Aircraft

Active Aero Helps Elevate Lamborghini’s Performante To An Even Higher Plane.

- Alex Inwood

IT'S ODD, but as I stand in the pit lane at Imola and gaze at the empty track, its curved main straight snaking away into the trees, I feel a little disappointed. And a fraction underwhelmed. For a circuit with such a fearsome reputation, I was hoping it’d look gloomier. More menacing. You know, with wisps of fog clinging to barriers shrouded in Senna flags and decaying flowers. That kind of thing.

Instead, warm sunlight falls from a clear sky. Birds sing in the woods. And there are children playing in a park outside the Armco. It’s almost…tranquil.

Until the first Huracan Performante barks into life. Behind me, a row of growling Performantes wait like jewels in the sun, their jutting noses, swooping rooflines and peacocking rear wings doing their best to enhance Imola’s visual drama.

This is the latest in a long line of track-honed special editions from Lamborghini, and this time Sant’Agata’s engineers have reached deep into a bag of new tricks.

There’s more power, of course, and 40kg less weight courtesy of a raft of measures including a material called forged carbonfibre (see Wheels June, p99), but the most hyped piece of tech is something Lamborghini lovingly refers to as “Ahhh Laaa”. That’s short for Aerodinamica Lamborghini Attiva (ALA, get it?), which is an exciting, Italian way of saying active aero.

Lurking inside that front splitter is an electric motor that operates two flaps. With the flaps shut, ALA is used to maximise downforce at the front axle. When the flaps slide open, the system helps to reduce drag.

The same principle applies at the rear, though things are much more complex.