Clarkson vs Zonda R

So. The Zonda R. It looks like a racing car, but because it conforms to not one single piece of racing legislation, it can't actually be entered for any recognised event. Apart, perhaps, from grass-track racing.
To make matters worse, it has no indicators or lights which means that you cannot use it on the road either.

Words: Jeremy Clarkson
Photos: Justin Leighton

This article was originally published in the December issue of Top Gear magazine

And no, it isn't a track-day car, because almost all racing circuits, in Britain at any rate, are neutered by noise limits and have men in anoraks to enforce them. And there isn't a decibel-o-meter in the world that would classify the R as quiet. Even ‘volcanic' has a summer breeze quality to it in the context of an R. For a run around the TopGear test track, it was fitted with half-arsed mufflers and we still got complaints. From people in Norway.

So, you will need £1.5 million to buy the car, and then your own race track in a desert somewhere. I’ve checked on this, and the going rate for one of those is around £6,000,000,000. That being what they spent on the recently opened facility in Abu Dhabi. So, the R then. Is it worth £6,001,500,000?

 

To make it move, Pagani has ditched the 7.3-litre AMG V12 we've seen in various Zondas to date, and instead gone with a smaller but more powerful 6.0-litre AMG racing unit. This has a dry sump, which is a good thing because that prevents oil surge when the car experiences high-g turns. And as we discover later, the R can do such high-g turns that your brain starts to squeeze out of your ears.
It's not just the engine that's different to other Zondas', or where they've put it. (It's 50mm further forwards than usual and is therefore bolted directly to the driver's spine.) No. This is the first Zonda to be sold with a flappy-paddle gearbox. It, too, comes from the world of racing and, while the changes are not smooth - it's a bit like being kicked in the head - they are fast.

 

Add all this together. Weight of a Ford Fiesta. Gearbox from a single-seater racer. And 740bhp. And you begin to wonder why on earth it took six minutes and 47 seconds to do a lap of the Nürburgring. I suspect the driver stopped half-way round for a nap.
I certainly haven't driven anything in my life that goes so quickly. It revs like a b******, screams like a psychopath stuck in a gin trap, hurls itself at the end of the runway and before you've stopped gurning, the speedo is reading 320kph. That's a nice round 200mph.
There was much, much more to come, but the road was running out, so it was time to try out the brakes. The figures say it will get from 125mph to a dead-stop in 4.3 seconds. The fact is that 15 minutes after I'd become stationary, my face was still doing about 70.

 

Savage. That's the best way of describing this car. They may have given it some leather door-pulls to suggest it's refined, but it isn't. Like all Zondas, it's much easier to drive than you could possibly imagine, but because of the thunderous noise and the science-fiction speed, things behind the wheel can become a little bit - not scary, that's the wrong word - hectic.
Part of the problem is that in that hot, bucking, and very loud cockpit, you feel disturbed. You know that you can go round the corner ahead at 100, easily, but you cannot help lifting. Maybe braking a tad. You almost don't want to let the madman do its thing, because you feel you won't be good enough to sort stuff out if anything went wrong.

 

It took me a long, long time with the R - days, in Italy and England - before I dared take it up to its limits. And I still didn't find them. Partly, I suspect, because of the tyres...
When a car comes down to the TopGear track on Pirellis, we know we are in for a short burst of extreme joy, followed by a frustrating day of understeer and unpleasant noises. Mostly coming from the cameraman we've run over.

 

Pirellis give excellent bite for two or three hot laps and then, even though there is no visual clue on the tyre itself, they lose the will to live. Oh, they are legal and fine for another 15,000 miles on the road. But for crisp cornering and exploring the outer limits of your car's capabilities? No. They're useless.
The tyres Bentley uses are even more peculiar. They do not lose any grip at all, or show even the merest hint of wear until, after a couple of hours, they explode, sending sheets of steel-reinforced rubber into the brake pipes, the anti-lock system and the delicately honed bodywork. This is usually followed by several irate telephone calls from Bentley's head office.

 

The tyres on a Jag meanwhile. They're unbelievable. They smoke like First World War battleships, give good grip and never wear out.
But the best tyres are those with no tread at all. Slicks. That's what the Zonda R was wearing and, frankly, they skew everything. A Nissan Micra on slicks would feel brilliant, so the Zonda? Well, it was out of this world. It flowed from corner to corner like nothing I've ever experienced, it braked more beautifully, and it powered onwards past the apex without even a hint of the dreaded waggly tail.
Some of that is down to the car. Some of it is down to the tyres. All of it, combined, is about the most perfect speed machine ever made.

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