SimplyAbuDhabi XXXIII

2 2 9 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I i felt like i was cheating the system, in fact i knew i was cheating and getting away with it all day long. behind the wheel of a million dirham, 630bhp Lamborghini Huracán Evo V10 on the bahrain race track, i hooked into the corners with every intention of spinning only for it to drift in the most gloriously controlled, full-lock power slide you could imagine. So confident was i that after the second lap i was jumping on the gas at exactly the wrong point, breaking it into the most lurid power oversteer slide i could muster and holding it for as long as possible hoping someone, somewhere would capture it on video. Was this a dream? Had i suddenly developed the poised drifting skills of Ken block in the space of the 50-minute flight fromAbudhabi to bahrain or was there some other weird science at play underneath the carbon fibre skin of Lamborghini’s latest supercar? Clearly it was option C, though it would have made for an epic dream sequence just the same. Lamborghini announced some time back that it was no longer chasing top speeds and was pulling out of the race to build the world’s fastest car, instead focusing on products that could deliver the maximum in driver enjoyment over outright speed. And here it is, the Evo is a mildly facelifted Huracán 5.2-litre V10 that will carry it through to the end of its model life when a hybridised version will most likely take over and while there’s plenty to talk about it in terms of its new aero package and latest in connectivity, it was its new ‘drift Mode’ that had me salivating. yes, it’s still mighty quick with a top speed of more than 325kmh and a zero to 100kmh time of 2.9 seconds with just another 6.1 seconds taking it to 200kmh, but the reality is that after a while, simply going fast isn’t all that fun. The new Huracán has a drift mode incorporated into its drive settings that, along with its new rear-wheel steering, lets you get away with the big slides without getting into trouble. The key ingredient is Lamborghini’s software program it calls LdVi (Lamborghini dinamica Veicolo integrata), which reads the driver’s style and quickly pre-empts their actions, trying to stay ahead of the curve by being proactive rather than reacting to a driver’s input afterwards. Using gyroscope sensors and accelerators located low in the car close to its centre of gravity, it measures its roll, pitch and yaw against the aggressiveness of the steering input, throttle positioning and brake pressure from the driver 50 times a second to determine the level of commitment the driver is placing in the car. Add to this, its millisecond transfer of information from the front wheel dampers to the rears with information such as changes in surface grip or bumps before they reach the rear wheels and you could be forgiven for thinking that the Huracán Evo knows what you’re going to do even before you think about it.