Not every development team brings their car to the Nürburgring to set a laptime. Most of the time the manufacturers or part suppliers are testing durability, or dynamics. If you stand next to the Nordschleife, watching an industrie-pool session, you’re much more likely to see a Land Rover Defender or Mercedes GLE squealing its tyres than any supercar.
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But that doesn’t make it any less disappointing to watch one of the world’s most desirable hypercars being gently tickled around the world’s toughest racetrack. The $9m Bugatti Centodieci, and three more Bugattis, arrived at the Nürburgring last week, in a choreographed dance of PR and social media worthy of a Hollywood A-lister.
Unfortunately for Bugatti, and unlike a Hollywood A-lister, there was nothing in the contracts about being being upstaged by rival talent. So whenever the various Chiron-based hypercars took to the track, they were almost certain to run into some of the supercars and hypercars actually being pushed to their limits.
A great example of this is in the video below, around the 1m25s mark, where the 640hp (claimed) Lamborghini Huracan STO (Super Trofeo Omologato) can be seen almost pushing the 1600hp (claimed) Centodieci around the Steilstreckekurve:
Of course, that’s because the STO is here to go fast. It’s not a photo-call to convince the plebs of the Bugatti’s long-past racing pedigree. Lamborghini have set themselves the MIGHTY task of scooping the Nürburgring Nordschleife’s fastest lap for a production car. For a 640-hp, naturally-aspirated Huracan, that seems an almost impossible task from my viewpoint, but I’d love to be proven wrong.
The various Bugattis might be the most expensive and exclusive cars to test at the Nordschleife this year, but you have to admit that the ridiculous AMG One hypercar is also looking a bit special. The F1-inspired hypercar is also gunning to become the Nürburgring’s fastest, and on every visit to the Nordschleife it’s looking more and more consistent. And fast.
VIDEO: See the AMG One’s active aero and suspension in action.
