The kings of speed: five of Top Gear mag's greatest memories in a Bugatti

We had 24 hours with a Chiron Super Sport – what would you have done? If your answer is drive at over 200mph on the autobahn and then join a public session at the Nürburgring then great minds think alike. The only spanner in our plan was the sheet rain falling when we arrived at the circuit.

I decided to go out in the car anyway with a very wide-eyed Andy Wallace riding shotgun – especially when we snapped sideways and the windows filled with Armco. We managed to stay on the tarmac, barely, and with refrigerated tyres we struggled to keep pace with the diesel BMW 3 Series Compact in front.

Head over to the Top Gear YouTube channel and you can watch the whole ordeal in glorious 4K.

I’m a long way from being a racing driver. But how’s this for a list of racing driver excuses? On the day life presented me with the chance to hit 250mph in a Chiron, it was too hot and humid for the W16 to make max power. The US spec petrol was low on octane, the wind was gusting on an active military runway (NASA’s Cape Canaveral) that could be closed at any moment. Several runs were postponed. The engine baked in the summer heat. Time at the location was ultra tight.

It came down to one attempt, one run, no second chances... and the Super Sport went and did it. A GPS verified 250mph, in worst-case scenario conditions, with a petrified driver. That’s how easily a Bugatti hits record speeds.

I’d been going to Bruntingthorpe for years. A solid two miles of cold war runway that knew its time was up. Crumbling surface, weeds on the fringes, broken bits of aeroplane in the bushes. And yet somehow, the best place in the UK to go fast. But not 200mph fast. I’d wrung stuff out there so many times, had cars tapping the 155mph limiter, once had a TVR Tuscan off the dial at 210mph, only for the GPS trace to reveal the truth – 178mph.

And then I sent a Veyron down its crusted runway. I remember the sense of rumbling power, the sheer force that kept building and building, and glancing down to see the needle sweep innocuously past 200mph barely beyond the halfway point.

A story well told by now, but a few years ago, I was tasked with picking up the Bugatti Veyron world record car from the factory and driving it across and down the Stelvio Pass. Tough job and all that. But it wasn’t the autobahn-in-a-Veyron that turned out to be the focus, even though that’s another story entirely. It was the ride I gave to the local Italian carabinieri who’d organised the road closures for TG.

The back side of the Stelvio Pass is much more open and we only went for a quick 15 minute blast – but when we got back, the cop got out of the car, kissed the ground and cried. Loudly. We’d been down the – closed – single track road a little too fast for his constitution, apparently.

The launch of the Bugatti Veyron was the hot ticket of 2005. Dogged by developmental issues and behind schedule, there were murmurings perhaps it was simply never going to happen. But here it was, at last. I covered it, and recall one of my colleagues – a well-known figure in the car mag world and an awesome driver – being uncharacteristically nervous as we boarded the helicopter that was taking us from Palermo to the venue, a medieval winery near Madonie.

He was right to be – we landed safely but on the next flight the pilot misjudged things and the tail rotor clipped a concrete outbuilding. Fortunately no one was hurt. And the car? Well it didn’t miss a beat. The drama, it turned out, was elsewhere...