Nürburgring 2020: Bonaldi Motorsport Takes the Flag by Four Seconds
Bonaldi Motorsport’s Dean Stoneman and Kikko Galbiati claimed victory in the first Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe race of the weekend at the Nürburgring in September 2020, beating Target Competition’s Miloš Pavlović and Raul Guzman by just over four seconds. The margin sounds comfortable. The race itself was anything but.
Karol Basz of VS Racing started from pole position for the 50-minute encounter and led off the line, but Stoneman found a way past into Turn 1 almost immediately. Basz reclaimed the lead with a late-braking move at the chicane on the same lap, only for Stoneman to wrestle the advantage back on lap two. That kind of back-and-forth in identical machinery is exactly what a one-make series is supposed to produce: proof that the car rewards commitment and the driver who blinks first loses.
Stoneman held a narrow gap over Basz through the mandatory pit window, which coincided with a safety car period after Libor Dvoracek’s Micanek Motorsport ACCR car stopped on track. Galbiati took over the Bonaldi car and immediately opened a gap over Lewandowski when the safety car withdrew with 13 minutes remaining. For Galbiati, the result extended a personal streak at this circuit; he had secured a double victory at the Nürburgring in 2019 with Imperiale Racing. Stoneman, meanwhile, notched his second consecutive win of the 2020 season, building on his Race 2 victory at the opening round in Misano.
Penalties, Comebacks, and the Drama Behind the Podium
The real fireworks happened behind the leaders. Loris Spinelli of Van der Horst Motorsport started 16th on the grid and carved through the field after taking over from Gerard van der Horst at the pit stops, picking off car after car in a charge that looked destined for a podium. He dispatched Liddy, Boccolacci, and Lewandowski in quick succession before getting past Alberto di Folco for third around the outside of Turn 1, briefly going off track and making contact with di Folco’s front-left corner.
The stewards judged the move too forceful. A five-second post-race penalty dropped Spinelli to fifth and elevated Basz and Lewandowski to fourth overall, handing them the Pro-Am class win. Whether you agree with the call or not, it illustrates something important about the Super Trofeo format: these cars punish overconfidence. The Huracán Super Trofeo EVO delivers power exclusively to the rear wheels, operating without the electronic safety nets that road-going Huracáns rely on. One moment of excess aggression, and the consequences arrive quickly, from the car’s behavior or the stewards’ office.
The battle between Patrick Liddy and Dorian Boccolacci for sixth produced some of the race’s best wheel-to-wheel action. Boccolacci, a former single-seater racer, used a perfectly executed dummy down the main straight to set up an around-the-outside pass at Turn 1. In the Am class, Massimo Mantovani claimed his second victory of the season for Target Racing, while Hans Fabri took the LB Cup honors from Martin Lechman of Konrad Motorsport.
The Huracán Super Trofeo EVO: Why the Spec Matters
Every car on that 2020 grid ran the same fundamental package: a naturally aspirated 5.2-liter V10 engine, rear-wheel drive, and an aggressive aerodynamic kit built around carbon fiber elements, large rear wings, and prominent air intakes. The series, established in 2009, was designed around the idea that identical machinery would strip away the engineering arms race and leave only driver skill and team strategy.
That philosophy produced fascinating engineering constraints. Without all-wheel drive or sophisticated traction control, the Huracán Super Trofeo EVO demanded a driving style that rewarded smoothness and punished ham-fisted inputs. Drivers who could manage rear tire degradation over a 50-minute stint gained seconds per lap over those who couldn’t. For Lamborghini’s engineers back in Sant’Agata Bolognese, the data flowing from these races provided something no simulation could replicate: hundreds of hours of real-world, high-stress validation for the V10 platform’s durability, cooling, and chassis dynamics.
The road-going Huracán, upon which the Super Trofeo EVO is based, was succeeded by the plug-in hybrid Temerario in 2024. That makes the 2020 season part of the final chapter for Lamborghini’s naturally aspirated V10 in competitive trim, a detail that retrospectively adds weight to every race result from this era.
From Track Data to the Huracán STO: The Road Car Connection
Lamborghini rarely discusses the Super Trofeo series as a standalone motorsport exercise. Squadra Corse, the brand’s motorsport division, positions it as a development pipeline, and the clearest evidence of that pipeline’s output is the Huracán STO. The name itself, Super Trofeo Omologata, is a direct reference. The STO translated lessons from years of one-make racing into a road-legal package: rear-wheel drive, aggressive aerodynamics, recalibrated suspension geometry, and a driving character that prioritized feedback and involvement over electronic intervention.
The specific engineering lessons that flow from track to street are difficult to quantify without access to Lamborghini’s internal development records, and the company has not published a detailed technical transfer document. What can be said with confidence is that the STO’s rear-drive layout, its emphasis on aerodynamic downforce over peak power, and its stripped-back electronic architecture all echo the Super Trofeo EVO’s design priorities. Lamborghini’s competitors run similar programs; Ferrari operates its Challenge series, and Porsche fields the Carrera Cup, both feeding data and credibility back into their road car lineups. Lamborghini’s version is distinctive because the Super Trofeo car’s rear-drive, naturally aspirated character stood apart from the all-wheel-drive road cars it sat alongside, making the eventual STO feel like a genuine philosophical statement rather than a marketing exercise.
For buyers who tracked their STOs, the connection was tangible. The car’s behavior at the limit, its willingness to rotate under trail braking, its progressive breakaway at the rear, all of that came from a platform that had been hammered around circuits like the Nürburgring by drivers like Stoneman and Galbiati for years before it reached a showroom.
What Comes Next: The Temerario GT3 and Lamborghini’s In-House Era
The recently debuted Temerario GT3 marks a significant milestone as Lamborghini’s first competition car fully designed, developed, and built in-house. Previous GT3 programs relied on external partners for significant portions of the car’s development. Bringing that work entirely within Squadra Corse signals a deeper commitment to motorsport as an engineering function, not just a brand exercise.
For Super Trofeo followers, the transition raises practical questions that Lamborghini has not yet fully answered. The one-make series will eventually need to migrate from the Huracán platform to whatever replaces it, and the character of that replacement, whether it retains rear-wheel drive, how it manages the added weight and complexity of hybrid components, will define the next decade of Lamborghini customer racing. The V10 era rewarded a specific set of driving skills. A twin-turbo V8 hybrid will reward different ones.
As Autoblog noted when the Temerario GT3 debuted at Goodwood, this is not just another track version of a road car. The in-house development approach gives Squadra Corse direct control over the feedback loop between competition and production engineering, potentially accelerating the kind of track-to-street technology transfer that made the STO possible.
Looking back at the 2020 Nürburgring grid, what stands out is how much the Huracán Super Trofeo EVO accomplished as a platform. It validated the V10’s durability, trained a generation of customer racers, and directly informed the most extreme road car Lamborghini built in the Huracán era. Collectors already recognize this: Autoblog reported a 2020 Huracán Super Trofeo EVO Collector edition with just 84 miles listed on Bring a Trailer, its rarity and motorsport pedigree driving collector interest. For anyone watching Lamborghini’s next chapter unfold, the Super Trofeo’s legacy is the clearest proof that what happens on track shapes what eventually parks in your garage.
Gallery
