Under the Abu Dhabi Lights, the No. 9 Huracán Proved Unbeatable
By the time the floodlights at Yas Marina Circuit illuminated the final round of the 2019 Lamborghini Super Trofeo Middle East on February 23, the championship already felt decided. Timur Boguslavskiy and Frederik Schandorff, sharing the No. 9 Huracán Super Trofeo Evo for Target Racing, had swept all three races at the Dubai Autodrome the previous weekend. Abu Dhabi was supposed to be where the rest of the field closed the gap. Nobody did.
Boguslavskiy took pole for Race 2 and led from the start, building enough of a cushion through the mandatory pit window that Schandorff could stretch the advantage further after taking over. Race 3 followed the same script in reverse: Schandorff led from the front row, defended cleanly, and handed a comfortable lead to Boguslavskiy, who brought it home first after a safety car restart froze the field in his favor. The championship was sealed with a race to spare. In a one-make series where every car leaves the garage with identical hardware, that kind of dominance points to something deeper than raw speed. It points to a team that arrived fully prepared for a series designed to expose the unprepared.
Lamborghini’s Winter Proving Ground
Most coverage of the Super Trofeo Middle East treats it as a standalone regional series, which misses the point. Then in its third edition, the championship ran across just two weekends in February, well before the European, Asian, and North American seasons opened in the spring. That timing was deliberate. For Pro-class drivers and ambitious teams, the compact Middle East calendar functioned as a high-stakes pre-season: real racing, real points, real pressure, compressed into a window that allowed crews to refine setups and driver pairings before the longer continental campaigns began.
The series attracted a mix of seasoned professionals and ambitious amateurs racing identical Huracán Super Trofeo Evo machinery. Team preparation and driver consistency mattered more than budget advantages. For Squadra Corse, Lamborghini’s motorsport division, the series also served as a live laboratory for evaluating the Evo aero package under conditions rarely encountered in Europe: sustained high ambient temperatures, abrasive surfaces, and the long, fast straights of Yas Marina that punish aerodynamic drag. Target Racing’s dominance, then, was not just a regional curiosity. It was the earliest and clearest signal of which crew had its operation dialed in before the global season even started.
The Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO competes at the Yas Marina Circuit during the Middle East series.
Target Racing’s Maiden Season: Preparation Over Luck
Winning a title in a maiden season sounds improbable until you examine the details. Lamborghini reports that the 2019 Middle East championship marked Target Racing’s debut in the series, but the Italian squad was not a startup operation. They arrived with established GT racing experience and paired two drivers whose skill sets complemented each other precisely. Boguslavskiy provided raw qualifying speed and the ability to build gaps in the opening stint, while Schandorff proved equally capable of defending leads and managing tire degradation through the second half of each race.
The numbers tell the story plainly. Across two rounds and six races, the No. 9 car won five times. Schandorff summed it up after the prize-giving:
“We won almost everything, except one qualifying, and there’s no better way to start the season.”
That final phrase matters. Schandorff was not talking about the Middle East title as an end in itself. He was talking about momentum, about arriving at the European opener with a team that already knew how to win together. In the Super Trofeo’s one-make format, where the car is identical across every garage, winning comes down to driver pairing, pit-stop execution, and the quality of engineering support during compressed race weekends. Target Racing got all three right from the first round.
They were not the only team celebrating at Yas Marina. Konrad Motorsport claimed two titles: Axcil Jefferies and Ramez Azzam won the Pro-Am class in car No. 29, while Vincent Schwartz secured the Am crown behind the wheel of car No. 11. Gabriele Murroni took top honours in the Lamborghini Cup with the Huracán Super Trofeo Evo. Still, the overall championship belonged to Target, and the manner of their victory set the tone for everything that followed.
The Huracán Super Trofeo Evo: Built for This Fight
The Huracán Super Trofeo Evo that carried Boguslavskiy and Schandorff to the title occupies a specific and interesting position within Lamborghini’s hierarchy. It replaced the original Huracán Super Trofeo (the LP620-2) in 2018 with a completely redesigned carbon fiber aerodynamic package that reduced drag while improving high-speed stability. The naturally aspirated 5.2-liter V10 produces 620 CV, managed by a Motec control unit rather than the road car’s electronics.
The racing Evo sheds roughly 335 pounds compared to its road-going counterpart, bringing the dry weight down to 1,270 kg. Crucially, the car is rear-wheel drive only. Every road-going Huracán of that era sent power to all four wheels; stripping the front axle drive saved weight and, more importantly, prepared drivers for the handling characteristics demanded by GT3 regulations. For owners considering the jump from track days to competitive racing, the Super Trofeo Evo was the intended bridge: more accessible than a full GT3 entry, but serious enough to develop the car control and racecraft needed for the next step.
The Evo’s redesigned cooling package proved particularly relevant at Yas Marina, where ambient temperatures during the February races still exceeded what most European circuits see in midsummer. Adequate brake cooling and consistent airflow to the rear-mounted V10 are not abstract engineering goals in Abu Dhabi; they determine whether a car finishes the race or parks on the grass. Target Racing’s perfect finishing record across both rounds suggests their engineering team understood the car’s thermal demands from the outset, another advantage of arriving with deep GT experience rather than learning on the job.
The Road to Jerez: A Global Season Ahead
With the Middle East title secured, the 2019 Super Trofeo calendar stretched across three continents before converging at the World Final in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, in late October. The European series opened at Silverstone in May and ran through six rounds including Spa-Francorchamps and the Nürburgring. The Asian series visited Sepang, Suzuka, Fuji, Yeongam, and Shanghai. North America’s schedule included Barber Motorsport Park, Watkins Glen, Road America, Virginia International Raceway, and Laguna Seca.
All three continental series fed into the Jerez World Final, where class champions from each region competed for global honors. One report indicates that Schandorff and Target Racing went on to win the 2019 World Final at Jerez as well, which would make the Middle East title not just a pre-season warm-up but the opening chapter of a genuinely dominant campaign.
That possibility circles back to the central question the Middle East series posed every February: which team would arrive ready to win from the very first lap of the year? In 2019, Target Racing answered it so emphatically that the rest of the field spent the global season chasing a standard set under the Abu Dhabi floodlights before spring had even arrived.
