The new Lamborghini Temerario GT3 car was outperformed by its own predecessor on the same weekend, on the same circuit. That in itself shows that persisting with it could wreck Lamborghini’s customer programme, two of DTM’s biggest teams, and the level of competition within the championship.
The most damning verdict on Lamborghini’s new Temerario GT3 was not delivered by a journalist, a rival team principal, or even a stopwatch. It was delivered by the car the Temerario was built to replace.
While the Temerario spent the DTM season opener at the Red Bull Ring running its own private race at the back of the field, the outgoing Huracán GT3 won the ADAC GT Masters support event on the same weekend, on the same circuit. A car Lamborghini has officially moved on from beat the car Lamborghini has officially moved on to. That is not a teething problem. That is a verdict.
Sant’Agata should be paying attention. So far, there is little evidence that anyone there knows what to do.
A debut that flattered nobody
Mirko Bortolotti, the 2024 DTM champion and the most accomplished factory driver Lamborghini has, finished Sunday’s race 16th. He was more than 36 seconds adrift over 37 laps. That is roughly a second a lap, a deficit so large that the Balance of Performance (BoP) system, designed precisely to neutralise differences between cars, has not come close to absorbing it. Comtoyou Aston Martin’s Nicolas Baert, a perfectly respectable driver but still yet to prove his place at the top, lapped six-tenths a lap quicker.
“The gap is simply huge,” Bortolotti told Motorsport-Total. He has not been speaking like a man who expects miracles.
Drivers, of course, have to keep their public verdicts measured. Factory contracts, sponsor obligations, and the politics of a manufacturer in crisis all conspire to soften what gets said into a microphone. However, finding a Temerario driver who genuinely likes the car right now has roughly the same odds as the car finishing on the podium this season. What gets said in the garage and what gets said on camera are rarely the same sentence. The picture worsens once you understand that the Red Bull Ring, with its long straights and unusually high asphalt temperatures last weekend, is one of the kinder venues on the calendar for a car this flawed.
Had the season opened at Oschersleben, with its 14 corners and heavy braking demands, the humiliation would have been considerably more public. The Temerario struggles under braking. It refuses to rotate. Its suspension generates too little mechanical grip. Its ABS and traction control systems are not yet mature. The teams received the car late, after a development programme that was already running behind schedule, without a functioning baseline setup.
Speaking to Motorsport-Magazin, Abt Sportsline boss Thomas Biermaier did not bother to soften his verdict. “We are effectively running our own one-make cup back there, and that should not be the case. That is an absolute no-go.” When a team principal publicly calls his own situation unacceptable after round one, the cavalry is no longer riding to the rescue. It is asking for directions.
BoP cannot save this car
The standard reflex when a GT3 car arrives off the pace is to wait for BoP to do its work. That route is, in this case, almost entirely closed. The Lamborghini Temerario already runs at the lower weight limit. Its ride height has been reduced almost as far as the regulations allow. More boost pressure remains technically available, but extra top speed only forces drivers to brake earlier, and braking is precisely where the car loses time. The minor tweaks introduced for Sunday read more like a public relations gesture than a genuine fix.
The deeper trap is the FIA homologation rule book. Once a GT3 car is homologated, its development is frozen, and a meaningful Evo update cannot be introduced for two years unless it concerns safety. A proper revision is therefore out of reach until 2028. Two full seasons of running a car that, in its current form, cannot fight even for the midfield. Two full seasons of selling that car to gentleman drivers and customer teams.
The exit ramp exists, but it closes quickly
Withdrawing the Lamborghini Temerario and reverting to the Huracán for 2026 sounds extreme. It is not. Article 13.10 of the DTM Sporting Regulations expressly permits a change of vehicle make, vehicle type, or homologation after the first technical inspection of the season, provided the GT Committee approves it in writing. The mechanism is right there in the rule book. What it requires is a formal decision, made quickly, and the willingness to absorb a short, sharp loss of face in exchange for not turning Lamborghini into the running joke of every GT3 paddock for the next two years.
The case for taking that exit ramp grows stronger the longer one looks. Lamborghini insiders quoted by Motorsport-Total say the Sant’Agata operation lacks the people or in-house competence to fix the car at the pace the situation demands. Factory drivers tested the Temerario for the first time in mid-October 2025 at Le Castellet and reportedly raised the alarm immediately. The same problems reappeared at the DTM tests in Vallelunga in March. Nothing material has changed. The car arrived in Spielberg in essentially the state its drivers had warned about six months earlier.
Nobody is holding the wheel
Some of that paralysis becomes easier to understand once the leadership picture is laid out. Long-time motorsport boss Giorgio Sanna left two years ago after an internal investigation. Rouven Mohr, who had been steadying the motorsport division, has since been promoted to Audi’s technical chief and is now occupied at the group level. Andrea Reggiani only took over as Lamborghini’s new motorsport boss at the start of April. He was in Spielberg, but he is still forming a picture of the operation he has inherited. There is, in effect, nobody whose job has been gripping this problem for any length of time.
What is actually at stake
The damage will not be confined to Lamborghini’s image or its plans to sell the Temerario to customer teams. Grasser Racing Team and Abt Sportsline depend on sponsors, and sponsors depend on results. Two of the most established names in the DTM cannot survive two seasons of finishing last on merit.
The DTM itself cannot afford to lose them. Lamborghini, alongside Mercedes-AMG, is one of only two manufacturers fielding two teams and four cars. Strip those four entries from the grid, and the field drops to 17. That is too thin for a championship that markets itself as the premier GT3 series in the world.
Lamborghini has a rule book that lets it act, a precedent car that has just won a race, two customer teams begging for relief, and a championship that needs the headcount. The only thing it does not have is time. Pulling the Temerario will hurt for a fortnight. Persisting with it will hurt for two years, and the bill will not be paid by Sant’Agata alone.
