Simply Abu Dhabi XXVII

2 1 2 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I N o doubt if you’re into your supercars and like reading up on the latest, you’re seeing a few reviews of the new Lamborghini Huracan Performante, the track-focused, sportier version of the already track-focused and sporty- enough Huracan V10. And there’s a very good chance that some of these articles will wax lyrical about the music from the exhaust pipes, the crackle and burble on down change, the ear- splitting, spine-tingling shrill from the 5.2-litre engine during flat out up changes, etcetera. It’s pretty hard not to get carried away with emotions by one of the most emotional cars on the market, but for the first time as I left the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari racetrack in Imola, Italy, better known as the home of the San Marino Formula One Grand Prix, it was the silent parts of this Lamborghini that impressed me the most. I’m a huge fan of aerodynamics; as I first cast my young eyes on the Ferrari F40 and the McLaren F1, both released at roughly the same time, I couldn’t help but notice that where Ferrari needed giant wings and spoilers to keep it pinned to the road, GordonMurray’s design of the F1 road car did the same without the need of a single wing or fin. It was pinned to the road purely by the clever use of air directed over and under it in strategic places, free energy that weighs nothing – and ever since then it’s been a minor infatuation of mine. So as I inspected the new winglets and the rear spoiler which have been added to the Huracan Performante, I noticed small venturi-like veins in the rear wing. Despite this car weighing 40kg less than a regular Huracan, being 10% stiffer with 15% less body roll and producing 29 more bhp, now at 631bhp with 600Nm of torque, up from 560Nm, I was most keen to test this new wing on the track. For those not familiar, this circuit in the Emilia-Romagna region is not only just 75km away from the Lamborghini factory at Sant ‘Agata, but it’s also the venue where Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger were killed on that fateful, horrific weekend inMay 1994 during the San Marino Formula One Grand Prix. It’s an old school track with little run off and very fast sweeping, off-camber corners that can catch you in the blink of an eye. It’s not of the clinical, modern genre of tracks which are safe at almost any speed. Get it wrong and it will bite hard – but get it right and it will reward you with the deep satisfaction of taming a beast. The Performante’s aero package, Aerodinamica Lamborghini Attiva (ALA), adds a front splitter and a rear wing that they claim produces up to 350kg of downforce at 310km/h. That’s 750% more load without affecting its 2.9 second to 100km/h acceleration time or its 325km/h top speed. It’s an active aero system which works in a similar way to Formula One’s DRS: it stalls the rear wing by opening small flaps on the straights to allow air through, thereby increasing speed and reducing downforce when it’s not needed. The clever part with the Lambo, however, is that unlike F1, it works on the left and right side independently. This means that going through a left hand corner, for example, the air directed through from the front is blocked on the left side but allowed to flow clean through on the right side, giving more grip to the inside rear wheel. Flick it through a left-right chicane sequence and it toys with Mother Nature, deflecting air left then right then left again to ensure maximum downforce is only applied to the wheel that needs it. When the flaps are shut, air flows over the wing normally, creating plenty of downforce; but when the flaps open, the air flows through the wing and out the back, stalling the wing by reducing both downforce and drag. It truly is one of the very few, genuine breakthroughs in supercar design and something that for once didn’t flow from motor racing but no doubt will be copied by it in some form very soon.