A Maiden Victory Forged in Chaos at Spa-Francorchamps
Yuki Nemoto and Olli Kangas of VS Racing scored their first Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe victory in the second race at Spa-Francorchamps on October 24, 2020, and the way they got it tells you everything about why strategy, not just speed, decides one-make races on a 7-kilometer Belgian circuit in late October. The 50-minute sprint was interrupted by a safety car, restarted, then stopped entirely by a red flag after a multi-car collision between La Source and Eau Rouge sent one driver to the hospital. The result was declared 15 minutes early, and the #6 Huracán Super Trofeo EVO crossed the line first because VS Racing’s pit wall made a single, decisive call at exactly the right moment.
Kangas started the race and spent the opening laps navigating greasy track conditions that made braking zones treacherous. Lamborghini says the team brought Kangas in for the mandatory driver swap just as the pit window opened, while a safety car was already deployed. That decision vaulted Nemoto, a former Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia competitor, ahead of the field’s leaders, who still needed to make their own stops. By the time the race restarted, the #6 car sat in clean air at the front. It was a win built not on outright pace but on reading the race better than anyone else on pit lane.
The Strategic Masterstroke: Timing the Safety Car
To appreciate why this single call mattered so much, consider the mechanics of a mandatory pit window in a one-make sprint race. Every car must stop within a designated window to swap drivers. Pit under green-flag racing and you lose roughly 30 seconds or more to the cars still circulating at full speed. Pit under a safety car, when the entire field is lapping slowly behind the pace car, and you lose almost nothing.
Karol Basz, who started from pole in the sister VS Racing #16 car, had built a lead of nearly 12 seconds before the stops. That gap evaporated the instant the safety car came out. Emir Keserovic’s Konrad Motorsport Huracán lost control under braking at Les Combes, snapping left into the barriers before coming to rest in the escape road. Keserovic climbed out unharmed, but the recovery operation neutralized the race through the entire pit window.
VS Racing’s pit wall reacted fastest. Kangas came in immediately, Nemoto went out, and the team effectively served its mandatory stop for free. Basz’s co-driver Andrzej Lewandowski rejoined behind Nemoto after the #16 car pitted later in the window. A 12-second advantage, built over multiple green-flag laps, dissolved into a net loss because of when, not how, the stop was made. In Super Trofeo racing, where every car runs the same Huracán ST Evo chassis and V10 engine, strategy is one of the few genuine differentiators. Spa delivered a textbook example.
Spa’s Gauntlet: Greasy Tracks, Crashes, and a Red Flag
Nemoto led the field away at the restart, but the race barely had time to go green again. On the straight between La Source and Eau Rouge, three cars ran side by side: Jonathan Cecotto, Kevin Gilardoni, and Raul Guzman. Lamborghini says the slightest contact pitched Guzman’s #41 Target Racing car into the barriers. The impact was severe enough to trigger a red flag.
Guzman was transferred to the circuit medical center and then to a hospital in Liège with a suspected broken left tibia. The barrier damage was too extensive for a quick repair, so race control declared the result with roughly 15 minutes still on the clock. Because cars had completed less than 75 percent of the scheduled distance, half points were awarded.
Kangas, speaking after the race, was candid about the conditions: the braking points were damp, grip was inconsistent, and survival was the primary objective during his opening stint. Nemoto acknowledged the luck involved but credited the team’s pit-wall decision as the turning point. Both drivers expressed concern for Guzman, and the muted celebration reflected the reality of a win earned partly through another driver’s misfortune.
Spa in late October is a known variable. The circuit sits in the Ardennes forest at elevation, where microclimates can produce rain on one sector while another stays dry. Greasy surfaces at the start gave way to a drying line mid-race, reshuffling the competitive order as drivers on different tire strategies found or lost grip. Dean Stoneman of Bonaldi Motorsport, who had been the closest challenger to Basz in the early laps, adapted well to the drying conditions and moved from third to second before the safety car compressed the field. He ultimately finished third, collecting 7.5 half-points that narrowed his gap to championship leader Gilardoni.
