First Drive: 2021 Lamborghini Huracan STO Review

A road-legal celebration of Lamborghini’s Super Trofeo and GT3 racing Huracans, the STO is the latest twist on the ‘racing car for the road’ trope supercar manufacturers wheel out any time they add extra wings and carbon to create another overpriced special edition. Dare we dream the STO is actually the real deal on this score, though? Well, there are positive signs that enough motorsport DNA has survived to make this a more rewarding Huracan to drive than those that have gone before, Performante included. Where that version used trick ‘blown’ aero to switch between high downforce for the corners and low-drag for vmax bragging rights the STO is all about aero grip and cornering speeds, because racecar and all that. Accordingly it comes with weight-saving glass, carbon-fibre bodywork, uprated CCM-R brakes, new Bridgestone road-legal track tyres and a focus on predictable, linear responses to help you drive to its formidable limits without scaring yourself silly. Enough to beat cars like the McLaren 620R, Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series and the inevitable RS version of the new 911 GT3 that, sure as night follows day, will be next out of the blocks? To a sweltering Vallelunga circuit outside Rome to find out…

While fast, noisy and dramatic Lamborghinis have always had a whiff of being more show than go, that’s changed with the brand’s entry into GT racing and determination to prove itself in competition against its supercar rivals. Which it has, with three consecutive wins in the Daytona 24 Hours and various GT3 titles, including last year’s British GT Championship. The fluid relationship between its road car and Squadra Corse race divisions has resulted in racing cars styled as much by the pens of the Centro Stile design department as the wind tunnel, the influence going the other way in the case of the Huracan STO and its racer-inspired bodywork. This includes a one-piece front clamshell to channel air over the front splitter and out over vents placed where the luggage compartment is on regular Huracans, plus louvres on top of the arches to extract high-pressure air and keep the nose pinned to the ground. New rear bodywork covers wider rear track than any previous Huracan and includes NACA ducts for the V10’s induction system but also reduce the frontal area, while a prominent snorkel and sharkfin on the rear deck – respectively – help cooling and direct air over the manually adjustable rear wing. Obviously, this completely obliterates any rear vision but, hey, who cares what’s behind you.

Even by Lamborghini standards it looks wild, and that’s before you factor in the endlessly customisable combinations of colours, stripes and finishes. Admittedly this is the four-wheeled equivalent of going for coffee in your gym kit to hammer home how sporty and active you are and – perhaps – similarly try-hard. But it seems unfair to criticise a Lamborghini for being a bit showy, so we’ll grant a pass on this occasion.

Though there have been rear-wheel-drive Huracans before most – Performante included – stuck with all-wheel-drive and relatively conservative driving manners. Like the race cars that inspire it the STO is, however, rear-wheel-drive only, tuned for a more hardcore feel than other two-wheel drive versions. In previous Huracans you got the sense the standard, fixed-ratio steering was made deliberately vague to encourage buyers to tick the optional variable rack Lamborghini Dynamic Steering, which while much improved in the Performante and Evo versions was never really satisfactory either. Thank heavens, then, that the STO finally gets the fast-racked, fixed ratio steering the Huracan was always crying out for, and something for the keen driver to lean against on corner entry. It’s still no McLaren in feedback terms but, with some sense through your fingertips of how much front-end grip there is, you feel miles more confident exploiting the gloriously linear response of that naturally-aspirated V10 and adjusting your line on the throttle. Like the Evo the STO gets rear-wheel steering, this and various other parameters controlled by new driver modes to replace the Strada, Sport and Corsa settings Huracan owners will be familiar with. Now you get the street optimised STO, track ready Trofeo and wet weather specific Pioggia modes via the wheel-mounted Anima switch.

There’s no variable traction control like that offered in the AMG GT or Ferrari-style Side Slip Control, Trofeo instead offering you a catch-net just far enough beyond the well-telegraphed limits to let you play with the balance within a sensible safety margin. You can turn everything off but through the serpentine 160mph right-left following the Vallelunga pit straight the occasional flicker of the ESC light and a tactful tug on the reins was more appealing than the Armco.

Star of the show remains the gloriously free-revving 5.2-litre V10 engine, which has been a constant throughout the Huracan’s life. Here it cranks out 640PS (471kW) at 8,000rpm, which is just 250rpm before the redline and demands fast hands on the paddle shifters if you’re to enjoy every one of those horses without running into the rev limiter. No mechanical harm done if you do so but it does cost vital tenths if you’re hunting lap times on the STO’s built-in telemetry system, which replays traces for inputs to throttle, steering and brakes straight to your phone via a dedicated app. Just like the Super Trofeo race cars the STO is designed to flatter the ‘gentleman driver’ and flatters your efforts, the aero, wider track and retuned suspension all working with the chunkier steering to deliver an experience rich in feedback. After years of having its true nature slathered in electronic mush it feels like the true Huracan has finally been unleashed. To which we say better late than never.

Lashings of carbon and Alcantara are now so commonplace in supercar interiors the STO’s cabin doesn’t feel the step beyond a regular Huracan you might expect. Sure, the carpets have been replaced by carbon-fibre mats, there are the compulsory looped fabric door releases and you can option in harnesses and an Akrapovič titanium roll hoop for a racier ambience, but you still get air-con and various other features via the central touchscreen. This may also include a stereo and phone connectivity but, frankly, these weren’t priorities while chasing a Lamborghini test driver round a race circuit and you wouldn’t be able to hear either over the engine anyway. Evaluation of Lamborghini’s claims it’s as viable driving to and from the circuit on the road as it is going round it will have to wait until we get a chance to take it beyond its natural habitat.

Big noise was made about the gyro-controlled Lamborghini Veicolo Dinamica Integrata system at the heart of the Huracan when the car launched, the idea being the black boxes would deliver real time control of parameters like steering, stability control, throttle, all-wheel-drive (where present) and more. The system’s potential was fully realised in the updated 2.0 format launched in the Huracan Evo and, here in the STO, promises active adjustments to camber, toe and damping that would usually be a set-up job for spanner-wielding mechanics on a conventional racing car. Here you get a simulation of it with a switch of the Anima button, along with a manually adjustable rear wing to let you adjust the rear downforce and aero balance according to the track or personal preference.

For all its heart-on-sleeve racing car dressing the STO is a tantalising glimpse of what the Huracan might always have been, were it not for Lamborghini’s strangely risk-averse handling model. Frankly a ‘standard’ Huracan with steering this sharp and handling this playful would be a lovely thing to drive and, even by the brand’s extrovert standards, the idea of using this thing on the public road seems a little full-on. But each to their own and, given hybridisation isn’t far away, it would be po-faced to criticise a Lamborghini for looking – and sounding – a bit over-the-top. That is, after all, entirely the point for many fans. The one-word summary? Bravissimo!