GDL Racing Takes Dubai: How Breukers and Jefferies Won Race 1
Rik Breukers and Axcil Jefferies delivered GDL Racing another victory in Race 1 of the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Middle East‘s second round at Dubai Autodrome, building on their win at Yas Marina the week before. The result carried extra weight because Breukers, a member of the Lamborghini Squadra Corse Young Drivers Program, did not simply inherit a comfortable lead. He manufactured one.
Konrad Motorsport’s Hendrik Still started from pole and controlled the opening stint with genuine pace, recording the fastest race lap at 1’37″377. Jefferies kept GDL Racing car #7 close but could not find a way past before the pit window opened. A safety car deployment, triggered by a stopped car on track, erased the gap Still had built and compressed the field just before the mandatory driver changes.
The pit stop sequence reshuffled everything. Breukers climbed into car #7 and wasted no time dispatching Paul Scheuschner, who had taken over the Konrad Motorsport entry. Scheuschner dropped to fourth as Andrew Haryanto (GDL Racing #71) and the FFF Racing pairing of Carrie Schreiner and Richard Goddard both moved ahead. With a few laps remaining, stewards slapped Breukers with a ten-second penalty for a track limit infringement. It barely mattered. Lamborghini says he still crossed the line more than seven seconds clear of second place, absorbing the penalty and winning comfortably. That margin, built under pressure and against a ticking clock, tells you something about the driver’s raw speed and composure, and about the kind of talent Lamborghini’s Young Drivers Program is designed to identify.
Rik Breukers and the Squadra Corse Young Drivers Program
Lamborghini’s Young Drivers Program operates as a deliberate talent pipeline, not a marketing exercise with helmets attached. The Super Trofeo ecosystem gives Squadra Corse a dedicated, controlled environment in which to evaluate emerging drivers against each other in identical machinery. When every car on the grid runs the same Huracán Super Trofeo, the variable is the person behind the wheel.
Breukers’ Dubai performance illustrates why the program exists. Overcoming a ten-second penalty to win by seven seconds requires more than car speed; it demands the kind of racecraft and situational awareness that separate promising amateurs from potential factory-program candidates. The Super Trofeo Middle East, inaugurated in 2017, was designed in part as a preparatory championship, strategically scheduled so drivers from the European, Asian, and North American series could use it as a competitive test bench before their own seasons began. For a Young Drivers Program member like Breukers, every race here functions as a live audition.
The broader trajectory matters because Lamborghini’s motorsport ladder now extends from these one-make regional series up through GT3 competition. According to Autoblog, the Temerario GT3 represents Lamborghini’s first competition car fully designed, developed, and built in-house. The drivers who will eventually race it at the highest levels need to come from somewhere. Programs like this one are where Squadra Corse finds them.
The Huracán Super Trofeo: Purpose-Built for Close Racing
The Huracán Super Trofeo is not a road car with a roll cage bolted in. It is a bespoke, track-only race car built to competition specifications, sharing the Huracán’s V10 engine and general silhouette but little of its road-going compromise. The series cars produce 620 horsepower from a naturally aspirated, direct-injection V10, and they run on spec Hankook tires, removing one of the biggest performance variables and forcing the competition to center on driver skill, team strategy, and setup.
The Huracán LP 620-2 Super Trofeo debuted in 2014 during Monterey Car Week and succeeded the Gallardo Super Trofeo that launched the one-make concept in 2009. Over that span, Lamborghini refined the formula: carbon-fiber bodywork, aggressive aerodynamic packages with prominent rear wings, and competition-grade suspension. The car is explicitly not street-legal, a point that occasionally surprises people when one surfaces at auction or, as Autoblog reported, when a Michigan dealer somehow titled one for road use.
For the Super Trofeo Middle East, the identical-car format is precisely what makes a result like Breukers’ penalty-absorbing win so credible as a talent marker. When the machinery is equalized, the stopwatch does not lie.
GDL Racing: Why Customer Teams Are the Engine of This Series
Led by Gianluca De Lorenzi, GDL Racing functions as one of the most prolific customer teams in Lamborghini’s one-make ecosystem. The team fielded multiple entries across different classes in Dubai: car #7 (Breukers and Jefferies) in PRO, car #47 (Steven Liquorish and George Richardson) in PRO-AM, car #26 (Bertuzzi and Farmer) also in PRO-AM, and car #71 (Andrew Haryanto) in AM. Running four cars at a single event requires serious logistics, engineering depth, and financial commitment.
