Lamborghini’s first SUV, the Urus, has recorded a rather unusual land speed record, taking a class win at an event called Days of Speed. The record, which now sits at 70.9mph, doesn’t seem all that impressive until you realize that it’s for a one kilometer standing start… on ice.
The Days of Speed is an annual event in Russia, and takes place on one of the most spectacular bodies of water on Earth. Lake Baikal is the largest volume of fresh water on Earth, containing about a fifth of all of the planet’s fresh water and more than the Great Lakes of the USA and Canada combined, largely thanks to being over a mile deep in places. It’s located in Siberia, which has become a byword for cold, and naturally the lake freezes over every winter.
With the ice coming in at over seven feet thick in places, it’s an obvious candidate for people to gather and race cars. The Russian Automobile Federation duly does this every spring since 2011, with this year’s event taking place between March 10 and 13.
Cars battle it out for various class records, and Lamborghini was gunning for the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk’s benchmarks set in 2019. The challenge is to launch from a standing start on the ice and aim for the highest speed possible in 1,000 meters. In addition, the organizers measure the car’s maximum speed at the finish line.
If anything was going to beat the Trackhawk, it was going to be the Urus. Although it’s giving away more than 50hp to the 707hp Trackhawk, the Urus’s 650hp V8 gives it a better power to weight ratio; all the better for acceleration.
In the end, the Urus, driven by 18-time Days of Speed champion Andrey Leontyev, covered the kilometer at an average of 114km/h (70.9mph), beating the Jeep by a relatively large 9mph margin. The Urus also hit 185mph at the finish line, beating the Trackhawk by some 11mph, and not actually all that far from the outright flying kilometer record of 215mph, set by a heavily modified E30 in 2019.
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