Shelby Super Car's (SSC) Tuatara

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Nice! Now let's see them break the 300 mph barrier. I'm surprised they didn't do it at the Texas road again. I'm also pretty sure that that's not the longest runway at the Kennedy Space Center. IIRC the one used for Shuttle landings are almost 5km long.

I wish VW isn't so uptight about other cars testing at Ehra Lessien. The McLaren F1 did set its record there, and since Bugatti have bowed out of the top speed contest, they should just let everyone have at it.

Didn't Bugatti claim that Ehra Lessien can only safely be run in one direction? That's why they only ran there 304mph run once.

 

[LeGeNd-1]

Didn't Bugatti claim that Ehra Lessien can only safely be run in one direction? That's why they only ran there 304mph run once.

That's what they claim. Something about the road grain shifting due to tyre rotational forces, and as a result it would be dangerous to run in the opposite direction. It doesn't make any logical sense to me, and if that's the problem I'm sure they could just resurface the road (which would be peanuts for a company their size).

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

That's what they claim. Something about the road grain shifting due to tyre rotational forces, and as a result it would be dangerous to run in the opposite direction. It doesn't make any logical sense to me, and if that's the problem I'm sure they could just resurface the road (which would be peanuts for a company their size).

The google satellite imagery shows that at least some of the surface must have been repaved recently, they demolished a whole section of the road!

I was curious about the wind. On the day that Bugatti ran the 304mph run, the windspeed was a steady 5mph with gusts of 10mph around midday (no shadows in the video due to cloud cover, but the sun appears pretty high in the sky) coming out of the NW, ideal orientation for the attempt. I get the feeling that a counterclockwise run on that day would have put the 2-way average speed below 300mph - which isn't nearly as good of a story (for Bugatti, anyways) as 304mph even if it would have been a new record. For fun I decided to see what the wind looks like right now at Ehra-Lessien and it looks quite favorable for a clockwise run...you know if it wasn't snowing.