The Ferrari 458 has been a regular on a lot of drag racing clips these past couple of months, but what we haven’t much of is the lightweight Lamborghini Gallardo Super Trofeo Stradale.
The 458 Spider is an amazing machine. It packs a 4.5 liter V8 engine, good for 570PS as well as 540 Nm (398 lb-ft) of torque. It can also accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 3.4 seconds, and it does all of this while weighing in at about 1,610 kg (3,549 lbs).
As for the Gallardo LP 570-4 Super Trofeo Stradale, well, for starters it’s not a convertible. These two cars don’t really have that much in common except for the fact that they’re both exotic supercars and share similar performance figures.
Regardless, the Lambo really is something special. It was born as a limited (150 units) version of the LP570-4 Superleggera, boasting a dry weight of just 1,340 (2,954 lbs). It will accelerate to 100 km/h in 3.4 seconds, just like the 458 Spider, but should do a heck of a better job on a track during high-speed cornering.
Still, that’s not what we’re seeing here. This is a good old fashioned rolling start drag race from 20 to 145 mph (233 km/h), which means any advantage that the Gallardo might have had off the line (traction-wise), becomes irrelevant.
Even though we can clearly see how quickly it jumps ahead of the Ferrari, it may just be because of driver reaction time. Otherwise, both cars are so similar in terms of performance, it really is painfully obvious.
On the 2nd run the Ferrari gets a better start, but it’s clear that in a straight line there’s not much, if anything, to separate them when accelerating from a rolling start.