At the moment there is only one, very special Lamborghini Gallardo GTR in the United States, and it headed to the famous SEMA Auto Show in Las Vegas recently. This very special car will be competing in the 2009 SCCA Speed World Cup Challenge Series that will kick of at Sebring International Raceway on March 12.
The SEMA show is one of the most important specialty automotive items show in the world, over 120,000 companies from more than 100 countries come to this massive event, the 2007 edition received over 60,000 visitors, both from within the US and from abroad, save to say this is a very impressive showcase for such a special car as this DP7 Racing Gallardo GTR.
This event is also a great option for Dan Pastorini to attract some additional sponsors for this very expensive type of racing, Dan is actually a football player, he was part of the NFL Houston Oiler team as a quarterback, but now he went back to his first love : racing. He gathered a team of enthusiasts around him, people from NASCAR, Indy Car and NHRA at the World Challenge SPEED GT Series.
But let’s take a look at his very special car, the Lamborghini Gallardo GTR was based on a 2008 model, so not the latest LP560-4 edition, however some very important changes have been made to this V10 Raging Bull. Just like on the Reiter Engineering Gallardo, this US model has been stripped from it’s four-wheel drive, switching to rear wheel drive was needed to comply with SCCA regulations.
Some impressive figures are on hand now, a power increase to no less than 570 hp at 7800 rpm (from the original 520hp) but more importantly an large increase in torque to 450lb-ft (597Nm) from the base V10’s figure of 376lb-ft.
Naturally the Gallardo GTR went on a diet too, loosing 353 lbs, as a result the overall weight of this race car is now only 2800 lbs (compared to 3153 lbs on the base car), final touches were appointed in the form of the necessary racing tyres from Toyo on CCW aluminum wheels (12×18 inch at the front, 14×18 inch at the rear) and an upgraded brake system composed of 6-piston Performance Friction calipers on 380mm discs at the front and 4-piston units on 355mm discs at the rear, both internally vented and featuring an in-car Front/Rear brake bias system.
The bodywork of the Lamborghini Gallardo hasn’t been left untouched either, many parts have been replaced with Carbon Fiber units while some remained in aluminum, there are additional air intakes all over the car to feed air into the new ram intake system, the engine also received a Hedman Hustler Hedders exhaust to allow a better air flow from the Motec ECU controlled V10, coupled through a Hollinger sequential six-speed gearbox (also used on the Reiter Gallardo by the way) and a tripple disc clutch.
We still have the 90° V10 engine with a displacement of 4960cc, but the compression has been raised to 12.5:1, while max power is reached at 7800rpm the engine is capable of reaching a respectable 8200 rpm
