Goodbye Bugatti W16s Veyron Chiron Road Trip 300mph Secrets

Here we are then everyone, at the end of the W16 era. The next Bugatti hypercar will be a hybrid, albeit one with a V16 engine in it, but you get the sense that's going to be more Rimac and a bit less Volkswagen. So, as we say au revoir to the Chiron, we're also closing the chapter on the Ferdinand Piëch masterminded resurrection of the Bugatti brand and how this and that became the fastest cars in the world. So, we've arranged a little farewell party for both of the 21st century's Bugattis, the original 987bhp Veyron and what it evolved into a decade later, the 1578bhp Chiron Supersport. Even when the weather is being indecisive, I live for days like this. Bloody hell! So no, this is not that video where we drag race the slowest Bugatti Veyron against the fastest Bugatti Chiron because, well what exactly would we learn from that? This has got another 600bhp and as you can see, yeah the weather's gone British. Chiron didn't totally rewrite the Veyron's original recipe for an excess all areas hypercar, but it did refine it. Bugatti had learned how to make its carbon tubs stronger and lighter, so the later car is built to withstand a Le Mans prototypes crash test. And while it's true that the 8.0-litre quad-turbo W16 engine gained 50% more power, this is way more than a tune-up job. It's actually a lot more progressive to drive thanks to its sequential turbocharging. So right now I'm basically in a twin-turbo Chiron. You're thinking, what are you on about? They never made one of those. No, you see I'm below 3,800rpm and really on the rev counter there should be a kind of skull and crossbones at 3,800rpm because that is the moment at which a little valve opens in the engine and air is directed not just to two turbos but to all four. That is when you really feel the rush. Chiron has a stiffer chassis than the Veyron, superior aerodynamics, not to mention much more malevolent, intricate styling. But underneath, more attention was paid to how this supposed straight-line hero car cornered and handled, with the engineers even insisting second time around that only 30% of power should go to the front axle to give the car a more agile, playful, rear-wheel-drive character. Which is why the second most shocking thing about a Chiron, beyond the performance which is like being rear-ended by a bullet train, is that this is genuinely a lovely sports car to drive. It's bizarre to even think so but it steers with precision, it feels agile, exploitable. I feel genuinely ridiculous even saying so but it's comfortable, it's composed, everything's been raised to the same level as the absolutely titanic power behind you. This may have started life in the Veyron as one man's vision of a 1,000 horsepower, 400 kilometre per hour monster but it's ended up as much, much more than just a numbers car. If there's one person who knows what it's like to find those limits, it's Bugatti's chief test driver, Andy Wallace, a winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans at Daytona and Sebring. He was the nerveless pair of hands behind the wheel when a Chiron Supersport 300 plus edition head-butted its way down the Aerolesian test track to a verified 304.7724 miles an hour. So Andy, you joined Bugatti in, was it 2011? 2011, yep. You kind of missed the arrival of this, the original Veyron then? Yes, I did, yeah. I mean, so are you familiar with them now? Over the years of course I've got to drive all of the cars and it's really great just to fill in the blanks. Jumping straight into the Veyron Supersport the first time absolutely blew me away. I had no idea that a road legal car could be that fast. Yeah, so for you as someone who's like super familiar with all the cars and the models and you've, you know, developed the Belleed as well, like the most extreme Bugatti, where's the progress been made for you compared to this, like where it all began back in 2005 and where's this poor old thing been, I don't know, slightly left behind do you think? Well it's easy to miss the fact that this car is pretty much 20 years old. The Veyron's really stood the test of time design-wise. I mean, yes of course we've got less power, this is 1001 horsepower version, the brakes were perfectly adequate 20 years ago but things have moved on, so you do notice if you arrive at a corner at fairly good speed you need a firm press and they're not quite as bitey as they are in the Chiron. Yeah and it's a really good point that, you know, 20 years old you would expect it to feel horribly dated and yet, you know, most supercars from when this thing was new had single clutch automated manuals, this is a twin clutch like we're used to in almost everything now. Yeah exactly, it was