A Near-Perfect Weekend at Zolder
On April 22, 2013, Peter Kox and Stefan Rosina drove the brand-new Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 FL2 to its first victory in the FIA GT Championship, crossing the line at Zolder just 0.448 seconds ahead of the Belgian Audi Club Team WRT Audi R8 LMS ultra of Stefan Ortelli and Laurens Vanthoor. The win capped a weekend that came agonizingly close to perfection: pole position on Saturday, a second-place finish in the qualifying race after Rosina lost rear grip late in his stint, and then a dominant display in Sunday’s 39-lap main event.
Kox built a lead of six seconds during his opening stint before pit stops compressed the gap, handing Rosina a defensive battle against Vanthoor for the final laps. The Slovakian held on. The field included eight different supercar marques, from McLaren to Ferrari, and featured names like eight-time World Rally Champion Sébastien Loeb and former Formula One driver Ricardo Zonta. Beating that caliber of opposition on the car’s debut outing told Lamborghini something it needed to hear: the FL2 worked.
“We are delighted with this impressive win yesterday, achieved in the face of significant competition. Although we have had quiet confidence in the results of the collaboration between Reiter and our own motorsports department, it is worth little until we have validated the Gallardo GT3 FL2 on the race track.”
, Maurizio Reggiani, Director of R&D and Head of Motorsport, Automobili Lamborghini
Validation, Not Just Victory
Reggiani’s words deserve a second reading because they reveal how Lamborghini viewed this result internally. The company was not celebrating a lucky podium. It was confirming that years of engineering collaboration with Reiter Engineering, the German motorsport specialist that had been developing Lamborghini race cars independently since 2000, could produce a genuinely competitive GT3 platform when backed by factory resources.
The Gallardo GT3 FL2 was developed in cooperation with Reiter Engineering and based on the 2013-model-year Gallardo. Lamborghini says the FL2 received “24-hour” brakes, improved engine cooling, and reduced fuel consumption, all refinements aimed at endurance reliability rather than outright qualifying pace. For GT3 competition, the car was converted to rear-wheel drive, shedding the road car’s all-wheel-drive system in favor of the balance and weight savings required by the regulations. One source reports that earlier Gallardo GT3 variants used a dry-sump quad-cam 5.2-liter V10 producing around 520 bhp, channeled through a Holinger six-speed sequential paddle-shifter, with a race weight of approximately 1,238 kg.
The deeper significance lay in context. One source reports that Gallardo GT3 cars collectively achieved 199 wins and 350 podium finishes between 2007 and 2013, but those results came largely through privateer efforts and Reiter’s independent operation. The FL2 represented a deeper factory commitment, and Zolder proved that commitment could translate into results at the highest level of GT racing.
The Squadra Corse Connection
The timing of this victory matters more than the margin. In 2013, the same year the Gallardo GT3 FL2 won at Zolder, Lamborghini established Squadra Corse as a dedicated motorsport division. That organizational step formalized what the Zolder weekend demonstrated: Lamborghini intended to compete systematically, not sporadically.
Before Squadra Corse, Lamborghini’s racing efforts relied heavily on external partners and customer teams. The results were often impressive, but the structure lacked the centralized engineering feedback loop that Ferrari and Porsche maintained through their own factory motorsport programs. Squadra Corse changed that equation, giving Lamborghini a single point of coordination for GT3 development, the Super Trofeo one-make series, and eventually the kind of factory-supported GT racing campaigns that would carry the Huracán GT3 to major endurance victories around the world.
Through that lens, Zolder reads less like a standalone result and more like a proof of concept. Reggiani and his team could point to a debut win against Audi, Ferrari, and McLaren as evidence that Lamborghini’s approach worked. For an organization still building its case internally, that kind of evidence carries weight.
From Gallardo to Temerario: A Racing Lineage
The line from Zolder to today’s GT3 grid runs through three generations of V10-powered race cars. The Gallardo GT3 FL2 gave way to the Huracán GT3, which became one of the most successful customer racing platforms in GT3 history. Squadra Corse refined its engineering process with each iteration, building the kind of institutional knowledge that only comes from sustained commitment.
With the Temerario GT3 on the horizon as Lamborghini’s next customer racing weapon, the brand faces a different kind of transition. The Temerario’s twin-turbo V8 hybrid architecture represents a fundamental departure from the naturally aspirated V10 that defined both the Gallardo and Huracán racing programs. For teams and drivers who built their programs around the characteristics of those V10 cars, adapting to a new powerband, different weight distribution, and turbo management in wheel-to-wheel racing will require a reset.
Multiple enthusiast communities describe the Gallardo GT3 as a rewarding but demanding car to drive, with owners and sim racers alike noting its late-braking character and the way it rewards driver commitment over electronic intervention. Whether the Temerario GT3 preserves that raw quality while adding hybrid complexity remains one of the more interesting open questions in customer racing.
What Zolder proved in 2013 still applies: Lamborghini’s motorsport credibility depends on debut results. The Gallardo GT3 FL2 answered that question emphatically. The Temerario GT3 will face the same test, with higher stakes and a more crowded grid. The foundation for that challenge was poured on a Belgian circuit twelve years ago, when Rosina refused to look in his mirrors and held on for the win.
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