Lamborghini Super Trofeo on the track, ready to race

Ah, Lamborghini, has long been a fan of gearboxes, bad boy racer types, and all of us at Automoblog (finally) in its racing department.

One of the major dings against Lambo in the past, aside from little to no rearward visibility, has been the fact that they never really raced all that much. Sure, there\’s been the occasional one-make series tried half-heartedly now and again, and they did make F1 engines for a couple of seasons, but on the whole, racing took a far back seat to Lamborghini\’s road car interests.

Well, that\’s changing, fast. Meet the new Lamborghini Super Trofeo.

OK, for starters, the full and correct name for Lambo\’s racing beast is The Lamborghini Blancpain Super Trofeo. Blancpain being the series sponsor, and yes, I do believe that Blancpain translates as \”White Bread\”. But c\’mon, you\’ve got to admit that \”The Lamborghini Blancpain Super Trofeo\” sounds SO much cooler than \”The Lamborghini White Bread Super Trofeo\” or, if it was a NASCAR deal, \”The Lamborghini Wonder Bread Super Trofeo\”. As it turns out though Blancpain is a luxury Swiss watchmaker .

Anyway, Lambo had the car out on the track for its final bout of testing on the track in Adria, Italy. They were mainly looking at braking components and tires for reliability issues. The testing went fine, overall, and Lamborghini is confident that \”the Super Trofeo will be the racing series to beat in 2009,\” when the season kicks off Silverstone, England in May.

The tests were conducted by Lamborghini\’s official test driver Giorgio Sanna (how do I get his job?). \”We came to Adria to primarily test the performance of the brakes and tires, as well as component reliability in a full race simulation,\” said Sanna. \”Adria is ideal for this kind of testing, as there\’s lots of continual up-and-downshifting through the gears, especially second, third and fourth. It\’s also really hard on the brakes of all cars that visit, because of the tight corners, so we\’ve learnt a lot.\”

The car itself falls into the \”pretty damn impressive\” category.

The Super Trofeo is a lightweight version of the Gallardo LP 560-4. The Super Trofeo will come with a reworked chassis and a power output of 419 kW (570 hp) from its V10, \’Iniezione Diretta Stratificata\’ engine. The racecar will feature Lamborghini\’s permanent four-wheel drive, making the Super Trofeo the only one-make, all-wheel-drive motorsport series. Also note that it has all of the now-traditional race kit: Full cage, fire system etc. etc. etc..

The race series will run over 6 European race weekends, alongside other prestigious series such as the FIA GT Championship and DTM.

Here is Rambo's press: