There’s A Storm Coming: Makes & Models ST Huracan

Words and Photos by Michael Chandler

It wasn’t that long ago that the big dogs running at Utah Motorsports Campus were the Porsche 911 Cup cars coming from the Tatum, Air Power, Snow, and Magnus garages. They would be battling it out with a few Corvettes, but the Porsches didn’t have much competition. Then some guys from a shop in Layton got an opportunity to do something to shake up the order.

They bought an Audi R8 LMS from a Pirelli World Challenge team. They took it to Envision to have it wrapped in their livery, and started learning the limits of the car. Then they started winning. Of course I’m talking about the Makes & Models R8. That changed things up quite a bit. Suddenly the dominance of the Porsches wasn’t so overwhelming. Eventually other ex-PWC cars came, and the old V8 LMS wasn’t the dominant car it once was. Seeing as how they changed the game once, why not change it again?

Well, another opportunity came up. A privateer who was running in the Lamborghini Super Trofeo series was looking to unload their Huracan. Derek Wolthoff of Makes & Models made some calls, and soon enough there was a car under a big, Lamborghini branded sheet sitting in their showroom. What was under that sheet?

Obviously. Well what exactly is a Super Trofeo spec Lamborghini Huracan? Well, it has a complete aero package that is very different from the street car. Also different from most of the road going Huracans is the lack of all wheel drive. This bad boy is rear wheel drive, and has a Marelli six speed sequential gear box. There’s no ESP, but there’s ABS which has 12 levels of ABS-ness.

Sitting at all four corners are 18 inch wheels, with Pirelli P Zero tires, and Brembo brakes. Up front the wheels are 18 x 11, draped in 305/660-18 slicks, with 380mm x 35mm slotted rotors with monstrous 6 pot monoblock calipers. The rear wheels aren’t much wider than the fronts, they measure in at 18 x 12. The tires, coincidentally… not really at all, are 315’s. The rear brakes are smaller than the fronts, but still massive: 355mm x 32mm, with 4 pot monoblock calipers.

The engine is still a V10, but a little different. Gone is the multi-point injection for the fuel, and in has come an intake by BMC. Out is the master and slave ECU setup, and in is a M182 MoTEC system with 9 positions of traction control. The Super Trofeo series still does have gentlemen racers, gotta give them a little bit of a security blanket.

There’s also the other race car stuff like a cage, seat and harness, cat flaps instead of windows, stuff make the car a great tool for racing, but awful for using as a car in the real world.

So what’s next for the car and team? Well, they’re going to feel out the car and it’s quirks. They’ve got one race under their belt, but things are looking pretty good. When asked about the future of the car, Derek gave me this:

“We would like to make changes to the car that will benefit the series (NASA GTS), based on the spec for ST”

So basically make the car more at home, while still keeping it a Super Trofeo car. This is good, especially considering that fellow GTSU competitors DXDT Racing recently announced their Super Trofeo program. Will we see some Lamborghini battles at UMC this season? Who knows!

We here at CAM can’t predict the future (at least not with any accuracy, but we were right about the F1 qualifying!), but we do know that, with all this new metal running around the track, there’s a storm brewing on the horizon.