Santino Ferrucci made his presence felt with an exciting victory in his Lamborghini Blancpain Super Trofeo North America debut at Circuit of the Americas on Thursday. Ferrucci, an 18-year-old American Haas F1 development driver, made his sports car debut this week after racing previously only in open-wheel cars. That didn’t stop him from earning a 9.172-second victory in the No. 77 Courtney Racing entry representing Lamborghini Broward over points leader Shinya Michimi in the extreme Texas heat.
“It was a beast to hold onto,” Ferrucci said. “But I enjoyed it. There’s nothing like having a fun race car when you’re running around a racetrack like this.”
Michimi’s second-place finish in the No. 1 Prestige Performance Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo LP 620-2 representing Lamborghini Paramus was his eighth overall podium finish of the season. The result helped Michimi extend his Pro Championship lead to 45 points, 126-81, with three rounds to go.
Michimi’s Prestige Performance teammates Craig Duerson and Trent Hindman rounded out the overall podium with a third-place finish in the No. 10 entry representing Lamborghini Paramus. The duo was also the top-finishing Pro-Am entry.
“Coming from qualifying, we had a little bit of understeer,” Ferrucci said. “So I was thinking, ‘All right, we start the race with understeer, and we go to oversteer.’ But it didn’t really account for the grip that the LMP guys were putting down. So you started loose, and I was just trying to manage the rear tire. I turned up the traction control a little bit. When Michimi got behind me, I thought, ‘All right, it’s time to go and start pushing.'”
