Getting to Know: Ugo de Wilde

The traditional season-closing Lamborghini World Finals have been a staple of the Lamborghini Squadra Corse racing calendar for the past 11 years and, next weekend, Jerez de la Frontera will again play host to the event every Super Trofeo driver wants to win.

But while most of the attention will be centred on the final rounds of the European, North American and Asian campaigns and the World Finals themselves, a select group of young drivers will be keeping one eye firmly on a much bigger prize.

The Lamborghini Young Driver shootout.

Taking place across the 18-19 November at the Spanish circuit, the shootout is divided into two separate segments. The first is dedicated to the Super Trofeo Young Drivers, from which the winner will go on to receive a funded drive in GT3 machinery for 2025. The second shootout is for the GT3 Junior Drivers from the 2024 season: following the assessment, the winner will be further ingrained into the Lamborghini Squadra Corse pool of professional drivers.

One driver particularly keen to make an impression in the shootout is current Lamborghini GT3 Junior Driver, Ugo de Wilde. The 21-year-old Belgian shone in the Super Trofeo Young Driver shootout last year, winning it along with Marzio Moretti, and is now aiming to consolidate his foothold in the upper echelons of GT racing.

“I enjoyed it a lot,” begins De Wilde. “In 2023 when I was doing Super Trofeo, we had all the driver meetings after each practice and qualifying and we had Loris [Spinelli] who was giving us a lot of useful information.

“We learnt a lot about our driving styles, analysing what we are doing. This year it was a bit different, but we still have to write reports after each weekend, and we are still assessed. It’s always good to have a link with the manufacturer as you are able to get the feedback you need, and this helps you improve as a driver.”

Immersed in the Young Driver Program last season, De Wilde soon turned heads both in and out of the car, excelling in the physical fitness tests at the state-of-the-art gym facilities at the Lamborghini headquarters in Sant’Agata Bolognese. Come the shootout at Vallelunga itself, De Wilde cemented his position as one of the standout drivers of the year.

The Huracán GT3 EVO2 that De Wilde has piloted throughout the season in Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup with Imperiale Racing is, like most GT3 cars, an imposing machine and certainly not for the faint-hearted. Producing consistent lap-times and making the right decisions at the right times, often in the most punishing physical environments, is what makes a good GT3 driver a great driver.

It's for this reason that De Wilde prioritises physical and mental fitness training almost as much as driving itself.

“In 2024, I have been doing sprint races so my training changed a bit to suit that, so I did a lot more cardio sprints in which I really have to run really fast, but I also want to do endurance racing in the future, so it’s important that you are able to last two or three hours in the car, maybe only get one hour of sleep and then go again.

“I have a personal coach back in Belgium who gives me a programme to follow, I’m training basically every day. Sometimes, I take one day off because it is really tiring and it’s also important to listen to your body and recover.

“Specifically for the GT car, I had to work a lot on my leg strength because you really have to brake hard. It’s not that I was struggling that much before, but in endurance racing you start to have cramps if you are not prepared enough. And then I am also training my neck muscles a lot to deal with the high g-forces we get in the car.

“But, for me, mental fitness is something that is really underrated as well in high-level sports, especially motorsports. Almost all racing drivers have a big ego, we think we are the fastest and the best and there is a tendency to think we are coping mentally but to me this is a big mistake.

“There is a lot you can do to make sure you are managing your emotions, to make sure you are confident and keep the concentration during races, like for example when you have a difficult moment, and you lose some places. You need to be able to refocus your mind and forget about what just happened as quickly as possible.”

Beyond the physical and mental preparation, De Wilde also gets to work long before a race weekend too. He’s a driver coach and instructor which means analysing circuits and his own driving comes naturally.

“I am really, really into the technical side of things too, the debriefs and everything. I am one of those drivers who works a lot between each event. Obviously, I am working on the physical and mental part but also on the driving part, I spend a lot of time on the simulator, watching onboards and data to try and squeeze everything I can so that when I arrive at a track, I already know which gears I will use, where I will brake.

“This is something I need to be able to perform at my best level, I need to feel more than ready, to deliver, and during the weekend I also spend a lot of time working with my engineers to find the small things and be very methodical.

“With my coaching, I am still learning a lot too. I use my experience to help those who are just starting off in racing. But what is interesting is that this year I am coaching drivers who are young and already fast, and I noticed that I was able to pick up some tips to help my own preparation [for a GT3 race at Imola two weeks later].

“What we worked on together, I could apply to my own race weekend because I saw that it worked. The braking points, what gears to use, so all the preparation I usually do, I learnt from my driver which was cool.”

These elements go hand in hand with what the Lamborghini Young Driver shootout is all about. It’s clear that De Wilde is destined for great things in the future: he’s part of a new crop of drivers that are physically, mentally and professionally preparing themselves for an established career in motorsport.

Keep following Lamborghini Squadra Corse’s social media channels to discover who will become the winners of the 2024 Lamborghini Young Driver Program shootouts in the coming weeks.