Paul Ricard Beckons: Super Trofeo Europe Reaches Its Tightest Mid-Season in Years
Three rounds into the 2017 Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe season, the PRO class championship looks less like a points table and more like a rounding error. The top three crews sit within two points of each other as the series arrives at Circuit Paul Ricard for its third of six double rounds, scheduled for June 23 through 25. In a one-make series built around identical Huracán Super Trofeo machinery, margins this slim confirm exactly what the format is designed to produce: racing where the car is the constant and the driver is the variable.
Imperiale Racing’s pairing of Vito Postiglione and seventeen-year-old Jonathan Cecotto currently lead the PRO standings after sweeping both races at Silverstone. One point behind them, VS Racing’s Raphael Abbate and Yuki Nemoto have reached the podium in all four races without yet taking a win. The GDL Racing duo of Rik Breukers and Axcil Jefferies, who led the championship after the opening round at Monza, sit right behind, separated from the leaders by a gap so small that a single bad pit stop could redraw the entire order.
Paul Ricard, then, functions as the season’s fulcrum. With three double rounds remaining after this one at Spa, the Nürburgring, and the World Final at Imola, the crew that leaves southern France with momentum will carry it into the second half with a genuine psychological advantage. The crew that stumbles may find the deficit impossible to recover.
The PRO Class Battle: Three Philosophies, Two Points
What makes the PRO class fight so compelling is that each of the top three crews represents a different competitive profile. Postiglione and Cecotto combine veteran racecraft with raw teenage speed. Postiglione brings years of GT experience; Cecotto, in his debut Super Trofeo season, brings the kind of fearlessness that only a seventeen-year-old who does not yet know what he is supposed to be afraid of can deliver. Their Silverstone double was emphatic, the sort of result that announces a partnership rather than a pairing.
Abbate and Nemoto, by contrast, define consistency. Four podiums from four starts without a victory is either the most frustrating or the most promising record in the field, depending on your perspective. They lose nothing on bad weekends because they do not have bad weekends. If Paul Ricard rewards patience over aggression, they become the favorites.
Breukers and Jefferies arrived in Europe fresh from winning the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Middle East title in March. They opened the European campaign with a win and a second place at Monza, then watched their lead evaporate at Silverstone. For a crew that already knows how to close out a championship, the question is whether they can recalibrate quickly enough to fight on unfamiliar ground.
Further back, Loris Spinelli and Mikaël Grenier of Antonelli Motorsport present a different kind of threat. Despite a win and a podium at Monza, a difficult Silverstone left them 17 points off the pace. That gap looks daunting, but in a series where a double win is worth enough to reshape the standings overnight, writing them off would be premature. Sergey Afanasiev of ArtLine Team Georgia, who took a third-place finish at Silverstone, will partner with Giorgio Maggi and could play the role of spoiler if the leading crews neutralize each other.
Across the Classes: Dominance, Rivalry, and a Family Affair
The PRO class captures the headlines, but the supporting categories carry their own narratives that feed the same theme of razor-thin margins and volatile momentum.
In PRO-AM, Kikko Galbiati of Antonelli Motorsport leads the standings and will share his Huracán Super Trofeo with Davide Roda at Paul Ricard. Galbiati’s consistency, including a Silverstone victory alongside Gianluca Giraudi, gives him a nine-point cushion over Kelvin Snoeks and Shota Abkhazava of ArtLine Team Georgia. The VS Racing pairing of Liang Jiatong and Christopher Dreyspring sits third, ten points adrift, with three second-place finishes but no wins. At some point, close finishes without victories become a pattern rather than bad luck, and Paul Ricard may be where that distinction becomes clear.
The AM category belongs, for now, to VS Racing’s Andrej Lewandowski and Teodor Myszkowski, who are chasing a fourth consecutive victory. Raffaele Giannoni of Automobile Tricolore trails by 28 points but showed strong form at Silverstone with a win and a second place. The gap is large enough to require sustained excellence and some misfortune for the leaders, but the AM class has a way of producing exactly that kind of volatility.
The Lamborghini Cup offers something rarer: an intra-team rivalry. Gerard Van der Horst and William Van Deyzen both compete under the Van der Horst Motorsport banner, separated by just seven points. When teammates are your closest rivals, pit strategy and data sharing become delicate negotiations. Carlos Sarrea of Autovitesse, who broke through with his first win at Silverstone, lurks close behind, ready to capitalize if the Van der Horst drivers spend more energy watching each other than watching him.
Cecotto and the Young Drivers Program: Why Super Trofeo Is Lamborghini’s Talent Pipeline
Jonathan Cecotto’s rapid emergence deserves attention beyond the championship table. Lamborghini says Cecotto recently joined the Squadra Corse Young Drivers Program, which operates as a structured pathway from customer racing into factory-level competition. The program spans multiple tiers, from Super Trofeo Junior Drivers through GT3 Junior Drivers to Young Professional Drivers, each level designed to develop both driving ability and the professional skills required at the top of GT racing.
The pipeline works. Maximilian Paul and Mattia Michelotto both rose through the Young Professional Driver ranks before earning full Lamborghini Squadra Corse factory driver status. Michelotto built his reputation through dominance in the Super Trofeo Europe championship before stepping up. For Cecotto, leading the PRO class at seventeen in his debut season is precisely the kind of performance that accelerates a young driver through the program’s tiers.
This matters beyond individual careers because it connects directly to Lamborghini’s competitive future. Autoblog reports that the Temerario GT3 represents Lamborghini’s first competition car fully designed, developed, and built in-house. When that car reaches the grid, Squadra Corse will need drivers who grew up within the Lamborghini ecosystem, who understand the brand’s engineering philosophy and competitive culture from the inside. The Super Trofeo is where those drivers are forged.
The practical takeaway for enthusiasts following the series casually is straightforward: pay attention to the young names on the Super Trofeo entry list. The ones winning races today are the ones you will see representing Lamborghini in GT World Challenge and the World Endurance Championship within a few years.
Why One-Make Racing Matters More Than It Looks
The Super Trofeo occupies a strategically important position in Lamborghini’s motorsport architecture. Because every competitor races an identical Huracán Super Trofeo, the series strips away the engineering arms race that defines open-regulation categories. No team can buy a faster car. No factory effort can develop a secret aerodynamic package. The result is racing that isolates driver skill, team preparation, and strategic decisions during pit stops and tire management.
For customer teams and gentleman drivers, this format provides a competitive environment where investment buys seat time and professional support, not a performance advantage that renders the racing processional. For Lamborghini, it creates a controlled environment to evaluate talent under genuine competitive pressure. For the brand itself, it generates the kind of close, dramatic racing that translates into compelling content for fans following via live stream.
Competitor brands run similar programs; Ferrari operates the Challenge series and Porsche runs the Carrera Cup. What distinguishes Lamborghini’s approach is how tightly the Super Trofeo integrates with the broader Squadra Corse operation. The Young Drivers Program, the progression into GT3 seats, and the development of the Temerario GT3 as a fully in-house project all connect. The Super Trofeo is not a standalone customer entertainment product. It functions as the entry point of a vertical motorsport strategy that extends from gentleman-driver weekends to factory-level racing.
The Huracán Super Trofeo itself, a track-only, race-prepared version of the road car that succeeded the Gallardo Super Trofeo in the series, remains the backbone of this ecosystem. It is typically not street-legal, designed exclusively for circuit use, and its specifications are locked to ensure parity. Compared to road-going Huracáns, the race car strips away the compromises that make a supercar livable on public roads and replaces them with a roll cage, slick tires, and an aggressive aerodynamic package built around a large rear wing and carbon-fiber components.
How to Watch the Paul Ricard Round
The weekend follows the series’ established format. Two free practice sessions run on Friday, followed by two 20-minute qualifying sessions on Saturday morning. Race 1 starts Saturday at 2:30 p.m. local time, with Race 2 on Sunday at 1:35 p.m. Both are 50-minute affairs with rolling starts and mandatory pit stops.
Lamborghini will stream both races live at squadracorse.lamborghini.com/live-streaming. Given the championship margins in play, particularly the two-point spread at the top of the PRO class, these are worth watching in real time rather than catching highlights afterward. The kind of strategic pit-stop timing and late-race overtaking that decides races this close does not compress well into a three-minute recap.
After Paul Ricard, the 2017 calendar continues to Spa in late July, the Nürburgring in September, and the season-closing World Final at Imola in November. By the time the series leaves France, the championship picture will either have a clear shape or will have become even more chaotic. Based on the first four races, chaos seems like the safer bet.
| 2017 Super Trofeo Europe Calendar | Dates |
|---|---|
| Monza (ITA) | April 21-23 |
| Silverstone (GBR) | May 12-14 |
| Paul Ricard (FRA) | June 23-25 |
| Spa (BEL) | July 26-28 |
| Nürburgring (DEU) | September 15-17 |
| Imola World Final (ITA) | November 16-19 |
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