Penalties, a Safety Car, and a Home Win: VS Racing’s Spa Super Trofeo Victory Was Earned the Hard Way

VS Racing Takes Spa: A Win Built on Pressure, Not Comfort

Mattia Michelotto and Gilles Stadsbader drove the #6 Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2 to victory in the opening race of the 2023 Lamborghini Super Trofeo Europe round at Spa-Francorchamps on June 30, marking their second win of the season and moving the VS Racing pairing into the points lead. The result sounds clean enough on paper. It was anything but.

A pit-stop time penalty, a late safety car bunching the field with roughly seven minutes remaining, and a Belgian co-driver carrying the weight of a home crowd’s expectations all conspired to make this a race that could have unraveled at half a dozen points. That it held together speaks to the caliber of driving the Super Trofeo Pro class now demands.

Brendon Leitch (Leipert Motorsport) finished second after the #12 Boutsen VDS entry of Thomas Laurent and Adam Eteki was hit with a drivethrough penalty, while Iron Lynx’s Ugo de Wilde and Rodrigo Testa de Sousa completed the podium. Michelotto collected the Hankook Fastest Lap Award for good measure.

The Opening Stint: Michelotto Builds a Cushion

Michelotto defended pole position cleanly at La Source against a lunge from Pro-Am polesitter Frederik Schandorff, then set about making the first stint count. The #81 Target Racing car went wheel to wheel with Laurent approaching Eau Rouge, ran wide, and eventually settled into third. Behind them, VS Racing’s Pro-Am entry driven by Loris Spinelli picked off Schandorff and then Laurent to claim second.

By the time the mandatory pit window opened, Michelotto had stretched his advantage to over six seconds. That buffer proved critical, because the pit stops would cost nearly everyone something.

“I started well, and in the early stages I tried to gain a bit of an advantage. During my stint I managed the situation quite well,” Michelotto said after the race.

Pit-Stop Penalties Reshape the Race

Customer racing series live and die by their regulations, and at Spa the stewards enforced them without sentiment. Three leading cars received penalties for pit-stop infringements: Andrzej Lewandowski (who had taken over from Spinelli) and Eteki both drew drivethrough penalties, while Stadsbader was handed a 1.2-second addition to his final race time.

The drivethoughs effectively ended the Pro-Am challenge from the VS Racing sister car and scrambled the Boutsen VDS strategy. Stadsbader’s 1.2-second penalty was survivable, but it meant any margin he held at the finish would be artificially compressed. In a one-make series where the cars are mechanically identical, 1.2 seconds can be the difference between a trophy and an explanation.

This is the regulatory detail that defines the Super Trofeo. The series rewards clean execution as much as outright speed, and the pit-stop window is where races are frequently decided.

Stadsbader’s Home Defense: Eau Rouge Under Pressure

When an incident for the #14 Oregon Team Huracán of Enrico Bettera at the Fagnes chicane triggered a safety car with about seven minutes left, all of Michelotto’s carefully constructed gap evaporated. The field bunched up for a three-lap sprint to the finish, and Stadsbader found himself staring down the Kemmel Straight with Eteki filling his mirrors.

Eteki attacked hard on the run toward Eau Rouge. Stadsbader held position. Behind them, Leitch used the slipstream down the Kemmel Straight to challenge Eteki into Les Combes, and the two went side by side before Eteki kept second on the road. Leitch then fended off Testa de Sousa and Amaury Bonduel (BDR Competition) exiting Speaker’s Corner, holding third on track before being promoted to second once Eteki’s drivethrough penalty was applied.

“I had quite a lot of nerves at the restart because we also had the penalty of one second as well, but thankfully we held on for the win,” Stadsbader admitted afterward, adding that winning in Belgium in front of friends, family, and sponsors was “more than I could even dream of.”

Cedric Wauters (TotaalPlan Racing) finished fourth on his Super Trofeo debut, and the #33 Rebelleo Motorsport entry of Abbie Eaton and Daan Arrow rounded out the top five.

Class Winners: Pro-Am Drama, Am Consistency, and Lamborghini Cup Chaos

The same pattern of penalties reshaping results played out across every class. Iron Lynx’s Yelmer Buurman and Nigel Schoonderwoerd inherited the Pro-Am victory (finishing 10th overall) after the drivethrough penalties cleared the road ahead of them, while Schandorff and Alex Au claimed second after dropping positions during the stops but staying penalty-free. Rallycross convert Edgar Maloigne and Stephan Guerin earned a deserved podium for Arkadia Racing, with Lewandowski and Spinelli salvaging fourth.

In the Am class, Leipert Motorsport’s Gabriel Rindone took his second win of the season after newcomers Melvin Moh and Han Songting (also Leipert) led the early running but lost ground during pit stops.

The Lamborghini Cup delivered its own subplot. Brutal Fish Racing’s Charlie Martin led early from quadruple champion Gerard van der Horst, only for a drivethrough penalty to drop the #54 to seventh. Bonaldi Motorsport’s Paolo Biglieri and Petar Matić took the class win, with van der Horst promoted to third. The father-and-son pairing of Luciano and Donovan Privitelio recovered from a spin to finish fourth, which in a class this unpredictable counts as a strong result.

Why the Super Trofeo Still Matters in Lamborghini’s Motorsport Ladder

Races like this one illustrate why the Super Trofeo series remains central to Lamborghini’s competition identity. The championship started in 2009 with just eleven cars in a European-only field and grew to span three continents by 2013. According to one report, the 2015 World Finals fielded 84 cars across North America, Europe, and Asia, a scale that few manufacturer one-make series can match.

The Huracán Super Trofeo EVO2 sits at the heart of this ecosystem: a rear-wheel-drive, naturally aspirated V10 race car that strips away the road car’s all-wheel-drive system and forces drivers to manage throttle application with real consequence. Drivers learn racecraft here before stepping into GT3 or higher categories, and Squadra Corse uses the platform to develop both talent and operational expertise. The penalty-strewn chaos at Spa only reinforces the point: clean execution under pressure is the skill the series is designed to teach.

With Autoblog reporting that the Temerario GT3, Lamborghini’s first fully in-house competition car, debuted at the 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed, the question of how Lamborghini transitions its customer racing programs from the naturally aspirated Huracán platform to a twin-turbo hybrid architecture becomes increasingly relevant. The Super Trofeo series will likely need its own generational shift, and races like this Spa encounter serve as a reminder of how high the competitive standard already runs. Whatever replaces the EVO2 will need to match this level of drama and driver engagement, or the series risks losing what makes it worth watching.

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