Original Confusing Story below:

Now before Audi AG send the lawyers after me, I’d just like to say that what follows is only my own personal opinion. I’m sure if you’re a fan-boi, you won’t even read this properly. Hell, I still get messages exclaiming disgust for how I must ‘hate’ Alfa Romeo, just because I had the audacity to say that a laptime boast delivered at a press conference isn’t the same as actually showing us the lap.

But now it appears that you might not even be able to show us a lap and have it believed. Why?

Well, let’s break it down.

DISCLAIMER: What follows, this ‘theory’ of mine isn’t unique at all. User JCViggen on Northloop.co.uk spotted it, so did a couple of my industry friends who’d rather not be named.

This theory that Lamborghini faked the laptime in the video HINGES on the fact that the overlay speedo displays of BOTH the Aventador SV and Huracan Performante videos are being fed by GPS data, NOT by wheelspeed. And that both speeds are ACCURATE.

If the post-processed digital dashboards were being fed by wheelspeed sensors (as per usual for a dashboard display) the inherent inaccuracy of measuring a groundspeed using a wheel that changes diameter with speed, temeperature and deflection, would register the following errors almost totally ‘within tolerance’.

Why do I think they’re GPS based? Simple both videos display ‘glitches’ in the speed readout shown on the post-processed ‘dashboard’. These glitches range from barely noticable to somewhat striking. GPS speed measuring from modern equipment is mighty impressive, but it still falls victim to trees, radio interference and ground reflections. Hence…

Two screenshots, both showing the tacho needle in the same position down to the pixel, and both showing very different speeds. Now it ‘could’ be wheelspin, and that would negate the next argument, but I believe it’s typical momentary GPS error. Here’s one from the Aventador too:

Notice how I left the full picture in this one, so you can see that the wheel speed is showing on the real-life dashboard, while the GPS one on the software is showing something else, even though the RPMs are the same.

And that’s important for what comes next…

I think Lamborghini didn’t publish an accurate video.

That’s my opinion. But it’s harder to prove it than say it. So here are the numbers taken from the two official Lamborghini videos. Working on the theory above, let’s presume that over this distance, from Gantry to Bridge, the distance of 1 mile means that the GPS speeds are very accurate (and presume they’ve not been inflated before being added to the video).

Yep, the Huracan reports a much slower speed, around 4.5% slower, while only being less than 1% slower when measuring the time.

When I last measured it, the gantry to bridge distance was about 1760metres, or a little over 1 mile. So then we can also calculate the speeds by measuring that distance.

Wait?! What’s this? The 750hp Aventador covers the distance at 291kmh, while the presumed 640hp Huracan covers it at 289kmh? By Lambo’s own figures, the GPS figures you can see on the screen, the Huracan should be 20kmh slower.

If the GPS speeds are correct, then that can only leave one logical conclusion: Lamborghini sped up the frame-rate of the video. Roughly, using those numbers above, I’d guess by nearly 5%. In other words, as a very simple example, you can make a 24fps version offline, and then play it at 25fps. So a 7m08s lap would look like a 6m52s lap. That’s a shoddy example, over simplified to make the point. Anybody with Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro will tell you; You can make any piece of video last as long as you want. You can interpolate frames, make new ones in between the existing ones, etc… but I digress!

The facts are clear enough to me. Either the GPS speedo is bullshit on the SV750 lap, or the Huracan laptime is bullshit.

One or the other. You choose…

P.S. I’m not the only one getting these figures: