Target Racing’s Breakthrough Win at Nürburgring
Kevin Rossel and Alberto di Folco gave Target Racing its first Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe victory in Race 2 at the Nürburgring, and they earned it the hard way: absorbing a post-race time penalty and still holding enough margin to keep the trophy. Starting third on the grid following Friday’s second qualifying session, the pair needed to manufacture track position rather than defend it. The way they did so, through a calculated opening-lap move, a late pit stop, and relentless tire management in the closing laps, offered a textbook example of how the Super Trofeo’s one-make format rewards strategy over raw machinery.
Di Folco handled the opening gambit. He jumped Oregon Team’s Dorian Boccolacci into Turn 1 on the first lap, slotting into second behind pole-sitter Loris Spinelli of Van der Horst Motorsport. That single corner defined the race. By moving into clean air behind Spinelli rather than fighting through midfield traffic, di Folco preserved his Hankook tires and kept the gap to the leader manageable while the pit window approached.
The Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe series, which began in 2009, remains one of the few international one-make championships built around a dedicated, non-street-legal race car. Every entry runs the same Huracán Super Trofeo EVO, so the margins come down to driver skill, team preparation, and exactly the kind of tactical decisions that played out at the Nürburgring.
The Strategy: Early Aggression, Late Tire Management
The 50-minute race format with a mandatory pit window opening at the 20-minute mark creates a specific tactical puzzle. Pit early, and the second driver gets fresh concentration but potentially more traffic. Pit late, and the opening driver can build a buffer, but the closing driver inherits degraded tires and less time to recover if anything goes wrong.
Target Racing chose the late approach. While Leipert Motorsport’s Marcus Påverud and several others ducked into the pits the moment the window opened, di Folco stayed out, managing the gap to his pursuers. Rossel then took over in the final minutes of the pit window. That late stop meant Rossel’s Hankooks were comparatively fresher for the closing laps, but it also meant the team needed a fast, clean driver change.
The change was not entirely clean. Target Racing received a 1.041-second post-race penalty for a pit-stop time infringement. In a series where races frequently end with gaps measured in tenths, that penalty could have been fatal. Rossel’s tire management during his stint, keeping the car fast enough to build a buffer while nursing rubber that was, in his words, “pretty much finished by the end,” proved to be the difference.
“It was a really good, but also quite difficult race. The tyres were pretty much finished by the end, so it was a case of managing them and the gap we had to second place.” Kevin Rossel said after the race.
The real battle on track turned out to be for second. Raul Guzman chased down Kevin Gilardoni, who had swapped with Boccolacci during the Oregon Team pit stop, through the closing laps, but Gilardoni held firm. Both Boccolacci and Gilardoni collected their first Super Trofeo podium, while Guzman and his team-mate Miloš Pavlović added more points to their championship tally.
Championship Implications and the Rest of the Field
Pavlović and Guzman lead the Pro standings with 49 points after the Nürburgring weekend. Dean Stoneman sits nine points behind in second, a remarkable position considering Bonaldi Motorsport started Race 2 from the back of the grid after a driveshaft failure in qualifying. Stoneman’s team-mate Kikko Galbiati gained seven positions on the opening lap alone, and Stoneman carried that momentum to finish seventh overall. Di Folco and Rossel, with their maiden victory, now sit just ten points off the lead in third, placing them firmly in the championship conversation heading into the second half of the calendar.
In Pro-Am, VS Racing’s Karol Basz again took the class win after a strong closing stint, while Massimo Mantovani backed up his Race 1 Am category victory with another class win in Race 2, finishing a striking 12th overall. That kind of cross-class competitiveness is one of the things that makes the Super Trofeo format genuinely interesting to watch: a skilled Am driver in the right car can mix it with Pro entries on raw pace.
VS Racing’s Olli Kangas completed both races after an accident in Friday practice left him with a bruised right ankle. For a gentleman driver absorbing the forces of a race-spec Huracán through an injured joint, finishing both races cleanly counts as a result in itself.
The Huracán Super Trofeo EVO as a Proving Ground
Races like the Nürburgring weekend illustrate why the Huracán Super Trofeo EVO remains central to Lamborghini’s motorsport ecosystem. A dedicated, race-ready machine derived from the road-going Huracán and stripped of any pretense of street legality, it succeeded the Gallardo as the featured car in the Super Trofeo series. Across more than a decade of competition, the platform has accumulated an enormous body of data on tire behavior, aerodynamic tuning, and driver development. Autoblog recently featured a 2020 example with just 84 miles on the clock listed on Bring a Trailer, a reminder that these cars carry real collector interest even outside the racing paddock.
For Lamborghini’s Squadra Corse division, the Super Trofeo series serves a purpose beyond entertainment. It functions as the entry point in a motorsport ladder. Drivers who prove themselves in the one-make series can progress toward GT3 competition, and the engineering lessons from thousands of racing laps feed directly into Lamborghini’s broader competition programs. The strategic thinking that won Target Racing its first trophy at the Nürburgring, the tire management, the pit-window calculus, the opening-lap positioning, is precisely the skill set that translates when drivers and teams step up to longer, more complex GT3 endurance formats.
From Super Trofeo to GT3: Lamborghini’s Evolving Racing Strategy
That pipeline matters more now than it did in 2020, because the next rung on the ladder looks very different. The Temerario GT3 is Lamborghini’s first competition car fully designed, developed, and built in-house at Sant’Agata Bolognese. Where the Huracán GT3 relied on external partnerships, the Temerario GT3 represents Squadra Corse taking full ownership of the development process. According to one report, the car uses an adapted version of the Temerario road car’s aluminum spaceframe and a re-engineered 4-liter twin-turbo V8 optimized for GT3 regulations, with testing underway since the summer of 2025.
Lamborghini aims for the Temerario GT3 to become its new flagship GT car, building on the extensive success of the Huracán GT3 program. For buyers and teams evaluating their next platform commitment, the Super Trofeo series remains the logical starting point: lower costs than GT3, a controlled competitive environment, and direct access to Squadra Corse’s technical support infrastructure.
The 2020 Super Trofeo Europe season continued with rounds at Barcelona, Spa-Francorchamps, and Circuit Paul Ricard following the Nürburgring. For di Folco and Rossel, that breakthrough victory put them within striking distance of the championship lead. For Lamborghini, each of those weekends generated exactly the kind of competitive data and driver development that feeds into the next generation of racing machinery now taking shape in Sant’Agata.
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