German based Raeder Motorsport GmbH has been preparing race cars for some years now, and recently they turned to the Lamborghini make to build a full blooded track car, after designing their ultimate purebred, they came up with the Gallardo seen on this page ...

This highly modified Lamborghini was constructed to have it's maiden race during the 37th edition of the Adenauer ADAC Rundstrecken-Trophy held on May 20. 2006, but before entering a car into such a race, a lot of testing and fine tuning was required.

A first 'outing' in their 'Baby' looked very well indeed, last May 16. the Raeder Motorsport team had the car on the Papenburg testing ground to perform a full 'functions test', to make sure the car was ready to be used on the track and avoid unpleasant accidents once 'in the heat of the race', like bodyparts going airborne or a rear wing starting to live it's own life at 300 Km/h ...



With a fire extinghuiser at hand and a laptop recording valuable information, the car was driven a first lap at Papenburg ... without any trouble, after that another 5 rounds were completed to test the car at higher rpm's, making sure that among other things the brakes were up to their job, even a start from standstill was tested to check if the driveshafts and transmission parts would hold ... everything worked like a charm.

But a lot more work would be put into this super Gallardo to have it ready on Sunday, May 20. ... after testing the car at Papenburg it was loaded up and driven to the 'painter' to apply the color scheme decided for the Raeder Lamborghini, bright orange combined with classic white would clearly show the massive work that went into creating the bodywork of this rare Lamborghini. Note that the final coats of paint were actually applied that same night !
In the morning back to Monchengladbach were Raeder Motorsport GmbH is located to have the decals mounted, fit the ABS and tractioncontrol, put some lights back on the car (regulations you know), cooling ducts for the brakes, a new exhaust system ... the list went on and on while time was running out.

The guys at Raeder had about 24 hours to get a freshly painted car ready for final testing on Friday ... and they did it, on Friday morning the Raeder Gallardo was present at Nurnbur to perform test runs on the actual track it should race on Sunday ... but they would only test the car for two rounds, and during those tests it smelled like it could burn down any moment !? The reason was simple ... because of the new exhaust, which also had been painted and wrapped in heat resistant material, warmed up for the first time, it sent a strange smell into the cockpit ... totally normal, so why only two rounds at a time ?
Another logical reason, there wasn't a temperature gauge installed, so they couldn't verify the engine wasn't overheating, so the stay on the save side they only drove the car for two rounds in a row.

It became obvious some small adjustments were needed to the cooling ducts, so these were performed on Friday evening (again working into the night ...) but on Saturday the car was ready to be tested 'pedal to the metal' on the GP track, still no ABS, traction control nor temperature gauge, but at least the car could be tested up to it's full potential ... but than bad luck hit this magnificent project : a driveshaft broke, putting the Raeder Gallardo to a standstill ... no more testing and subsequently no race in Sunday. At that moment there were no spare parts available yet, so this minor defect couldn't be repaired in time for the ADAC race.

But rest asure that the Raeder Gallardo will be back on the track, they intend to run this high power car in both 6-hour and 24-hour endurance races, so expect to see this orange and white Lamborghini in action again pretty soon.