Car Features
Lamborghini Esperienza Corsa: Across the Line!
What does 10,000 rpm sound like? In a car?
This wasn’t my first time hearing an engine rev to a five-digit limit. Engines in multi-cylinder supersport motorcycles do that regularly. The BMW S1000RR, Ducati Panigale V4, Suzuki GSX-R 1000, you name them. Most of these redline at around 14,000rpm by which time they sound like banshees howling down an empty corridor. Straight for your soul. It’s a spine tingling, gooseflesh inducing, hair-on-end experience that I never thought I’d have in a car. But I just have.
“Don’t shift up. Let it rev all the way through,” my instructor Ansal tells me on the long back straight at the Buddh International Circuit (BIC) as I keep the throttle pinned on lap two. The sound of the 4-litre twin turbo V8 spinning away to its 10,000rpm redline right behind me is visceral. I can feel it in my bones as I flick the right paddle behind the steering wheel and the car shifts up through the eight-speed dual clutch ‘box with a resounding thud. Eyes firmly set ahead as I rush through the blur of my own peripheral vision, I am at my braking marker much too soon. I lift off, and hit the brakes and the back goes all twitchy as this raging bull starts slowing down from whatever speed I did (I hadn’t dared look at the speedo) so that we can make the hard right down the hill, which is Turn 4. Subtle, isn’t in the nature of the Lamborghini Temerario.
The internal combustion engine puts out a whopping 789bhp and 730Nm of torque. Working in collaboration with the e-motors, the combined peak output is 907bhp
You already know that this new Lambo replaces the Huracan in the line up and is a hybrid. That mental petrol engine works with one electric motor to send power to the rear wheels while two electric motors work on sending power to the front wheels. So, effectively, it is all wheel drive and offers more grip than a normal rear wheel drive car. But there’s a catch. It’s in the split. The internal combustion engine puts out a whopping 789bhp and 730Nm of torque. Working in collaboration with the e-motors, the combined peak output is 907 bee-etch-pees. So, you have more than 83 per cent of the entire output going to the rear axle while just over 16 per cent is sent to the front. What this engineering jiggery pokery means is you have plenty of grip where you need but also a tail happy, hyper involving supercar. Which is very in line with the brand from Sant’Agata Bolognese.
Four laps aren’t anywhere near enough to be able to judge this mad car or even scratch the surface of its capabilities
Four laps aren’t anywhere near enough to be able to judge this mad car or even scratch the surface of its capabilities. And you shouldn’t be ashamed to say that this car will likely far outshine your driving skills, because that’s probably the truth. It does nought to 100kmph in 2.7 seconds. That’s less time than it takes for me to draw a full deep breath and inflate my lungs fully. Two hundred comes and goes in just over seven. That’s around ten beats from the heart.
We all must have gotten to 300kmph or thereabouts. And it wasn’t enough. Top speed on this thing is 343kmph. Chief instructor at the first ever Lamborghini Esperienza Corsa in India GT3 Champion Nick Foster who helps develop F1 simulators in his spare time added the word “approximately” during the briefing.
Driving back into the pits and down to a speed that actually registers on the brain without throwing up an error code, everything feels muted. Wound right back down. It feels odd. Am I imagining or are my ears mildly ringing? Either way, what an introduction to 10,000 screaming howling revs from a car engine! What an incredible introduction to the Lamborghini Temerario.
