At speeds above 400 km/h, phenomenal forces are exerted on every area of a car and the human body must learn to quickly adapt to a velocity at which it was never designed to be subjected.
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"Convection currents rise from the asphalt, making pockets of air appear to shimmer far off in the distance. Today the selected drivers will sail through a magical milestone – the 400 km/h barrier – in one of the most technically innovative and intricately designed hyper sports cars of the 21st Century: the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport1.
The experience is inspired by the vision of Ferdinand Piëch for the original Bugatti Veyron, who challenged engineers to build a car that could drive 400 km/h in the morning and accompany its owner to the opera in the evening. Since then, the ability to seamlessly blend incomparable speed with unparalleled luxury and elegance has been a core part of the Bugatti identity, and today, the drivers will feel that identity in its most visceral form. Bugatti customers and partners line up on the tarmac, and among them is Evan Cygler, Brand Manager at Bugatti Greenwich. To acknowledge his remarkable performance in the Bugatti Sales Excellence Programme 2022, Evan was given this opportunity for a once-in-a-lifetime experience where man and machine are challenged to travel at speeds that very few Bugatti owners had ever travelled before in their hyper sports cars – beyond 400 km/h.
Christophe Piochon, President of Bugatti Automobiles, who attended the 400 Drive, said: “Just a few years ago achieving 400 km/h required months of careful preparation, the very best motorsport drivers and the most favorable conditions. For a very long time no production car could get anywhere near that speed, even for a moment. But today, in the world of our meticulously engineered and designed Bugatti hyper sports cars, we opened up this performance to our customers in absolute safety and allow them something that very few people will ever have, and most of them even had a chance to experience this with their own car. This kind of moment is part of the incomparable magic of Bugatti.”
Before their first runs, drivers underwent an intensive information session with a Bugatti Pilote Officiel, to prepare for both the physical and mental strains they will go through. At 400 km/h they will be covering the distance of 1.25 football fields every second, their body will experience over 1G of longitudinal force during full-throttle acceleration, and their eyes will struggle to pinpoint the braking boards among the heat haze rising from the runway. But, with a background in elite motorsport, the Pilote Officiel offered them valuable guidance on staying focused, and on the unusual feeling of allowing the car to wander at high speeds rather than try to steer it at roughly a third of the speed of sound. Time had come then for drivers to do their first exhilarating runs of the day, but not before the cars were equipped with their Top Speed Key.'
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