Bugatti Chiron Sport sets new speed record

Bugatti has set a new world speed record for production cars. To achieve this, a Chiron hypercar was slightly tweaked by Dallara.

The tuner raised the output of the car’s W16 engine from its standard 1,500 horsepower (1,119 kilowatts) to 1,600 hp (1,193 kW), bringing it on par with the recently introduced Centodieci.

Piloted by Andy Wallace, the vehicle set the record a full month ago, but the results haven’t been published until now. The Chiron Sport made 490.484 kilometers per hour (304.773 mph) on the Ehra-Lessien test track in Germany.

This is better than the result of the Koenigsegg Agera RS, which hit 457.1 km/h (284 mph) two years ago and even better than the 483.44 km/h (300.4 mph) of a unique Ford GT in March this year. The latter supercar was the first to breach the 300 mph mark worldwide.

The Chiron Sport depicted here sports a rear end that is 25 cm (9.76 inches) larger than stock. Apparently, this was done to minimize the aerodynamic drag.

Possible future contenders of the Bugatti Chiron Sport are the Hennessey Venom F5, the Koenigsegg Jesko, and the SSC Tuatara. Their respective manufacturers claim they are capable of surpassing the 300 mph mark, however, none has proven this in a real-life test so far.