Customer teams like GDL Racing form the backbone of the Super Trofeo series. Lamborghini provides the cars and the regulatory framework; the teams provide the drivers, the crew, the transport, and the operational expertise that make a race weekend function. Without well-organized customer operations willing to invest in the program, the grid does not fill, and the championship loses its competitive substance.
GDL Racing’s Dubai results underline that investment. Beyond the Race 1 victory, Haryanto finished second overall and won the AM class outright, while Liquorish and Richardson took second in PRO-AM. Bertuzzi and Farmer claimed third in PRO-AM (eighth overall). Four cars, three class podiums, and an outright win from a single customer team. For prospective entrants evaluating whether the Super Trofeo is worth the commitment, GDL Racing’s operation serves as a compelling case study. And for Squadra Corse’s talent pipeline, a deep, competitive grid is essential: young drivers only prove themselves when the racing around them is genuine.
Class Results: PRO-AM, AM, and Lamborghini Cup
The multi-class structure of the Super Trofeo is one of its underappreciated strengths as a proving ground. PRO, PRO-AM, AM, and Lamborghini Cup categories run simultaneously on the same track, meaning gentlemen drivers share asphalt with program-backed professionals. The racing is real, the penalties are enforced (as Breukers can confirm), and the class battles often produce their own compelling storylines independent of the overall result.
In PRO-AM, Konrad Motorsport’s Hendrik Still and Paul Scheuschner won the class despite finishing fourth overall, a consequence of Scheuschner losing positions to Haryanto and the FFF Racing duo after the pit stop shuffle. The PRO standings shifted meaningfully: Carrie Schreiner and Richard Goddard, who finished third overall and second in the PRO class aboard FFF Racing’s car #5, became the new PRO championship leaders. Schreiner, just nineteen years old at the time, racing at the front of a professional class in the Middle East, represents exactly the kind of emerging talent the series is designed to cultivate.
Haryanto’s AM class victory was notable for its outright pace. Finishing second overall in a field that includes PRO-class entries is a strong result by any measure. He finished ahead of GT3 Poland’s Myszkowski-Lewandowski and ARC Bratislava’s Miro Konopka. In the Lamborghini Cup, Gabriele Murroni of Petri Corse took another win, continuing the rookie’s promising start to the season.
The Super Trofeo Middle East in Lamborghini’s Bigger Picture
The Super Trofeo series began in 2009 with the Gallardo and now spans three main continental championships (Europe, Asia, and North America), plus this Middle East series and a season-ending World Final where regional champions compete for global titles. That infrastructure represents one of the most extensive manufacturer-backed one-make programs in motorsport. Lamborghini’s particular strength lies in how tightly the Super Trofeo integrates with its broader Squadra Corse ambitions, particularly the Young Drivers Program and the pathway toward GT3 competition.
The Middle East series, launched in the same 2017 season as this Dubai race, occupies a strategic position in that calendar. Its scheduling allows drivers from other continental series to race competitively during what would otherwise be an off-season gap. For Squadra Corse, that means more data on driver performance, more seat time for developing talent, and more opportunities to evaluate which young drivers deserve advancement.
With the Temerario GT3 now on the horizon as Lamborghini’s first fully in-house competition car, the question of where future factory-backed drivers will come from becomes increasingly relevant. The Super Trofeo is the answer, or at least the first chapter of it. Frederik Schandorff, who won the 2019 Pro class title in this same Middle East series, later became a Super Trofeo World Finals winner, illustrating that the pathway is functional, not theoretical.
Breukers’ Dubai win, then, is more than a race result. It is a data point in a system Lamborghini has spent nearly a decade building: a pipeline that turns regional one-make victories into factory-level careers. The Huracán Super Trofeo platform, with its naturally aspirated V10 and equalized specifications, rewards driver talent above all else. As the brand transitions toward the Temerario era, the drivers cutting their teeth at circuits like Dubai Autodrome today could well be the names on factory-program rosters tomorrow.
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