In front of a packed grandstand, the 2023 Lamborghini World Finals crowned the remaining world champions this afternoon, those of the PRO and PRO-AM classes. Race 2 on the Vallelunga track outside of Rome was rather low-key until the restart, which took place 6 minutes from the end. At that point a sort of wild west was unleashed in which the quickest and best driver was the Italian Luca Segù.
The driver of the Lamborghini Roma by DL Racing team fired off a succession of spectacular laps to overtake Amaury Bonduel, Andrzey Lewandowski, Oliver Söderström and Alex Au in succession; the Belgian made his daring passing moves just a few kilometres from the end and went on to deservedly take the win in the 50-minute race.
Behind him, Söderström managed to take home a good second place, ahead of the new Lamborghini PRO world champion, Amaury Bonduel. Söderström tried to undermine the Frenchman in the final laps by finishing ahead of him, but the bottom step of the podium was enough for the 24-year-old to win the title.
Artem Petrov came close to the podium after narrowly overtaking Brendon Leitch, driver of the Leipert Motorsport team. Leitch had a chance to overtake Bonduel in the final laps of the race, just before Segù put the hammers down, but the BDR Competition driver simply proved to be too strong this weekend.
Mattia Michelotto finished sixth but was unlucky when he made a mistake with two laps to go when he took out his VDS teammate, Andrzej Lewandowski. The Pole was fighting with Frederik Schandorff and Alex Au for the victory of the PRO-AM world title, together with Italian Loris Spinelli, but the contact with Michelotto put an end to any remaining slim hopes of success.
As a result, the crew of the Target Racing team took home the title after having set pole and victory in Race 1 yesterday. An epilogue which, given the performances achieved in these two days at Vallelunga, deservedly rewarded the fastest and most consistent crew of Au and Schandorff with the category title.
Ugo De Wilde and Rodrigo Testa (Iron Lynx) finished in ninth place ahead of youngster Riccardo Ianniello (DL Consulting), while the Top 10 was completed by Sebastian Balthasar and Marzio Moretti (Team Oregon).
Of note was the incident for Slade Stewart which occurred after just one lap. The Flying Lizards team driver was hit and ended up against the wall, clearly damaging the front of his Huracan. The incident resulted in the first of the two occasions in the race when the Safety Car was deployed.
The second occasion was following the incident involving Lorenzo Pegoraro (Enrico Bettera's teammate with Oregon), who ended up crashing into the barriers in turn 10.
As the 2023 Lamborghini World Finals race weekend drew to a close, it was confirmed that the event to decide the world champions of the Sant'Agata Bolognese manufacturer’s one-make Super Trofeo series in 2024 will be held at Jerez de la Frontera (Spain) from 21 to 24 November.
