Lamborghini’s chief technical officer gives us a lowdown on the Sterrato’s new rally mode.
The Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato has finally made its public debut at the Art Basel in Miami today. First shown in concept form in June 2019, we now have full technical specifications of the supercar that can be driven over a rally stage.
- Gets new Rally mode for dirt roads and gravel paths
- Will be limited to just 1,499 units worldwide
- Huracan Sterrato is powered by a 610hp, NA V10 engine
Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato: rally stage set-up
Lamborghini has thrown in several technical upgrades to make the Sterrato off-road ready. First up, the front and rear tracks have been increased by 30mm and 34mm respectively and the ground clearance has gone up by 44mm to allow for more suspension travel. It also gets aluminium front underbody protection, reinforced sills, and a new roof-mounted air intake that allows the engine to breathe cleaner when driving over dusty tracks. The Sterrato also comes with an updated vehicle dynamic pack or LDVI (Lamborghini Integrated Vehicle Dynamics) that has been used to configure Rally mode for the supercar and recalibrate Strada and Sport modes.
The Huracan Sterrato rides on new 19-inch rims – one size smaller than the standard AWD variant – and is shod with custom Bridgestone Dueler AT002 tyres. The dual-purpose tyres measure 235/40-R19 at the front and 285/40-R19 at the rear, and come with run-flat technology.
Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato: engine and performance
The Huracan Sterrato uses the same 5.2-litre, naturally aspirated V10 engine as the standard Huracan AWD, but is tuned to produce 610hp and 560Nm of peak torque. The Sterrato is, therefore, 30hp and 40Nm down on power and torque compared to the regular Huracan AWD. It’s claimed 0-100kph time is also about half a second slower while top-speed has come by 60kph. This is because the Huracan Sterrato is built for the rough stuff, which justifies the trade off in outright performance.
The engine comes paired to a 7-speed dual-clutch transmission, sending power to all four wheels via an electronically controlled all-wheel drive system and a rear mechanical self-locking differential. Lamborghini claims the Sterrato can sprint from 0-100kph in 3.4 seconds and has a top-speed of 260kph.
Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato: exterior and interior
Visually, what you notice first about the Sterrato is its higher ground clearance which gives it a completely new stance. The front bumper has also been reinforced with a stone guard, along with a pair of LED light bars. The Sterrato, however, loses the roof-mounted LED light bar that came fitted on the concept. In profile, it gets chunky side skirts, roof rails and bolt-on rugged fender flares, while the rear has a revised diffuser with improved departure angle.
The satin-finished khaki paint shade is also new to the Huracan line-up and is contrasted by red accents on the claddings and on brake callipers. There aren’t any major cosmetic updates on the inside, but the Sterrato gets new Alcantara Verde upholstery along with new graphics for the touchscreen and special off-road driving features – there’s a digital inclinometer with pitch and roll indicator, a compass, geographic coordinate indicator, and steering angle indicator. It also gets a connected telemetry system that allows the driver to monitor performance and analyse data via a mobile app.
We speak with Rouven Mohr, Chief Technical Officer Lamborghini, to learn more about the Huracan Sterrato’s dirt track setup.
Q.Does the car use a steel plate for protection? And does the car have a lift mode?
For both questions, the answer is no. I will also explain why – for the steel plate, it would we would have had to recalibrate the suspension due to the weight, and we didn’t want to compromise the handling. As for the lift mode, it’s really not needed. For sure, you would have needed it if you intended to do hardcore offroading. Then for sure lift mode makes sense. But this was not off-roader. And for daily usage, this is the first Lamborghini where you do not have to fear about speed bumps and parking lot entries and potholes.
Q. Can you switch the stability control off fully? Is the torque distribution fixed or variable in Rally mode.
A. For sure, you can switch off the ESC completely. But even for a trained driver, I would not recommend you do that. We have made the intervention of the stability control seamless to help the driver drive as smoothly as possible. In fact for the most part you will not even recognize that there is an ESC is on and working.
The mission of the rally mode is to go sideways as easily as possible and as fast as possible. Therefore, the torque distribution is fully variable but uses a completely different strategy (map) from what we do in the streetcar.
In rally mode on the Sterrato, if you go off throttle, you have more weight transfer happening to the front. So even when you just get off the throttle, the car already helps you to go sideways. And then, if you push the throttle a little, the LDVI system understands that the driver wants to go sideways and helps smoothen power delivery. Then during the corner, if you go harder on the throttle, the car pushes more torque to the front compared to the streetcars for greater stability. So we use the LDVI system to make the four-wheel drive more front oriented to keep the drift going.
The beauty of the system is that the driver notices nothing at all and finds the car easy to drift and more importantly to hold the drift. So you don’t have to permanently modulate your throttle and balance the steering to do this. It’s so easy that it’s really impressive.