Nurburgring News

Bugatti brings Veyron SuperSport to the 'Ring

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Parent Category: Nurburgring

Created on Thursday, 14 June 2012 10:22

Last Updated on Thursday, 14 June 2012 11:00

Published on Thursday, 14 June 2012 10:55

Written by Dale

A laptime at the Nürburgring Nordschleife seems de rigeur for any supercar, but Bugatti seem to have avoided the whole 'ring laptime' question. Until today, at least. Whether they like it or not, the arrival of this Veyron Super Sport has set tongues in the village wagging. Wearing the Wolfsburg plates of parent company Volkswagen, this Veyron has been feeling its way around the Nordschleife all morning. And it's getting faster. See the video below to see what I mean...

It's over six years since Bugatti allegedly did a 7m40s lap of the 'Ring with the standard Veyron. Since then we've seen the new Super Sport model arrive with a ridiculous figure of 1183hp stuffed under the rear hood. That's 182hp more than the previous model! And on the Top Gear test track, the SS model improved over the previous car's laptime by 1.5s, posting a 1m16.8s lap around the Dunsfold course. Enough to beat the Gumpert Apollo on the airfield track, dominated by straights.

But that's only a 1.9% decrease in laptime over the older 1001hp model and if you apply the same improvement to the old 7m40s lap (never officially verified) then we'll only be seeing a 7m31s full laptime from the nearly-1200hp supercar. The Gumpert, with it's crazy cornering forces, did a 7m11s, remember?

So while it's an impressive enough hypothetical, it's not impressive enough for my tastes. With a top-speed of 258mph the Veyron Super Sport will win a game of Top Trumps, but it's not going to beat cars like the Nissan GTR, Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 and Dodge Viper ACR around the twisty Nürburgring Nordschleife. All of these relatively affordable supercars are comfortably ahead of the 1888kg monster.

So we'll have to wait and see if Bugatti release any stunning onboard video, or keep quiet again like they did last time. My money's on the latter outcome. Which is a shame, because I'd just like to see the Veyron SS accelerate down Döttinger Höhe if nothing else...

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