Q&A With Lamborghini’s Chris Ward on Super Trofeo Season

Photo: Jamey Price/Lamborghini

With new teams, drivers and further stability in the championship, the fifth season of Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America is set to kick off this weekend at Circuit of The Americas, as part of IMSA’s first standalone weekend at the world-class facility.

Sportscar365 caught up with Chris Ward, Senior Manager, Motorsport for Automobili Lamborghini America for insight into the year ahead in Super Trofeo.

What are your thoughts on the overall entry for this weekend at COTA?

“Overall, I’m pleased. There’s a lot of teams with multi-car entries, which shows good health in the business case of Super Trofeo.

“We lost a couple of cars with testing incidents last week, so that was a shame. But the paddock feels healthy and strong. The grid count, when I compare it to last year, has grown. So we’re very happy.

“I was at VIR last weekend and had a lot of interesting conversations on [Pirelli World Challenge] teams wanting to come over to Super Trofeo, maybe even after our first round.”

Are you pleased to see the growth in Pro class entries for this year?

“I’m really pleased at the balance of the number of cars that are in each class this year.

“Obviously having very stout driver lineups in the Pro class across multiple entries is just great for the championship, the spectators and will only draw more talented drivers to the series in the future, which I’m looking forward to.”

There’s also been an increase in female drivers, which coincides with a new Lamborghini initiative…

“Yes. As we look forward in future years to the expansion of the Lamborghini brand into additional model lines, there is an initiative to attract more female buyers to the brand.

“Squadra Corse believes that an initiative to support that would be to have female drivers in our championships, not only in Super Trofeo, but also in GTD in the future.

“We’re excited about that. We’ve got some top-level female drivers, some of the best in North American sports car and open-wheel racing joining us. We’re really excited for it and there could be more in the future.”

Can we expect a similar level of continuity in the schedule for 2018?

“Without anticipating anything, I’d like to shake a couple of things up for next year. This would be our third consecutive year of virtually the same tracks.

“We’re looking at options for next year. But we’ll take input from our customers on where they want to run.

“But at the end of the day, we can’t beat the format that we’ve got right now. And obviously going over to the famed Imola circuit for our World Final will be very exciting for everybody.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John