Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ almost sold out

Bugatti generated plenty of media hype with its record-breaking 490.48km/h (304.77mph) run in a modified Chiron at Germany’s Ehra-Lessien test track last month.

And the French hypercar brand will also deliver a tidy financial payoff as the entire 30-unit production run of the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ that’s near-identical to the record-breaker is on the verge of being sold out.

“They’ll all be sold by the end of this week. The colleagues are just signing the contracts with customers, and there’s more interest than we have cars,” Bugatti spokesman Tim Bravo told carsales.com.au at the Frankfurt motor show.

Each unit is priced from 3.5 million euros ($A5.6m) and deliveries will commence in mid-2021 after the pre-production process is completed.

The Chiron Super Sport 300+ has the same technical spec as the record-setting car, and is propelled by the uprated 1176kW quad-turbo W16 motor that first came to light in the limited-edition Centodieci.

The production variant also gets the taller gearing of the record-breaking car, although it loses the rollcage fitted to the latter and regains the passenger seat that needed to be removed to accommodate the GPS and raft of computer equipment to log all the data from the high-speed runs.

The Bugatti Super Sport 300+ wears a different set of lightweight magnesium rims than the record-setting car as Bravo explains: “They [the Bugatti engineering team] tried a few different sets of rims as they were optimising airflow for the ultra-high-speed runs, for which they had no previous real-world data.”

Although the rims are different, the production car gains the same reinforced Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres that were specially created for the record-breaker (more on this later).

Contrary to some reports, the ride height of the record-setting Chiron is no lower than the showroom model it’s based on, and the same goes for the Super Sport 300+.

As per the standard Chiron, the Super Sport 300+ will drop to 60 and 65mm respectively at the front and rear in ‘Top Speed’ mode, 115mm/116mm (front/rear) in ‘EB’ mode and 95/115mm in ‘Autobahn’ mode and ‘Handling’ mode. Ride height in ‘Stance’ mode (ie: when the car is parked) is 90 and 95mm respectively at the front and rear.

As already reported, the Super Sport 300+ will be speed limited to 440km/h, but there’s no truth to reports by some media that customers can have the speed-limiter deactivated and attempt to replicate former Le Mans winner Andy Wallace’s recent record-setting feat at Ehra-Lessien.

“If you’ve ever driven above 400km/h, you’d know that is already very fast,” says Bravo. “The speed-limiter won’t be deactivated for safety reasons. To go beyond that, conditions have to be perfect and a professional driver is needed.”

“For the record, we had a whole team of engineers optimising every parameter and we X-rayed all the tyres, and yet Andy still had to be very careful because of the winds at Ehra-Lessien that kept changing. Every movement at that speed is multiplied.”

Bugatti’s calculations indicated the car could have gone 25km/h faster in Nevada, as the air is less dense due to its higher altitude than Lower Saxony, where Ehra-Lessien is located, but the company decided against this on safety grounds.

“The route in Nevada is very long and only goes in one direction: security forces would have taken too long to get to the scene in an emergency. In addition, the track has a slight gradient of about three percent. It wouldn’t have felt right to set a record there,” says Bugatti’s head of development, Stefan Ellrott.

The record-setting Chiron’s aero-optimised longtail bodywork was designed by Dallara to minimise drag, with air curtains at the front guiding excess pressure developing at the front air inlets towards the flanks.

In addition, there are air outlets on the upper surface of the front fenders and directly behind the wheel-arch to dissipate excess pressure from the wheel-arch.

But the big changes are at the rear, with the so-called ‘Longtail’ keeping the airflow attached to the car to reduce drag by over 40 per cent.

Meanwhile, there’s two pairs of vertically stacked exhausts, which creates space for a diffuser that generates sufficient negative lift to enable the rear wing to remain fully retracted in Top Speed mode (the wing stays up at a small angle in the standard car), further minimising drag.

As per the record car, the bodywork of the Super Sport 300+ is fabricated from exposed jet-black carbon-fibre, with a pair of ‘in-yer-face’ orange stripes running from nose to tail. The black engine cover is made of carbon, as is the windscreen wiper.

Regarding the orange-and-black exterior, Bravo says: “This is the only colour scheme foreseen, and customers would for sure want it. However, if they have other wishes, they will be able to change it.”

Befitting its limited-edition status, there’s a ‘Super Sport 300 +’ motif etched in LED lighting on the doorsills and the interior is dominated by black carbon, leather and Alcantara in Beluga Black, complemented by colour highlights in Jet Orange.

All interior trim parts have a black anodised finish, while the rear-view mirror and centre line are painted in Beluga Black.

Bugatti approached the record-breaking run with a clinical, methodical build-up and former Le Mans winner Andy Wallace – the company’s official test driver – was obviously the go-to man for the record attempt at Ehra-Lessien.

“The first time I was contacted with regard to the record attempt was in May or June to ask if I was doing anything in August,” Wallace told carsales.com.au at Frankfurt. With a laugh he added, “I said, ‘No, no… I’m free!’”

Although Wallace wasn’t involved in the development of the car, he put in about 1000km of testing – incrementally building up speed – before the final record-setting run.

“We didn’t rush this project at all, because it was important to validate all the simulations in the real world,” he says.

“Our simulations had indicated that in the space available (Ehra-Lessien’s straight is about 8.7km long) we would hit about 490km/h and, as it turned out, they were bang on.

“The fact that the data is that accurate gives you a lot of confidence because data is what all this is driven by. After all, this can go very wrong if you don’t get all the numbers right.”

Wallace says the car was still accelerating at 490km/h, but adds: “At some point you have to decide to start slowing down to make sure you’ve wiped off enough speed for the banking at the end. That’s how we ended up with that number.”

