AMS chief editor Bernd Ostmann has been the first mag tester that had the pleasure to ride 400+ in the EB 16.4 Bugatti Veyron at VW test course Ehra-Lessien...
some impressions what he said about that day...
the track has been kinda damp in the morning, kinda scary at 400km/h, so 111m/sec without crash barries like in Nardo, well not really, rear wing setup to 2° so 40 to 50kg downforce at rear axle engineers promise that this´ll be enough for a smooth ride even on wet pavement...
through the first corner with 220 easily - absolute brutal accelerating up to 300 within seconds a light left hand bend with 380 - looking into the rear mirror - just an enormous spray but just like they told the EB16.4 is a very smooth car to ride even at that speeds...
the sepcial Michelin tires are working just perfect, they were tested up to 500km/h and before a high speed run they require 3bar pressure - this is one of the points the driver has to go through with a check list and a second car key to unlock the high speed mode - here the two front diffusor flaps are closed, the rear wing selects 2° and the body is lowered to 6.5cm front and 7cm rear a sepecial system is monitoring everything and when only one parameter is not ok the car automatically switches to handling-mode...
the first run ended with "only" 380km/h - the car switched to handling because the exhaust temperatures reached critical 970°C - cooling down the car at 220 or 5000rpm in 4th gear...
the weather gets better, it´s much warmer now and engineers force the AMS team to "act" - next run 398km/h - this time it´s the driver´s fault as he has enabled the A/C on the previous cooling lap costing some km/h on that fast run - so again a cooling lap and then full concentration on the last run with nearly 400 the rpm showed 5800 in 7th gear, now it shows 6200rpm at a speed of 402km/h ...
braking is again a new experience 31.4m (!!!) from 100 to 0 with a 1950kg car...
on the other hand acceleration is also outstanding - measured 25m long black rubber from all four wheels after the standard sprint with launch-control - result: 2.5sec to 100 and 7.3 to 200 :shock:
on a side note - at 400 km/h the EB16.4 needs ONE liter fuel for ONE kilometer so they calculated every 12min a gas station on autobahn when driving 400
