The Lamborghini Urus Is Officially the World’s Fastest SUV on Ice

In March this year, Lamborghini announced that driver and racer Andrey Leontyev had taken the Urus for several drives on the Lake Baikal in Siberia, setting two new world records in the process. The Urus was the fastest SUV on ice, but it had also achieved the highest speed over a distance of 1 km (0.62 miles) from a standing start.

The Russian Automobile Federation (RAF), which is a part of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) has formally registered the record. With a top speed of 185 mph (298 kph), the Urus is the fastest on ice, beating the record set in 2019 by the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, of 174 mph (280 kph). The record is just 5 mph (8 kph) short of the claimed top speed of the Urus, 190 mph (305 kph), and the achievement is even more impressive if you consider the conditions it was possible in, i.e. the icy surface and the strong gusts of wind.

To mark the occasion of the record becoming official, Lamborghini spoke with Leontyev about how he got into ice racing, and how his passion has always been cars and the incredible things you can do with them in extreme conditions. As he puts it, the versatility of the Urus, along with the incredible performance it’s capable of, is a stand-out quality.

Leontyev notes that the Urus makes a “strong unit” with the driver, and that it’s a supercar that’s surprisingly obedient. “I am certain that even a fairly inexperienced driver could still perform well in this vehicle if they were to step onto the race track,” he says. After a day at the track, that same person could drive the Urus with his family to the family vacation home.