Asked about the biggest challenges when attempting a speed record, Wallace says: “From a technical standpoint, the two most important things are tyres and aerodynamics.

“You obviously need a tyre that can stay in one piece, and the other key factor is to reduce aerodynamic drag. However, as you go faster and faster it’s vital to keep the aero balance, so plenty of wind-tunnel testing went into the car.”

Wallace thus explains the procedure for the final high speed run: “It’s just over 20km for a lap at Ehra-Lessien, so you go out and do an entire lap at 200km/h, which is idling in a Bugatti, and that stabilises all the temperatures and tyre pressures.

“For the high-speed run you enter the final banking at 200km/h, which is the neutral-steer point, but as you get towards the end of it you increase speed to 250km/h and then ‘Bang!’” [makes a hand motion to mimic flattening the throttle].

Wallace said accelerating from 250 to 490km/h during the record run took just 57 seconds, which is a staggering statistic in itself.

“The first increments flash past very quickly and you’re at 300km/h probably before you’ve even got to full throttle,” he says. “Three-fifty and 400 also come up pretty quick, but once you get to 450 the acceleration obviously slows down although you’re still adding speed.

“In an ideal world, you then just sit there with your foot flat, get to 490km/h and everyone’s happy but in reality it’s not quite like that. First of all, there’s a real shock value when you’re going that fast.

“I’m very used to doing 380km/h in the standard Chiron, and then when you use the Speed Key you can get to 420. Just going from 380 to 420 is a big jump, even though it’s only an extra 40km/h. You really do feel you’re going a lot faster. Ditto after 450.

“After 450km/h there’s a bit of an issue as the wheels are turning so fast they effectively turn into a gyro, which means they keep going in a particular direction unless you make a correction.

“There’s a tiny bit of crosswind at this track which makes the car move a bit to the left, so you want to correct that. You then tip in a tiny bit of steering lock, but then it wants to go in the other lane and run along the barrier.

“You then think, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be there’, so you make another small correction the other way. So, you’re constantly steering and counter-steering above 450km/h.

“The car is travelling at 136 metres per second at this speed, so even a small lateral movement is massive when you’re in the car. I’ve had the car moving across all three lanes and almost losing control of it due to crosswinds.

“Then you run into another problem, which is to slow down the car after having hit 490km/h. At this point the car has a lot of forces all over it but it’s sitting pretty flat in terms of rake.

“When you lift off the throttle you increase the rake, which instantly shifts the aero centre of pressure forward quite a lot. This means you gain grip at the front but lose it at the rear, which makes the car a bit of a handful. Obviously not desirable at 490km/h!

“So, you gently lift off the gas and then, once you feel confident, you start to press the brake and the idea is that you get down to 200km/h again before the banking at the end. You have to pick a point where you lift off in order to slow down sufficiently for the banking. Maybe the point I picked was a fraction early, but I didn’t know what to expect.”

“Once you’ve gotten the speed down in the three-hundreds you can do whatever you like with any of the controls and it’s fine. It’s only at really massive speeds, where forces build up exponentially, that you need to be delicate with your inputs.”

Wallace says the record-breaking car feels no different to drive versus a standard Chiron at low and medium speeds, although he says the extra 100hp (73kW) makes it feel “a bit more responsive”.

But he adds that where a standard Chiron’s acceleration starts to taper off markedly around the 400km/h mark, the low-drag set-up of the ‘Longtail’ enables it to keep piling on speed.

Wallace says there was a feeling of elation and relief when the record was achieved, particularly due to all the unknowns along the way.

“There is a bit of apprehension with such an exercise because, even though you’re working with the best technical people in the world, there’s that little bit of risk that you can’t eliminate,” he says.

“But that apprehension is healthy, as it sharpens your mind for what you’re about to do. It’s not that different to sitting on the start line in an 800-horsepower race car, with 30 other cars around you.”

The standard Chiron already sports a specially developed set of Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tyres, but the record-breaker called for even more specialised rubber to cope with the enormous loads at the massive velocity the car is capable of.

“Externally the record car’s tyre looks no different to a standard Chiron’s Cup 2 tyre,” says Benjamin Vilpert, supersport tyre designer at Michelin. “However, we had to reinforce its structure substantially.”

“The way we explain the problem is that in a Porsche 911 at speeds of around 300km/h, the traction force on the belt of the tyre is about three tonnes. This is already a very big number.

“But in the Chiron record car, this force increases to more than seven tonnes once you get past 400km/h. So, you can understand that we have to add a lot of reinforcement to cope with this.

“We had to work beyond all our previous boundaries. We had to think out of the box in terms of design, simulation and testing compared to anything we had done before.

“We can test all our hypersport tyres in France, but for testing these tyres we had to go to our aircraft testing facilities in Charlotte, North Carolina -- it’s where Michelin tested the Space Shuttle’s tyres.”

Amazingly, the recored-breaking tyres had never been fitted to any car until four days before the high-speed run at Ehra-Lessien – development had all been done via simulation until that point.

Vilpert says the tyres were designed with a big safety margin and are capable of going much faster than even 490km/h.

“There is no place on earth, with a straight long enough, where you can reach the limit of the tyre, yet it’s fully street-legal and the tread pattern and compound is no different to the standard Chiron’s tyre.”

The research and development that went into the record tyres will bring more mainstream dividends in due course as Vilpert says the upcoming generation of high-performance electric cars are “very fast and very heavy” and many of the lessons learnt with the Chiron can be applied to tyres for these hyper-EVs.

“It will help us a lot in refining our next-generation tyres in the near future. This wasn’t merely about setting a record for us.”