Lamborghini confident in new Temerario: Will Huracan's weaknesses finally disappear?

The Lamborghini Huracan GT3 is regarded as a quick GT3 car that plays to its strengths, especially in low and medium-speed sweeping corners, and it is also strong under braking. However, high-speed corners and wheel-to-wheel battles are not among the strong points of the car, which is based on the Audi R8 platform. That is set to change with the new Temerario GT3 from this year onward, promises Lamborghini’s chief technical officer Rouven Mohr.

“The goal was to improve peak performance and eliminate the bottlenecks of the car,” explained Mohr, who has now returned to head Lamborghini’s motorsport department. “Above all, this is about raceability and slightly widening the operating window.”

What does he mean by “raceability”? “The Huracan has a pretty good drag-to-downforce ratio, which is down to the small frontal area of the base model,” Mohr explained. “That’s why, under BoP, we usually have to give up some top speed.”

Cornering strength often punished on the Huracan

This typically stems from the fact that Lamborghini’s previous GT3 car makes its lap time in the corners, which often leads to negative adjustments to engine performance under Balance of Performance rules.

“That’s not good for raceability, because unfortunately it’s very difficult to overtake in the corners during races, even if you’re faster. In the end, overtaking happens in the slipstream on the straights.

“That’s also the reason why our car is extremely good when we qualify at the front or start in the first rows,” he explained. “If we start further back, it’s difficult for us because we can’t make use of our cornering advantage and we can’t overtake.”

Lamborghini will debut the Huracan's successor this year, which will compete in a wide variety of championships, including the DTM.

A “gamechanger” is expected to be the new 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 engine. While many fans may feel nostalgic about losing the Huracan’s screaming 5.2-litre naturally aspirated V10, the turbo unit is considered far less vulnerable in traffic.

Raceability: A big step forward thanks to the turbo engine?

The small airbox of the Lamborghini Huracan was a disadvantage in close combat.

“When you’re driving in the slipstream, you lose engine performance because you don’t have the ram-air effect,” Mohr said, referring to a key issue for naturally aspirated engines. “That problem is solved with a turbo engine. If you look at the GT3 field with the McLarens, the Ferrari and all the cars that already run turbo engines today, their raceability is generally better because they can use and compensate for this effect.”

With the current Evo version of the Huracan, the situation was made worse by the fact that the airbox on the roof could not be made any higher due to GT3 regulations, meaning it received too little airflow in traffic.

By contrast, thanks to turbocharging, the Temerario “doesn’t rely solely on pure output to achieve its performance,” Mohr clarified. “That hopefully puts us in a better position and within a better performance window in terms of raceability.”

Beyond that, the Temerario is intended to retain the strengths of its predecessor. “Our car isn’t the easiest to drive, but it rotates like crazy in the corners,” he said, pointing to the strong front end of the Huracan, which allows it to change direction quickly.

“And it’s strong under braking,” Mohr adds. “We actually want to improve that further, because we now have more stiffness thanks to the chassis.”

This had already been considered during development of the road car, since Lamborghini knew it would form the basis for the GT3 model. “Some of the kinematic decisions in the road-car platform were made with foresight so we wouldn’t be limited with the race car.”

Temerario set to be more accessible for amateur drivers

Lamborghini Temerario GT3

Another key focus for engineers during the development of the Temerario was drivability. The aim was to make the car more accessible for amateur drivers than the Huracan.

“Even professional drivers who are extremely quick in other cars sometimes struggle the first time they drive the Huracan,” Mohr explained, attributing this to the “very narrow operating window of the current car.”

If you fall outside that window, you lose a lot of time “because you lose balance and front-end grip, which leads to too much understeer,” he said. “Then you can’t get out of the corners fast enough because the engine performance isn’t there.”

With the new car, emphasis was placed on widening that operating window and making the car less sensitive to changes in ride height.

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