Once upon a time, long before I found my way to writing for publications like Fighter Sweep, I was a punk kid with a wrench in my hand, sitting around pit lane at race tracks like Limerock, Laguna Seca, and Road Atlanta. Eventually, I’d leave those days behind to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps, but once my time in uniform came to a close, I once again found myself back in racing. Of course, I had a few more diplomas in my hand by then, so my second stint in the racing world was as a consultant.
As we used to say in the expansive warehouses we built and maintained race cars in, the difference between a mechanic and an office guy is pretty simple: the former washes their hands before they go to the bathroom, the latter waits until after.
I’ve also been known to occasionally do some driving myself.
Racing is not entirely dissimilar from the aviation world: where a large number of support personnel and millions of dollars worth of equipment are devoted to ensuring a single driver gets the best performance possible about of a machine that’s been designed from the ground up to do the sorts of stuff most people would consider impossible. And let me tell you, if you think fighter pilots are cocky, you should meet some race car drivers…
It would seem that I’m not the only one that’s noticed some parallels between the racing world and the world of combat aviation, as Lamborghini’s new marketing campaign is also devoted to showing us how their new Aventador SVJ drew its inspiration from the world’s most advanced fighter, the F-35.
(Lamborghini)
While the F-35 boasts as much as 40,000 pounds of thrust with its afterburner engaged, the new Aventador touts a comparatively modest (but still impressive) 759 horsepower and 531 pound-feet of torque. That gives the new Lambo a top speed in excess of 217 miles per hour and a 0-60 time of around 2.8 seconds. Not too shabby for a ground-based vehicle.
As for how and where it drew its inspiration from the F-35, we’ll leave that up to Lamborghini, who produced this video to show you exactly that: