Running with the Bulls at the 2017 Lamborghini Festival
TeamSpeed goes down to Houston, Texas to experience Lamborghini Festival and drive a couple of the automaker’s supercars.
It’s fitting that the opening night party for the seventh annual Lamborghini Festival took place at the Space Center Houston. What better venue in which to start the three-day celebration of Sant’Agata Bolognese’s signature supercars than one filled with stunningly powerful machines created through cutting edge engineering, made out of advanced materials, and capable of face-rippling speeds?
The exhibits, which included the helmets and gloves that astronauts wore in the yesteryears of space exploration, were undeniably interesting, but I couldn’t fully concentrate on them or the fashion show that followed the opening presentation. I wanted it to be Saturday, October 14 already – the track day portion of the Lamborghini Festival.
The next morning I headed to MSR Houston, an FIA-approved 2.38-mile track. The sun soon burned off the mist that hung over the secluded course. The buzz and rasp of race-spec Miatas and other small-engine machines zipping around the track’s 17 turns filled the rapidly heating air. Lamborghini Houston’s demo cars began trickling in. Ultimately, they would end up bringing four Huracans and 2 Aventadors. It wasn’t long before those had company. Lambo owners started rolling in with their Gallardos, Aventadors, and Huracans. An early Murcielago made an appearance. They all became less noticeable when the original Lamborghini supercar, the Miura, showed up, a bright orange metal sculpture that inspired equal amounts of questions and fantasies of driving it across the country at irresponsible speeds.
Despite its name, Lamborghini Festival was about more than just the brand’s cars. It was about the passion for automobiles and the love of performance, which explained the presence of cars from other brands, including Ferrari (no punches were thrown), Porsche, McLaren, and Aston Martin. Someone even brought their purple Dodge Viper GTS to thunder around the track. Thanks to event founders Jorge Verdejo and Alfonso Zaza, Lamborghini Festival is also about charity (and not just the philanthropy of Lambo owners letting people see and hear their cars). This year’s fest benefited an organization called Bennett’s Bears, which donates “Build-a-Bears to children at the hospital who are unable to be home during the holiday season.”
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I joined current and prospective Lamborghini clients outside of the pit lane. Lamborghini Houston lined up its demonstration cars for lead/follow laps. I was going to learn several lessons that afternoon. One of them was that even though the people who surrounded me were relatively used to being around and seen in Lamborghinis, they weren’t jaded by the exposure or immune to the thrill of letting a raging bull charge forward at full speed and fury. They flooded the first-come-first-served driver queue area. Eventually, I was able to reserve a spot in a white Huracan LP610-4 covered with a Lamborghini Super Trofeo World Final safety car livery. Once the lead/follow session began, I started to learn another lesson. Having never driven a Lamborghini before that day, I had a preconceived notion that it would be more of an Italian muscle car in comparison to a Ferrari, whose every model has a reputation partially built on its parent company’s accomplished racing history that precedes it. It turns out I’ve been wrong this whole time. The Huracan wasn’t just a warhead in a wedge-shaped delivery device, a dumb bomb waiting to be fired at the horizon by my right foot. It communicated with me, allowed me to feel what it was doing and what it was encountering. The steering was heavy, a helpful force that was not to be taken for granted. I didn’t just take turns. I earned them. The surge of the 5.2-liter V10’s 601 horsepower was more of a channeled current than a busted fire hydrant. Through the tires, I could determine the age of each pebble I ran over. I was able to sense the Huracan leaning slightly in the curves, but gripping tenaciously. I took it as a simultaneously reassuring and challenging gesture, as if the car were telling me, “Don’t worry. I can take way more than this…so push it next time.”
I was only able to drive the Huracan for that one lap, but at the end of the day, I rode shotgun in another Huracan as a Lotus Driving Academy instructor piloted it around his home track. He knew each curve and elevation change by heart and was able to drive the baby bull harder than I would’ve been able to even in the most feverish of racing hero dreams. From the passenger seat, I could feel how easy it was to get the Huracan to slide and how controllable the chaos was. I had been a passenger for hot laps in high-performance cars before then. While I had enjoyed each one-lap experience as it occurred, afterward I was left feeling physically assaulted by the strain of the g forces on my body and brain. None of those unpleasant sensations came over me after three laps around MSR Houston in the Huracan. It was fun – even when I wasn’t driving it.
After lunch, I once again positioned myself near pit lane for a chance to drive an Aventador. I didn’t care which kind. I really couldn’t. There were only two. The general manager of Lamborghini Houston was kind enough to make sure I received a drive slot before it got too late in the day. Lo and behold, a yellow Aventador S just like the one I saw revealed at the Houston dealership back in March awaited me.
So did another lesson. The Aventador truly is the Huracan’s big brother in physical – not just marketing – terms. The 3,472-pound* coupe felt massive around me. The steering seemed to be attached to a minecart full of lead. It was easy to smile in the Huracan. Doing that in the Aventador S would’ve been offensively cute, too flippant and disrespectful. The Aventador demanded obedience and vigilance. It didn’t communicate so much as dictate. For my two lead/follow laps in the 740-horsepower beast, I had to be disciplined and attentive in how I maneuvered it through the turns. Instead of sensing the limits of its grip or marveling at the thrust of its engine, I mainly concentrated on not letting the Aventador S overpower me or my abilities. I trusted what Lamborghini Houston’s general manager had said about the four-wheel steering making the Aventador S much easier to drive than the regular model, but I didn’t have enough familiarity with the S to rely on that trust. For years, I had read and heard that V12 Lambos are hairy-chested animals. That day I learned how right those people had been.
I wasn’t going to be able to attend the Lamborghini car show the next day, so I returned home to Austin late that night. Similar to the astronauts that had flown beyond Earth’s atmosphere decades ago as part of various missions, that Saturday I had gotten into a precisely engineered vessel, blasted past everyday circumstances, and left the world as I had once known it behind me – at life-changing speed.
*Dry weight
