Lamborghini Huracan Performante: The new king of the ‘The Ring’
The Lamborghini Huracan Performante was introduced at the 2017 Geneva auto show where it was met with overwhelming praise. The car introduces Lamborghini's new ALA (Aerodynamica Lamborghini Attiva) system which allows the car to mange downforce in ways no other car manufacture is doing. On top of the ALA system, the Huracan Performante gets a power gain of 30hp over the standard Huracan, up from 610hp to 640hp and a weight reduction of 88lbs. This allows the car to accelerate form 0–62 mph (100 km/h) in just 2.9s and reach a top speed of 201+mph (325+km/h). The car also introduces new bushings, a new suspension system and new tires; working in conjunction with the ALA system and motor to achieve the ultimate goal of being the fastest car on any track and in any race.
“We challenged the engineers to come up with a car that could be the winner and the fastest car on a race track. And to get there we imagined to have a car that could perform on all levels, in each single part and components of the car”. -Alessandro Farmeschi, COO for Lamborghini
One of the things that automotive critics look at is how fast can the car in question go around the Nurburgring Nordshleife circuit, and in fact the Huracan Performante now holds the record for the fastest production vehicle to ever go around the circuit. The Performante achieved a time of 6:52:01, beating the Porsche 918’s time of 6:57:00. However, critics argued that the Performante’s lap time was sped up from 24 fps to 25 fps making it illegitimate. Lamborghini’s CEO Stephano Domenicali came back and said,
“Why would we [cheat]? We have all the data, all the GPS data. It’s verified. It’s already verified”.
The Huracan Performante’s incredible lap time around ‘the ring’ is mainly due to the crazy aerodynamics. The ALA system implements a number of flaps that can open and close to either increase or decrease downforce as necessary. There are flaps on the front splitter that when open provide less drag, increasing acceleration and top speed. When those flaps are closed they increase the amount the drag on the front end, giving maximum downforce for stability and high speed cornering. The flaps in the rear of the car work in conjunction with ducts inside the fixed rear wing to, again, provide max acceleration and top speed when open and max downforce when closed. These flaps, however, are very smart and can opened and closed individually depending on which way the car is turning in to a corner. Say, for example, you are coming up to a left hand corner, the car will close the flaps on the left side of the car to increase cornering speed. It works sort of like skiing. If you want to go left, or right, you lean to that side and apply more force in that direction. When the car is turning, depending on which way you are going, the downforce is increase on that side of the car which allows you to corner faster and smoother.
The Huracan Performante is a hardcore track weapon that you can also drive around and do your errands in. Sure it’s probably not the most comfortable car to drive on the street but, as Alessandro Farmeschi stated, that is not what the car was intended for. The car was made to annihilate every other car on the track. There is no other car on the market right now that you can buy for under $300,000 (base price of Huracan Performante is $274,390) that will destroy a $1 million+ hypercar around a track, and be able to drive home afterwards. The Lamborghini Huracan Performante is one of the best special edition, track oriented cars on the market right now. If you have the money I suggest you get yourself one of these before their value increases.
