Shanghai Sets Up the Season’s First Real Pressure Test
SJM Theodore Racing’s Charles Leong and Alex Denning swept Sydney and carry a 10-point PRO lead into Shanghai, but at least three crews arrive with realistic shots at dethroning them. A 22-car field of Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2 race cars will contest Round 2 on the 5.451km Shanghai International Circuit from May 15 to 18, and tight points gaps across PRO, PRO-AM, AM, and Lamborghini Cup mean this weekend could reshuffle the entire championship picture after just four races.
The Sydney opener answered one question quickly: Leong and Denning could win. Two races, two victories, maximum points. The harder question, the one that makes Shanghai genuinely interesting, is whether anyone on this 22-car grid can sustain a challenge across a six-country calendar stretching from Australia to a November finale in Misano, Italy.
Shanghai International Circuit, the Hermann Tilke-designed venue that opened in 2004 and hosts the Chinese Grand Prix, offers a very different proposition from Sydney Motorsport Park. The 5.451km layout rewards late-braking precision and aerodynamic stability, and several teams arriving in China bring either fresh co-driver pairings or unfinished business from previous seasons at this track. Because every entry runs identical Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2 hardware, those differences in preparation, personnel, and circuit knowledge become the margins that decide championships.
PRO Class: A 10-Point Lead That Looks Thinner Than It Sounds
Leong and Denning’s advantage looks comfortable on paper. In practice, a single bad qualifying session or opening-lap contact can erase a 10-point gap in one weekend. Leipert Motorsport’s Ethan Brown left Sydney second in the PRO standings after finishing runner-up overall in race one and posting the fastest lap. For Shanghai, Brown partners with Jacob Reigel, a 20-year-old German who collected a podium during the 2024 Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe campaign. That is a meaningful co-driver upgrade for a team that already showed front-running pace.
DW Evans GT’s Nazim Azman and Emilien Carde sit 11 points back, close enough that a strong Shanghai weekend could vault them into contention. Carde finished fourth in the overall standings last season despite missing a round, so consistency is part of his profile. Then there is BC Racing’s Gavin Huang and Jonathan Cecotto, the 2024 vice runners-up who podiumed twice in Australia and won at Shanghai last season. If any pairing knows how to extract time from this circuit, Lamborghini says it is this one.
Peter Li Zhicong adds a co-driver for Shanghai, teaming with Lee Jungwoo under the Lamborghini Bundang by Racegraph banner. Li raced solo as a PRO entry in Sydney, so the two-driver format could change the dynamics of his pit-stop strategy considerably. In a one-make series where the cars are mechanically equal, these personnel decisions carry outsized weight.
PRO-AM and AM: Where the Real Drama Brews
The PRO-AM standings are arguably tighter than the PRO fight. Liu Kaishun and Cao Qikuan lead on 28 points after converting a class pole into victory at the opener, but SQDA-GRIT Motorsport’s Liang Jiatong and Brian Lee Changwoo trail by only three points. Lee Changwoo, the reigning AM champion and a double winner at Shanghai in 2024, brings circuit-specific knowledge that could prove decisive.
Two more pairings are locked on 18 points: Lu Zhiwei and Ling Kang, teammates of the class leaders under the LK Motorsport by Climax Racing umbrella, and Le Mans 24 Hours winner Ho-pin Tung alongside Z.Speed’s Chen Chunhua. Having a Le Mans winner in the PRO-AM field underscores the caliber of driver this series attracts, even in the gentleman-driver categories. BC Racing’s Johnson Huang, racing this season with his 16-year-old son Brian, sits fifth. Huang Kuisheng switches from the PRO ranks into PRO-AM for Shanghai, partnering with Han Huilin, the 2019 AM champion, a move that could shake up the class order. Madness Racing also returns to the grid with a two-driver PRO-AM car.
In the AM class, championship newcomers Li Dongsheng and Li Donghui hold a seven-point advantage after converting pole into victory in the opening race. Suttiluck Buncharoen of True Vision Motorsports Thailand won the second Sydney race and leads Song Jiajun in the standings. Reigning Lamborghini Cup champions Haziq and Hairie Oh impressed on their step up to AM with a double-digit points haul, matched by Delta Garage Racing Team’s Umar Abdullah and Dypo Fitramadhan. The depth across both classes illustrates why identical EVO2 hardware produces such unpredictable racing: when the car is the constant, everything else becomes a variable.
The Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2: Why Identical Hardware Makes Better Racing
Every car on the Shanghai grid is the same machine: the Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2, a dedicated, non-road-legal race car built around a 5.2-liter naturally aspirated V10. The Super Trofeo series originated with the Gallardo before the Huracán took over, and the EVO2 represents the most developed iteration of that formula. Stripped interiors, full roll cages, competition suspension, upgraded brakes, and aggressive aero packages separate these machines from anything you can drive on public roads.
The one-make format is precisely what makes the class battles described above so compelling. Because every entry runs identical hardware, the margins come down to driver skill, team preparation, pit-stop execution, and setup choices for each circuit. Each race weekend typically features two 50-minute sprint races with a mandatory pit stop for driver changes, a format that rewards consistency and clean handovers as much as raw pace. For anyone who follows Lamborghini’s customer racing program, this is the accessible entry point: a series designed to let both professional and gentleman drivers compete on equal mechanical footing.
Lamborghini’s racing ecosystem sits at an interesting inflection point. The Temerario GT3, described as Lamborghini’s first competition car fully designed, developed, and built in-house, debuted at the 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed. How the brand transitions its customer-racing ladder from the Huracán platform to the Temerario generation remains one of the bigger open questions for Squadra Corse. For now, the EVO2 continues to anchor the one-make series, and the 22-car Shanghai grid suggests the platform retains strong commercial appeal among teams across Asia.
How to Watch and What Comes Next
Both Shanghai races will be live streamed on the Lamborghini Squadra Corse YouTube channel, making this one of the more accessible motorsport series to follow remotely.
The Lamborghini Cup class adds its own subplot. Supachai Weeraborwornpong of Siamgas Corse swept both races in Sydney, while Batmobile Racing’s Kumar Prabakaran took pole for the second race. Gerald Goh, who started the season in PRO-AM, switches to the Lamborghini Cup alongside Samson Chan, joining Kenneth and Bertram Lau of Kam Lung Racing (currently sixth in the standings) in what should be a deeper field for Round 2.
After Shanghai, the 2025 calendar moves to Fuji Speedway in Japan (June 27 to 29), then Inje Speedium in South Korea, Sepang in Malaysia, and finally Misano in Italy for the season finale and Lamborghini World Finals, where the top competitors from the Asia, Europe, and North America series converge. For prospective participants, Lamborghini does not publish a single headline figure; the total depends on whether a driver purchases a car outright or opts for an arrive-and-drive package through a team. Specific season costs remain difficult to pin down from public sources, but this is not a budget series. What it does offer is a structured, professionally managed path into competitive GT racing under the Lamborghini banner, with a clear championship progression toward the World Finals. Whether the next chapter of that path runs on V10 power or the incoming Temerario platform, the 22 identical Huracáns lining up in Shanghai this weekend prove the formula still works.
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