Thursday, October 6, 2011

Bugatti Veyron

Beyond this suggested checklist, there are a few catches in the procedure that will make it hard to perform a top-speed run on public roads. Once the bugatti Veyron exceeds 35 mph, if you turn the steering wheel more than 90 degrees, or so much as touch the brakes, the car's configuration reverts to the handling ode.Bugatti Veyron normal mode (top) presents max ride height and a clean body.Bugatti Veyron

Handling mode (middle) drops the body and extends the rear spoiler and wing. Bugatti Veyron top-speed mode (bottom) hunkers even lower and leaves just a bit of wing showing. When braking in the handling mode, the wing tilts up even more to increase drag and rear downforce.
The reasons for this became clear during my first top-speed lap.Bugatti Veyron With downforce reduced, the Veyron no longer cut through the air like some hyperkinetic fastball. Instead, it meandered slightly, something akin to a swift knuckle ball.

Bugatti Veyron

I barely touched the Bugatti Veyron car's top-speed governor that was set at 253 mph (407.5 kilometers per hour) on that first lap, but on the second I held the car there for at least three of the back straight's five miles. Bugatti Veyron combination of driveline noise, tire noise, and hurricane-force winds rushing over the car must have been deafening, but I don't remember it, Bugatti Veyron as I concentrated on keeping the gently meandering car within the center of the track's three lanes.

Bugatti Veyron the straightaway was only 32 feet wide, with a low highway-type guardrail at each edge and dense forest beyond. One stretch of the straightaway didn't even have a guardrail on the outside of the track, just a grassy embankment that sloped up at about 20 degrees for about 30 feet toward the trees. Leaving the pavement and ending up in the trees was only a twitch of the steering wheel away.

Bugatti Veyron

Fortunately, the Bugatti Veyron's steering is ideally set up for such fast running. There's absolutely no slack on-center, and the steering responds with a gentleness that makes it easy to feed in the delicate corrections needed to keep the Veyron between the center lane's dotted lines without overcorrecting. Still, I can see why Bugatti Veyron engineers don't want their customers to be passing semis on the autobahn at 200-plus mph in this low-downforce mode.
When you lift off the throttle at 253 mph, the aerodynamic drag alone slows the Bugatti Veyron at 0.3 g. After running that fast, dropping below 200 suddenly seems utterly effortless. You could not only hold a cell-phone conversation at 185 but also dial a cell phone at that pace. Allocate some money to keep an attorney on retainer if you get one of these cars, because double and triple the speed limit will quickly feel comfortable and normal.
You will likely only experience this speed in short bursts, which is why the Bugatti Veyron's powerful brakes will come in handy. Bugatti Veyron car is equipped with huge carbon-ceramic brakes: 15.7 inches in front with eight-piston, four-pad calipers, and 15.0 inches in back with six-piston, two-pad calipers. When you step on the brakes at high speed, the rear wing tilts up to a 55-degree angle. At 230 mph, this increases rear downforce to 1100 pounds and adds as much as 2500 pounds of drag. A panic stop at that speed produces nearly 2.00 g of initial deceleration—at least 50 percent more retardation than a Porsche 911 can generate at any speed.
Bugatti Veyron with the top speed verified, Schreiber jumped into the car to demonstrate the Veyron's "launch mode," which allows the engine to light up all four tires in a full-bore accel run. He promises the Bugatti Veyron will sprint from rest to 100 km/h (62 mph) in less than three seconds. From this, we would conclude that the car will likely run the quarter-mile in the high 10s at about 140 mph for another production-car record