Championship Shake-Up: Penalties, Points, and the Road to Paul Ricard
The stewards’ post-race decisions reshaped the standings more than the on-track action did. Cecotto and his co-driver Patrick Liddy were disqualified from the results entirely. Guzman and his teammate Miloš Pavlović received a 10-second penalty for their involvement in the La Source incident, dropping them out of the top 10. For Gilardoni, who entered the weekend as points leader, the collision and its consequences were a significant blow. Stoneman closed to within 7.5 points heading into the season finale.
The Pro-Am title fight, by contrast, ended quietly. Basz and Lewandowski’s second-place finish gave them enough points to clinch the Pro-Am championship a round early. Their margin over Leipert Motorsport’s Elias Niskanen and Mikko Eskelinen exceeded the 32 points still available across the final two races. It was a clinical title defense wrapped inside a race that was anything but.
Imperiale Racing’s Hans Fabri claimed his fifth Lamborghini Cup class victory of the season, effectively locking down that championship. Ray Calvin of Konrad Motorsport won his second consecutive LB Cup race. In the Am class, Yury Wagner and Fidel Leib closed the gap to points leader Massimo Mantovani despite racing with a broken rear wing on their Leipert Motorsport car.
The 2020 season finale was set for Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet on the weekend of November 13 to 15, with the Pro Cup title and several class battles still unresolved. Yet the story of this Spa round was already written: the team that read the race best walked away with the trophy, while the fastest car on track settled for second.
The Huracán ST Evo as Lamborghini’s Motorsport Foundation
One-make racing series live or die on the quality of the car underneath them, and the Huracán Super Trofeo EVO earned its reputation by being both fast enough to thrill and robust enough to survive weekends like this one. The car is purpose-built for the series, not street-legal, and shares its naturally aspirated V10 with the road-going Huracán while running a stripped, caged racing chassis with aggressive aerodynamics. The large rear wing and prominent front splitter generate the downforce needed to push through Spa’s high-speed sweepers, while the spec nature of the series ensures that driver skill and team strategy, not engineering budgets, determine the outcome.
That spec formula is precisely what made VS Racing’s pit-wall gamble so decisive. When every car produces the same power and runs the same aero package, the margins shrink to the point where a single well-timed call under a safety car can overturn a 12-second deficit. The Super Trofeo, which one source traces back to 2009, functions as a proving ground for drivers aiming to move into GT3 competition. Nemoto’s background in Super Trofeo Asia before competing in Europe illustrates the pathway. As Lamborghini transitions its customer racing program from the Huracán GT3 EVO2 to the upcoming Temerario GT3, which Autoblog described as the brand’s first competition car fully designed and built in-house, the Super Trofeo series becomes even more important as the entry point for drivers and teams building toward that next platform.
Ferrari and Porsche run their own one-make ladder systems, and the competitive health of these feeder series directly affects the depth of talent and team commitment at the GT3 level. A race like this Spa round, with its chaos, its strategic complexity, and its genuine consequences for drivers’ careers and bodies, demonstrates that the Super Trofeo is producing real racers, not just wealthy hobbyists doing parade laps.
What Spa’s Wild Race Tells Us About Super Trofeo’s Value
Strip this race down to its essentials and you find every element that makes one-make racing compelling compressed into roughly 35 minutes of actual green-flag running. A pole-sitter built a dominant lead that strategy erased. A team exploited a safety car with surgical precision. A multi-car collision serious enough to hospitalize a driver ended the race early. Post-race penalties moved drivers up and down the standings after everyone had already packed up. And a maiden winner freely admitted that luck played a role.
The practical lesson for anyone considering the Super Trofeo as a competitive entry point into Lamborghini motorsport: the series rewards preparation, adaptability, and having a pit wall that can make fast decisions under pressure. Raw speed matters, but Basz proved that you can be the fastest car on track and still lose when circumstances shift. The teams that thrive in this environment tend to be the ones that move into GT3 programs with real operational maturity.
Nemoto and Kangas did not dominate this race. They survived it, made one brilliant call, and took the checkered flag. In a 50-minute sprint on a greasy, incident-strewn Spa-Francorchamps, that was enough. The 2020 season still had its finale at Paul Ricard to sort out the Pro Cup championship, but for VS Racing’s #6 crew, the story of Spa was already complete: the right call, the right moment, and a result that no amount of raw pace could have guaranteed.
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