actually the first, as you say, first supercar, hypercar with a double clutch gearbox. Yeah that still does the job doesn't it? I'm just gonna reel off for the benefit of people who don't know your LinkedIn profile off by heart, you did 217 miles an hour in a Jaguar XJ220. Yep. So you're four miles an hour faster than Martin Brundle, but I bet you never tell him. Oh I do when I see him. And then you did the 243 mile an hour record in the McLaren F1. That's right. And then of course your most recent speed exploit 304, I'm going to get this right, 0.7724 miles an hour in the Chiron Supersport 300 plus ultra car. So I want to put this on the record once and for all, rank those experiences on the brown trousers scale, what is the most scary? Well I'll try and make the answer quick, but as somebody who was crazy about cars from seven years old, I never thought I would find myself in any of these cars doing these crazy speeds and I never set out to do it, I was just stood in the right place or the wrong place, however you view it, at the right time and I got the job. As the speed or as the records go, the speed gets more and more and more and it's getting to the point now where it's pretty seriously fast. So the brown trouser side is coming from the speed rather than the way the car feels at that speed. Yeah. To some extent these records become a bit of a hot potato which is bouncing around and I was just stood there and had to catch it, but now I feel really lucky in fact to be asked to do this. Yeah I guess the question is where does it go next? All joking aside, which is very easy to do because Andy is the most modest, down-to-earth, quick bloke imaginable, Mr Wallace here is a very brave man and not just when he's in the driver's seat. He sat next to hundreds of Chiron customers on test drives, teaching them how to drive the world's fastest car. Not an easy job when you're dealing with a billionaire who isn't used to being told what to do or a journalist like our Jack who's still clenched to this day from this moment on the Nürburgring. But I wanted to hear more about Andy's heroics hitting the fastest speed ever in a production car and once we'd found him some tasty cake and coffee he didn't disappoint. So Andy, bon appetit. Holly thanks mate, this is delicious. Nice bit of afternoon pie. Now we've done some driving and we can just sit down and have a chat, I just wanted to ask more about your finest hour. 304.7724 miles an hour. You have to get the decimal points in or it gets very upset. What's that in kilometres? I know you operate in metric now. 490.4837. There we go. So that record it's just you know it's extraordinary to watch but we were just talking about it off camera and there's just there's something you've got to hear. Can you please tell everyone about the jump? I can, absolutely. You tend to sort of think in your mind 400kms which is what close to 250. Anything below that you're almost not switching your brain on, it's really crazy to say that. So you give it some and it's going and as soon as it crosses 400kms, okay now concentration. The proving ground in Erlissing has been repaved on not the end where you do VMAX but the building up speed end and then there's a join between the new surface and the old surface and really it's nothing. So just where they've just stitched kind of new fresh tarmac to old and they kind of seal it over don't they? Exactly yeah. It's just one of those. Yeah and it's sealed and yeah you can feel it in a normal car, a road car, as you go over it's just a little bump. So every time we were doing more and more runs and I did a thousand, roughly a thousand kilometres above 400kms during the week before as we built up to this and every time I was going over that the car was just momentarily taking off and landing and I kept saying to the engineers, oh well when you go over the jump the car was quite stable and everything and they kept saying well they were quite annoyed actually, what do you mean jump? All these guys have honed all the downforce and everything else, what do you mean jump? Yeah why do you call it a jump? I said well because it's off the ground, no no no it can't be, it can't be. And then they look at all the data and come back, yeah you're right it's a jump. So briefly when you were accelerating up to this record speed all four tyres of that Chiron Supersport were off the ground at 260, 270 miles an hour? It was probably about 270 yeah roughly in rough numbers. Just extraordinary. The thing is there was quite a lot of crosswind. And it's not difficult enough anyway so obviously there's got to be crosswind and so where there's gaps in the trees the car's moving around and so you never feel super confident because of that but then