Abra: Huracan “a joy to drive”

Richard Abra has described MP Motorsport’s new Lamborghini Huracan as “a joy to drive” ahead of the team’s return to the Blancpain Endurance Cup in 2016 with Barwell Motorsport.

The Huracan has been an overwhelming commercial success after winning on its Blancpain debut at Monza, with six cars entering the Daytona 24 Hours and multiple customer programmes expected across Europe, including a two-car attack on the British GT championship by Mark Lemmer’s Barwell outfit.

Abra will share the Lambo with Osborne and Poole (Barwell Motorsport).

After a year away, Abra will once again team up with old sparring partner Joe Osborne and car owner Mark Poole.

“Literally from the word go, the biggest thing that Joe and I thought was how easy it was to drive,” says 27-year-old Abra. “We tested it in Vallelunga last year to get a feel for it and instantly fell in love with everything about it, the controls, the brakes, the seating position; it’s a joy to drive, which only bodes well for the Amateur drivers.

“Lamborghini have taken it in-house this year and invested a lot of time and money in the project. They really seem to have done this properly, they’ve had a year with Grasser running the car, so they’ve already done a lot of racing with it and they’ve had a lot of great drivers in the car who’ve had nothing but good things to say about it. Overall it’s a great package – the running costs and service intervals are very reasonable as well.”

Although Poole has yet to test the Huracan, Abra is confident that with Barwell running the cars, they will be firmly in the mix for Pro-Am honours come the start of the season.

“We raced with Barwell before back in 2013, and the same then applies now – Barwell have a great history of running GT3 cars at the highest level and always being very successful,” Abra says. 

“There’s a lot to be said for that in terms of who you pick to run the cars, and there’s not many teams that I would feel comfortable with handing over a new project like this to run at the standard we’re looking for.”

Abra also said that MP Motorsport are exploring following British teams RAM and Optimum into the 24H Series for some of the longer events, with the Paul Ricard and Barcelona 24 Hour races among those under consideration.