A Heatwave, a Safety Car, and a New Points Leader at Spa
Round 3 of the 2026 Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe season at Spa-Francorchamps produced the kind of weekend that rewrites championship narratives. Two 50-minute races, run under a European heatwave that Lamborghini says pushed ambient temperatures past 40° C, delivered confusing finishes, contact-induced retirements, and a Pro standings shakeup nobody predicted heading into the Belgian Ardennes.
Oregon Team’s Silas Lovén Rytter and Patrik Fraboni left Spa with a seven-point lead in the Pro category, having arrived trailing DL Racing’s Simone Iaquinta and Kevin Gilardoni. That reversal came not from dominant speed but from a Race 2 retirement for Iaquinta and Gilardoni following on-track contact, a safety car that compressed the field, and the kind of attritional chaos Spa specializes in producing.
Anthony Pretorius and Bronislav Formánek of Micánek Motorsport took the overall and Pro-Am victory in Race 1, while Leipert Motorsport’s Swedish pairing of Axel Bengtsson and Månz Thalin collected their first career Super Trofeo win in Race 2. Both results were shaped less by raw pace and more by who survived the drama cleanest. In a one-make series where every car runs the same naturally aspirated V10, survival is the variable that separates champions from also-rans.
A vibrant grid of Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2 cars awaits the start of an exhilarating race on a sunny day. Image: Automobili Lamborghini.
Race 1: A Confusing Final Lap Hands Formánek and Pretorius the Win
Bengtsson qualified on pole and led early, but the real story of Race 1 was the chaos that bookended it. Brendon Leitch, making his first Super Trofeo appearance since last year’s World Finals, seized the overall lead on lap six at Pouhon and stretched it through the first stint. Behind him, Iaquinta and Thalin fought aggressively enough to bang door panels on the approach to Eau Rouge, the sort of close-quarters combat that only a one-make series can reliably produce.
Fraboni’s Oregon Team car inherited the Pro lead after the pit cycle but slowed unexpectedly, dropping behind Formánek before recovering. The final laps descended into genuine confusion. Stricken cars from Philip Tang and Karim Ojjeh triggered a safety car, and Formánek’s #11 mistakenly followed it into the pit lane on the final lap. Fraboni nearly made the same error. Iaquinta initially crossed the line first, but officials reinstated the previous order, giving Pretorius and Formánek a somewhat surreal first overall Super Trofeo victory.
“Not the best qualifying for us this morning so we had to make the positions back up in the race,” Pretorius said afterward. “Bronek took our chances after the misfortunes of others and we ended up with the win overall.”
The result narrowed the Pro gap between Rytter-Fraboni and Gilardoni-Iaquinta to a single point heading into Race 2, making Saturday’s second race existentially important for the championship picture.
A striking blue Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2 car navigates the track with speed and precision. Image: Automobili Lamborghini.
Race 2: Contact at Les Combes Rewrites the Championship
UNIQ Racing’s Jerzy Spinkiewicz started from pole after a post-qualifying penalty shuffled the grid, but the decisive moment came mid-race. Spinkiewicz and Gilardoni made contact at the exit of Les Combes, sending Gilardoni into the gravel and out of the race entirely. The incident carried a 75-second post-race penalty for Spinkiewicz, converted from a drive-through, and far larger consequences for the championship: Gilardoni and Iaquinta dropped from first to second in the Pro standings, now seven points behind Rytter and Fraboni.
Bengtsson, who had taken over from Thalin at the pit stops, inherited a comfortable position and managed the gap to the finish. The safety car deployment after the Les Combes incident compressed the field, but Bengtsson kept his composure.
“I was quite sweaty in the car in the second half of the race,” Bengtsson admitted. “Månz left me a great car, and I could just keep on driving, so everything felt perfect.”
Thalin, his co-driver, called Spa his favorite track and the victory his first Lamborghini podium. The heat, he said, was the “greatest enemy” of the race, forcing careful tire management throughout. Benedetto Strignano and Nicholas Pujatti finished second, while Joonas Salonen and Henri Tuomaala completed a double podium for Leipert Motorsport in third. When every car shares the same V10 and the same rubber, tire management in 40-degree heat becomes the closest thing to a performance differentiator the series allows.
A sleek black Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2 car expertly takes a corner on the race circuit. Image: Automobili Lamborghini.
Am and Lamborghini Cup: Kingsford’s Double and a One-Off Pro-Am Return
The supporting classes produced their own storylines, though the same theme held: in identical machinery, racecraft and composure decided everything.
Todd Kingsford, racing solo for Leipert Motorsport, won both Am races on his European debut. Kingsford competes in the Super Trofeo Asia series, where Lamborghini says he leads the Pro-Am standings, and his immediate adaptation to Spa suggests genuine pace rather than luck. Ulrich Niels Nybøe and Peter Hegelund (DC Motorsport) took second in Race 1, with Grzegorz Moczulski (GT3 Poland) completing the Am podium.
