The essence of performance is at the heart of Lamborghini
Sant’Agata Bolognese, 18 April 2024 – Speed is synonymous with super sports cars, and every Lamborghini delivers benchmark VMAX figures. In motorsport as well as in road cars, speed is a reference, but Chief Technical Officer for Automobili Lamborghini Dr. Ing. Rouven Mohr and racing driver Andrea Caldarelli distinguish achieving those top digits as just one facet of the greater performance.
In the video ‘Beyond Speed: Emotion Outside of Numbers’, they explore the technical commitment and human input that delivers not only thrilling acceleration and kilometers per hour but the more powerful and emotional driver that is performance.
Rouven Mohr describes cars as his life: “Even in my private life, I think about them, draw them, photo them, collect them.” For Lamborghini factory driver Andrea Caldarelli, competing in GTP Class of IMSA Sports Car Championship, it took some time away from motorsport to realize his passion for racing: “It was when my father put me back in a car, a single seater, that I realized this was my passion, my career.”
For both, speed is not a simple target. “Speed is part of a Lamborghini super sports car’s DNA, but it’s not about pure numbers,” says Mohr. “Speed must also deliver an experience. For us, this is part of what constitutes performance, it is a baseline of what we do and what makes us credible.” From Caldarelli’s perspective, speed and the clock are as much enemies as friends. “It’s not just a science, the achievement of a lap time. The greater performance is something we discover every time we go out on the track. Take endurance racing: it’s not just about the quickest car, it’s about teamwork. It’s how good and fast they are too, their passion and commitment.”
Mohr points out that even arriving to compete demands another level of commitment. “We too must be fast, to engineer and deliver a car that is ready to perform, ready to win. Like in life, the race does not wait for us.”
It’s the passion of the team, whether in Research and Development or in the pit garages, that takes the given of elite top speeds and goes beyond to deliver ultimate performance. For Mohr, it’s creating the best, most emotive Lamborghini experience for the customer. For Caldarelli, a race car’s accomplishments on track are how the team experiences the definitive emotion of victory. Like Lamborghini, speed, but most fundamentally performance, is in their DNA.