This is not your average drag race.
The original Top Gear Series 10, Episode 3, aired October 2007. It featured Richard Hammond at the wheel of a Veyron and a Eurofighter Typhoon in drag racing. Bugatti organizes a similar duel but this time it involves the hypercar’s natural successor, the Chiron, and a Dassault Raffale Marine.
This W16 machine is the Chiron Sport, which is part of the Les Legendes du Ciel specification. This limited edition special edition was created to honor Ettore Bugatti’s contributions to the development of plane engines, and even entire aircraft. It also pays tribute to early Bugatti race driver drivers, who flew for France’s Air Force in the early 1900s.
One-of-20 Chiron Sport Les Legendes du Ciel hypercars arrived in Landivisiau (north-west France) with Pierre-Henri Raphanel, official Bugatti test driver, behind the wheel of an unconventional drag race against Dassault Rafale Marine. The French multirole fighter produces 58,550 Newtons (5,646 horsepower), which makes the Chiron’s 1,479-hp engine seem weak.
Navy pilot Etienne sits inside the cockpit. He explains how everything must go smoothly for the jet fighter as well as the hypercar, since the runway is very short. Although the Chiron may be the fastest production car (in Super Sport 300+ specification), it is not able to match the Dassault Rafale Marine at more than 1.6 Mach (1,243 mph) or nearly 2,000 km/h. This drag race is not fair.
We’ve embedded the Top Gear scene below if you haven’t seen the Veyron Vs Eurofighter Typhoon duel.