In the Lamborghini Cup class, Francesco Turzo of DL Racing won Race 1 with what Lamborghini described as a strong drive throughout. Umar Basamalah (ASR) took his first victory in Race 2 after early leaders Donovan and Luciano Privitelio were eliminated by contact with Turzo at the Bus Stop chicane.
The Pro-Am class in Race 2 delivered arguably the most entertaining single performance of the weekend. Egor Orudzhev and Shota Abkhazava, making a one-off return to the championship, charged from 14th on the grid to third overall and first in Pro-Am. That kind of progress through a field of identical cars, on a circuit where overtaking opportunities narrow through Eau Rouge and Blanchimont, requires genuine racecraft. Brendon Leitch and Don Yount (Leipert Motorsport) continued their strong weekend with another Pro-Am podium.
A race official congratulates a victorious driver on the podium after a successful race. Image: Automobili Lamborghini.
Why the One-Make Format Produces This Kind of Racing
The drama at Spa is partly a function of the circuit, which punishes small errors with gravel traps and compresses the field through its high-speed sections. The Super Trofeo format amplifies it. Every car on the grid runs the same Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2, powered by the same naturally aspirated V10, shod with the same tires, governed by the same technical regulations. The championship splits entries across Pro, Pro-Am, Am, and Lamborghini Cup categories to keep competition close within each skill tier, but all four classes share the track simultaneously. One report indicated a 37-car entry for the Spa round, and on a circuit that narrows to a single dry line in several key corners, contact and safety cars become almost inevitable.
Without performance differentiators between cars, the margins between championship contention and retirement can be measured in inches of track position and fractions of a second in pit-stop execution. Rytter and Fraboni did not dominate at Spa. They survived it. Their double victory at Imola in Round 2 was built on pace; their championship lead after Spa was built on consistency and other people’s misfortune. Both count equally in the standings.
That dynamic is the appeal and the risk of the series. The Super Trofeo offers some of the most competitive wheel-to-wheel racing available in a customer championship, precisely because the car is not the variable. The driver is. And at Spa, the V10’s linear power delivery and predictable throttle response kept the competitive focus squarely on skill and strategy rather than mechanical advantage.
Two Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2 cars lead the charge down the track, showcasing their vibrant liveries. Image: Automobili Lamborghini.
The V10’s Last Dance and the Temerario GT3 Waiting in the Wings
Every round the Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2 completes now carries a valedictory quality. The road-going Huracán gave way to the Temerario, and the Temerario GT3, which Lamborghini describes as its first competition car fully designed, developed, and built in-house, is already racing in GT3 competition. The new car makes its 24-hour race debut at the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa, the very same event the Super Trofeo round supported this weekend. Two eras of Lamborghini motorsport, sharing the same paddock and the same seven kilometers of Belgian tarmac.
The Super Trofeo series, now in its eighteenth edition, was built around the naturally aspirated V10. That engine defines the car’s character on track: linear power delivery, a predictable throttle response that rewards driver precision, and a sound that carries across the Ardennes forest. The Temerario GT3 represents something fundamentally different in engineering philosophy, though Lamborghini positions it as an evolution rather than a break. How the transition from one platform to the other will reshape the Super Trofeo series remains an open question. Lamborghini has not announced when or whether the Temerario will replace the Huracán in the one-make championship.
What the Spa weekend confirmed is that the current car still produces exceptional racing. The V10’s simplicity, its lack of hybrid complexity or turbo lag, keeps the competitive focus on driver skill and team strategy. Whether that character survives the platform transition is the question that will define the next chapter of Lamborghini’s customer racing program.
The Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2 race car with number 89 navigates a turn on the track. Image: Automobili Lamborghini.
Championship Standings and the Road to the Nürburgring
Spa-Francorchamps marked the halfway point of the 2026 Super Trofeo Europe season. Rytter and Fraboni carry a seven-point Pro lead into the summer break, but the compressed nature of the standings means that advantage could evaporate in a single bad race. Gilardoni and Iaquinta, who led the championship coming into Spa, know that better than anyone after their Race 2 retirement.
The 2026 calendar resumes at the Nürburgring Grand Prix circuit on August 28-30, followed by Barcelona in October and a double-header finale at Monza that includes the Lamborghini World Finals, where European, North American, and Asian Super Trofeo competitors converge to crown a global champion.
| 2026 Super Trofeo Europe Calendar | Date |
|---|---|
| Paul Ricard (Round 1) | April 10-12 |
| Imola (Round 2) | May 9-10 |
| Spa-Francorchamps (Round 3) | June 25-27 |
| Nürburgring (Round 4) | August 28-30 |
| Barcelona (Round 5) | October 2-4 |
| Monza (Round 6) | October 21-23 |
| World Finals, Monza | October 24-25 |
Three rounds and a World Finals remain. The Pro title fight between Oregon Team and DL Racing will likely define the second half of the season, but Leipert Motorsport’s Spa breakthrough suggests Bengtsson and Thalin could become a factor if their consistency matches their emerging speed. The Nürburgring, with its own technical demands and historically unpredictable weather, will test every team’s adaptability once again.
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