign. That distinction is central to the series’ role as a brand-building tool. GT3 programs demand enormous budgets for development, homologation updates, and parts inventories. The Super Trofeo’s one-make format eliminates the arms race: every car is mechanically identical, so results reflect driver skill and team strategy rather than engineering spending. For owners considering a step into competitive motorsport, this is the critical selling point.
One source reports that a full-season “arrive and drive” package for the Super Trofeo Asia series runs approximately €300,000 for a single driver, with that cost roughly halved when two drivers share an entry. Purchasing the car outright adds around €270,000 plus taxes and ancillary equipment. Those figures are substantial, but they remain well below the cost of running a GT3 campaign, where a single season can exceed half a million euros before accident damage enters the equation. The price of entry is high enough to filter for the right clientele and low enough to keep the grid full, a balance that serves Lamborghini’s commercial interests as neatly as it serves the racing.
Fine Dining at 55 Degrees: Hospitality as the Other Half of the Strategy
Lamborghini and its dealers offer premium hospitality, including fine Italian dining, for VIP guests at each stop of the Super Trofeo Asia series. For a brand whose customers routinely spend north of $250,000 on a road car, the trackside experience serves as a relationship-building exercise that no digital marketing campaign can replicate.
The format is straightforward: prospective and existing owners watch racing from a curated hospitality suite, eat well, and spend time with brand representatives and fellow enthusiasts in an environment where the cars are being driven at ten-tenths. Lamborghini understands that this kind of immersive exposure converts interest into loyalty more effectively than a dealership test drive. The guests who attend Buriram are the same people who will be invited to configure a new car at the factory in Sant’Agata. The racing weekend is the first handshake in a relationship designed to last for multiple purchase cycles.
Competitors run similar hospitality programs. Ferrari Challenge events include their own VIP suites, and Porsche’s customer racing infrastructure is arguably the most mature in the industry. Where Lamborghini differentiates is in the sheer visual and auditory spectacle of its product. A grid of Huracán Super Trofeos, each wearing a bespoke livery and screaming through corners on a naturally aspirated V10, creates an emotional impression that lingers long after the espresso is finished. That visceral impact is not incidental to the brand strategy; it is the brand strategy.
From the Gallardo Grid to the Temerario GT3: Where Customer Racing Goes Next
The Lamborghini Gallardo marked the brand’s return to one-make racing with the original Super Trofeo series, and the Huracán generation refined the concept into a genuinely global championship. The next chapter is already taking shape. The Temerario GT3, which multiple outlets including Autoblog reported as Lamborghini’s first competition car to be fully designed, developed, and built in-house, debuted at the 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed. A Temerario-based Super Trofeo racer is expected to follow, with reports indicating approximately 100 cars being built for a simultaneous introduction across all three continental series in 2027.
That transition will mark a significant shift. The Huracán Super Trofeo’s naturally aspirated V10 defined the series’ character for over a decade. The Temerario platform, built around a twin-turbocharged V8 hybrid powertrain, will demand different driving techniques, different tire strategies, and a fundamentally different on-track experience. For teams and drivers who built their programs around the Huracán’s linear power delivery and high-rpm personality, adapting to turbo lag, energy recovery, and altered weight distribution will be a genuine challenge. For the VIP guests in the hospitality suite, the question is simpler: will the next generation feel as visceral as the one it replaces?
The Buriram grid in 2017, with its V10 soundtrack reverberating off the grandstands, set a standard that any successor will be measured against. Lamborghini’s decision to bring GT3 development fully in-house suggests the company is betting on engineering control, not outsourced compromise, to answer that question. In the meantime, the Huracán-based series still represents one of the most accessible paths into serious customer racing with a top-tier supercar brand. The car, the support infrastructure, and the global calendar, complete with a World Final at Imola, offer a package that few competitors match at this price point. Whether the Temerario generation will maintain that value proposition remains to be seen, but Lamborghini’s continued investment signals confidence that the next chapter of its regional power play will be worth the wait.
Gallery
