The new, rear-wheel-drive, Huracan STO just drove past my office window. Like a big black and yellow insect, it swept past the glass in a flash of weird angles and reflections. Its 640hp V10 demurely burbling, barely audible over the heavy rain drops. Lamborghini, like a moth to the flame, have arrived at the Nürburgring once again.
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Ever since their absorption into the VAG mothership, Italy’s most dramatic supercar marque has been a semi-regular sight at the 20.8km Nordschleife. It’s no surprise really, with the wealth of German engineering experience added to the brand. The German’s penchant for proving everything on the world’s greatest racetrack* made a ‘Ring laptime almost inevitable. And without those inaccurate-speedo-numbers, would we have even been so interested the first time? But I digress…
With the modern era of Lambo proving their success both on the roads AND the racetrack, it should also be no surprise that this even-faster-than-before Huracan is basically a SuperTrofeo racecar made road-legal (and Monaco-chic).
This week, Lamborghini have two opportunities to take this Bull to market, and cash out big-time; Wednesday night (so-called Performance Night, where industry-pool prototypes can officially do laptimes), and then a private session on Friday afternoon, just after lunch. With a mixed forecast all week, the nerves at Lamborghini’s HQ might be stretched. Will it be wet or dry on those two, narrow, windows?
Even if it’s dry, can a 640hp, RWD-only Lambo, with just 565Nm, be enough to topple the “production” record set by the 900Nm AMG GTR Black Series? With a goal of 6m48s for the FULL 20.8km lap, it’ll need a lot of rubber, and a lot of aero to even get close. Admittedly, the STO appears to have both:
But AMG haven’t built a slow car in decades, and the GTR Black Series is a monster. A real Nordschleife hot-rod.
And even if Lambo can topple the AMG as the fastest ‘series production car’, most Nuerburgring fans will simply point to the Manthey Racing GT2RS, a modified-but-street-legal car. At 6m44s, Lars Kern’s lap is still the Nürburgring laptime to beat.
Let the games commence!
*just my opinion