eventually on the last day in the morning the windsocks were all pointing down and then you think oh now we've got to do it, there's virtually no wind. And to set the scene you leave the parking area and it's 20 kilometers for a whole lap. So you set the cruise control at 200 k's, 125 miles an hour, you just sit there and it takes quite a while. As you're doing the lap you're just basically stabilizing temperatures and pressures but then as you're coming back towards the last banking before the real speed of course you know what you've got to do and you've been there a week already and you've got to do it. So you've got your sweaty palms. Even you get sweaty palms during the big speeds. Yeah and then you arrive and so you knock it down into fourth gear, I think it is, from seventh, up onto the banking and basically you're looking for until you can see the exit, you shouldn't go too early, you don't want to lift off and go again, you see the exit then you just squeeze it down. So bam, go down, off the banking, probably a bit quicker than I should have but it was okay. Some of the engineers were leaning over the fence and I'd been passing them at around 428 kilometers, this time I passed them at 438 because I went earlier. And you thought we're on now. Yeah and I thought that was it and then I know I've got to go over this jump, so I go over the jump and it landed quite okay and oh that's it now, I'm not lifting, I'm staying flat, staying flat, staying flat and it's picking up speed like crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. Then once you pass 450 which I do know is pretty much exactly 280, after it passes that of course you're pushing so much air out of the way, the acceleration is a little bit duller and it's still, you feel it accelerating but it's basically you're covering the ground so fast and the end of the track, the bit where you have to lift off and go around the banking, it's in the distance but it's coming. So you're willing the speed to continue to go up and this is coming closer and it's a game of like, well what shall I do? It's basically a game of chicken with your own nerve. Yeah you try to judge where the time, the right time to lift off is and because you've never arrived that fast before, it was probably five miles an hour slower before, you don't really have a point, you have to sort of invent it yourself. So finally it's there, it's starting to move around and we then decided in the end it's not an aerodynamic problem, it was the fact that the wheels are turning so fast that the gyroscopic effect of the wheels turning overcomes the suspension geometry. So the natural release and it should centre, at this point release and it does anything else but centre and that's because it's not normal 300 miles an hour. But anyway, so this is happening so you really are very aware of the movement and the speed's coming up and the end of the road's coming and you've got so many things to concentrate on and you have to pick a spot to lift off and so the trouble is we didn't reach Vmax which I think maybe it takes another two or three kilometres to get that but it was still climbing, still climbing but in the end you've got to call it a day. So hang on, so 30477.24 is the claim and that was verified, it was done on the data I think, but there was more in it. It was still climbing, still gradually, gradually climbing. And it's just all about space, it's not about oh if we'd had better weather or different tyre pressures, it's just purely about having a It's just, yeah, it's not quite long enough. It's an incredible feat of engineering and of driving and it sort of brings me to the fact that when I've watched a video of you doing 391, 391, it will not go any more than 391 but 391's quite fast. That was like the immortal line in the McLaren F1 at Aerolessie. It will not go any more than 391 but anyway 391's quite fast isn't it? And I think a lot of, you know, maybe a lot of people watching thought oh I'll never see a street car go faster than that. That did and then it was, you know, it started a real ding-dong battle and then of course the Chiron's now up there as the king. These records that we think are unbeatable are always challenged and I'm kind of fascinated, so you're currently in the throne, what would you say to the person out there who is going to one day strap themselves into a car and attempt to beat 304.7724? Well I mean records first are to be broken aren't they and if you, you know, throughout human history you've always tried to go faster, longer, higher, so yeah I mean good luck. Good luck. I mean if Bugatti was to build such a thing would you be, you'd be putting on your Nomex that morning? You'd be putting on the lids and being like I'm up for