Bugatti Chiron 1 breaks 300 mph barrier in Germany

Tearing down the Ehra-Lessien test track in Germany's Lower Saxony, Bugatti's specially-made Chiron 1 sports car peaked at a speed of 304.7 miles per hour (490.4 kilometers per hour), the carmaker announced on Monday. 

The vehicle, a heavily modified version of the road-legal Chiron hypercar, whose list price starts at a jaw-dropping €3 million ($3.3 million), was driven by Bugatti's chief test pilot Andy Wallace. The 300 mph barrier was broken after repeated test runs on the VW-owned test track, the longest in the world.

In a press statement, Bugatti said the modified Chiron 1 is the "first hyper sports car to break the magic 300-mile-per-hour barrier."

 "It's inconceivable that a car would be capable of this. But the Chiron was well prepared and I felt very safe — even in these high speed ranges," said Wallace. 

"I went at full throttle from the start for approximately 70 seconds. It was important for me to be out of the bend at 200 km/h in order to reach top speed on the straight," he said. The vast speed test track at Ehra-Lessien has two gentle, banked curves, linked by a pair of extremely long straights — to facilitate top-speed testing. Wallace hit the record pace on the longest straight, which is more than 5 miles long.

Its peak speed reached on the straight equates to the car covering 136 meters in a second. 

The speed test was done on August 2, and the results were announced after being confirmed by Germany's TÜV technical inspection association.

In an interview with Car and Driver magazine, Wallace said the Chiron 1 was going so fast during the test run that the system transmitting the speed to the team could not keep up, and only Wallace knew that he had cracked the 300 mph barrier until speed engineers could analyze the data. 

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