Thunder and lightning
The Lamborghini’s new Huracán is a quick supercar. The hybrid carbon-fibre chassis of the LP 610-4 weighs less than 200kg, and the engine puts out a massive 602 bhp. So straight-line performance is just amazing. But can it get ahead of the Indian Air Force’s top gun, the Sukhoi Su-30MKI, on the ground? It’s a fascinating question, and really, there’s only one way to find out. The Lamborghini starts out with an advantage. The Sukhoi’s turbine engines take their own sweet time to spool up. The Huracán, meanwhile, is off like a scalded cat, leaping forward with huge energy that comes as a bit of a shock to my passenger, who’s also a Sukhoi pilot. Our heads get tossed back, the seat squeezes us hard in the back and, initially, the Lamborghini leaps ahead. The car’s 0-100 kilometres per hour (kmph) time of just 3.2 seconds certainly helps here. The Sukhoi, however, begins to close the gap as the full force of its about 25,000kg-afterburner thrust comes in. Then, just as we are sure we are ahead, the aircraft thunders past the car’s window, deafening us in the process. A handful of seconds later, we see the Sukhoi point its nose up and thunder into the sky, retracting its mechanical claws like a giant eagle. Ground speed at the time should have been 270 or 280 kmph. Performance is so strong off the runway, we have to get off the burners soon after we take off, or we’ll go supersonic over the city; a huge problem, say the pilots. For pure speed, however, there’s no comparison. Whereas the Huracán tops out at a seriously quick 325 kmph, the Su-30MKI can run all the way up to Mach 2.35, over twice the speed of sound. That’s in excess of 2,500 kmph. But raw speed is not enough. Not for the Sukhoi Su-30MKI or the new Lamborghini. Agility is just as important, and as any good engineer will tell you, it is even more difficult to attain. The new Huracán starts with a clean sheet and the chassis uses a combination of high-technology aluminium and carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer. It also uses a four-wheel drive for better traction. This means it puts its power down to the road better and can accelerate out of corners quicker. In the MKI version of the Su 30, the “I” stands for India, with special for-India-only features that help give it amazing agility. It actually uses two key technologies. Up front, the Su-30MKI uses a pair of canards or winglets near the cockpit and, at the rear, thrust vectoring nozzles. The canards help in situations where the aircraft needs to make a tight turn and the thrust-vectoring nozzles help steer the aircraft from the rear by moving up, down, left and right. The Lamborghini, on the other hand, uses a system called torque vectoring on the rear axle. The system kicks in only around corners, allowing the outside wheel of the car to be sent additional power. The Lamborghini Huracán and the Sukhoi Su-30MKI are two of the greatest machines in the world—both at the cutting edge of technology. They are similar, but of course they are different too. Whereas the Lamborghini Huracán “takes off” like a “bat out of hell”, the rate of acceleration drops the faster you go. It’s exactly the opposite for the Sukhoi—up until a certain speed at least.
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