it? It's very tempting isn't it? Right I think with that I think we've earned some pie. Yeah I think we have too. What a guy, what a driver. I think every petrolhead on earth owes Andy a debt of thanks and a slice of rhubarb cake for living out our top trump, top speed fantasies and verifying the VMAXs we all know off by heart. Where Bugatti and ultimate speed runs go from here, well that's anyone's guess. My job for the rest of today is to take the Chiron home. It's weird you know, since the last time that we'll drive a Bugatti Chiron kind of in period, maybe Top Gear will never drive one again and even if we do, well it will be the old model, it will be the legacy car. That's poignant because like you I've grown up with these cars branded into my brain as the benchmarks. Long before I worked at Top Gear, I was a fan glued to the TV show watching Jeremy race a plane and a train from Italy to London, watching Hammond race a Veyron against a Eurofighter Typhoon jet and watching Captain Slow himself max the Veyron Supersport at Aerolesion, thankfully without doing a jump. I remember being in the Top Gear office the day that we got the mysterious pictures of the new car, this secret new Chiron and the performance figures were off the charts again but we were all just looking at it going, oh yeah that's better than the Veyron, that looks hot and then a few months later seeing Chris Harris on the TV show get the world exclusive drive and do what I think is still the only true power slide I've seen in one of these, which yeah I think I'll keep it that way today actually, I'm not gonna have a go. Last year I finally got my shot at going really fast in a Bugatti and hit 250 miles an hour on the space shuttle runway at Cape Canaveral. It's one of the most exciting things I've ever done in a car but it was also fascinating to meet Bugatti owners and chat to them about why they dropped two or three million quid on one because well of its quality, its integrity and the fact that it's not actually just a flex, it's an engineering master class and I simply don't believe that any car from the Volkswagen group in the last 20 years would have been as good if it wasn't for trial by Veyron. Whether you're driving a 911 Turbo or a Polo DSG, I've bumbled along in both and thought no this wouldn't be as solid or as sorted if it wasn't for what they learned with Bugatti. So I'm not going to try and change your mind because I feel like you probably know where you stand on these Bugattis by now, you probably love them or maybe you just respect them or maybe you think that they're a complete overweight waste of time but I do think that this car doesn't have as many haters as maybe it did 20 or so years ago and you can't tell me that the Veyron didn't totally reignite and reinvigorate the top speed war. There's no way that Koenigsegg and SSC or Hennessey would have tried so hard to do 260, 270, 290 and beyond if it wasn't for Bugatti always being there and always setting the gold standard. I feel like this car might just be moving out of its pantomime villain era, you know the kind of Max Verstappen Roger Federer vibe when something's just too good, too unbeatable and you almost cheer on anything that takes it on out of default but then afterwards, after it's gone then you kind of find you had an affection for it all along. So maybe it's only after the death of the mastermind of the Veyron and then its child the Chiron, Ferdinand Piëch and the W16 quad turbo engine that he wanted at the heart of it that we'll think wow yeah we were lucky to be alive to see that kind of madness get engineered. I mean you can argue the toss all day whether or not it's the greatest type of car or even my favourite eye of the car but I do just feel lucky and privileged to have lived in a world where people are not only man enough to conceive projects like this but also clever and bloody minded enough to see them through to existing. So it'll be interesting to see if a Veyron or a Chiron becomes one of those priceless historic cars. Remember in the 1990s Ferrari 250 GTOs weren't that sought after and you could get a McLaren F1 for cheaper than new whereas they're now 25 million pounds. Will Veyrons and Chirons ever get up there? Well they did build them in the hundreds rather than in the tens and it has no motorsport pedigree but of all the unobtainium hypercars I reckon it's still the only one that you would win at auction and then get into and drive home in the rain. Wow that car. Anyway try not to be too sad for the ending of this Bugatti era because we're about to show you the next one and I think I can hear it coming. So make sure you're subscribed to the Top Gear channel and see you back here on June the 20th for the next chapter.