Lamborghini Huracán LP580-2 track drive

Devil's in the Details

As with the Gallardos that went before it, the two- and four-wheel-drive Huracáns are distinguishable by some very subtle visual details. The front bumper is a little edgier and looks a bit more like the bigger Aventador’s, while at the rear, the tail has a much larger ‘grille’ area, and personally, I prefer this look to the standard car’s.

The other details come from the spec sheet. Petal-style steel brake discs replace the standard carbon-ceramic ones from the LP610, to improve feel at the pedals (and, I suspect, to bring the price down). It may have lost 30bhp but it’salso lost 33kg. And the great part is, despite the lower power and the traction disadvantage of rear-wheel drive, at 3.4 seconds, the LP580-2 is only 0.2 seconds slower in a 0-100kph drag than the LP610-4. With great caution, I broached the taboo subject of the manual gearbox and its absence on this back-to-basics driver-centric variant; Porsche just brought back the manual with its 911 R after all, right? Nope, a seven-speed dual-clutch auto is the only gearbox you’ll ever get in a Huracán and customers, it seems, are just fine with that.

There are smaller details too. The ‘Anima’ driving modes – Strada, Sport and Corsa – have been recalibrated for the LP580-2, as have the adaptive magnetic suspension, stability and traction control, steering and anti-roll bars. Pirelli developed a new tyre for this car, and the weight distribution, as you might imagine, has shifted more to the rear – now a 40:60 split.

Slayed in Taiwan

Textbook closed, it’s time to hop in and get to know this new Raging Calf on the Penbay International Circuit, located in a quiet fishing district outside Kaohsiung in Taiwan. There’s nothing quiet about what we’re doing here today though, and the lead car in our convoy has no intention of doing a ‘sighting’ lap – it’s foot flat to the floor, right out of the pit lane. I realise I have to multi-task and evaluate this car on the fly, but that’s hard to do when you’re chasing down apexes on a track you’ve never seen before. I try to quickly scan around for changes to the cabin (turns out there are none) but I daren’t take my eyes off the narrow, unknown tarmac.

You don’t need your eyes to feel the LP580-2’s magic though, and soon I’m doing just that – through my wrists, my backside, my eardrums and my recently re-arranged guts. One lap is enough to give me a vague idea of the place, and by Lap 2, I’m whacking the Lambo into corners mercilessly. This Huracán seems more eager to stick its nose into chicanes, and should you make contact with one, you can bet you’ll feel it as the steering wheel shimmies away in your hands. It just feels so much more alive. Exit a corner with requisite vigour and the whole car moves around more, and it fidgets about under braking too. Let me be clear, these are all good things when you’re on the limit; you want your rear-drive supercar to keep you on your toes.

Did you know, of the three Anima driving modes, it’s the middle one – Sport – that lets you get the most sideways in all Lambos? Apparently that’s because it’s the ‘fun’ mode, while ‘Corsa’, the final mode, is for serious lap times, and the Huracán’s electronics adjust the car’s behaviour accordingly. I discover this midway through the final corner getting onto the main straight, in what starts out as a reasonably civilised exercise. I’ve shed enough speed and so I click down into second gear – fine, until the exit, when the tail just breaks free like a captive lion being released back into the wild. The best part is, I trust the car, and the car delivers, bringing me back into line quite predictably and easily. So I do it again, and again, and again, until the guys from Lamborghini get rather insistent on the radio that I come back in.