17:45 19-06-2026
Bugatti Tourbillon gets bespoke Michelin Pilot Cup Sport 2 tires for 1,800 hp
Michelin built a dedicated tire for the 1,800-hp Tourbillon. Sizes 285/35 R20 front and 345/30 R21 rear are tuned for 445 km/h and a hybrid AWD layout.
The Bugatti Tourbillon isn’t just getting another set of sports tires — Michelin has built a dedicated version of the Pilot Cup Sport 2 specifically for this hypercar. For a car packing an 8.3-liter naturally aspirated V16, three electric motors and a combined 1,800 hp, that’s nearly as important as the engine itself.
The sizes are serious: 285/35 R20 up front and 345/30 R21 at the rear. But the width isn’t just for looks. The Tourbillon hits 100 km/h in roughly 2 seconds, 200 km/h in under 5 seconds, and top speed is electronically capped at 445 km/h. At those numbers the tire has to handle longitudinal and lateral loads, heat and brutal centrifugal force all at once.
Michelin and Bugatti have been here before. The Chiron Super Sport ran on dedicated Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires, and the record-setting Chiron Super Sport 300+ hit 490.484 km/h on a version of them. Back then Michelin reinforced the casing and the tires carried a Bugatti-only marking. With the Tourbillon, the task is different: on top of high speed you now have hybrid torque, all-wheel drive, three electric motors and far more complex traction control logic.
For a Tourbillon buyer, this isn’t about saving money on a set of tires. The car starts at €3.8 million — about $4.4 million — and production is capped at 250 units. But the tires decide how safely the car can actually use its potential. Hypercars long ago left the world of universal rubber behind: the tire is engineered together with the aero, brakes, suspension and stability software.
Against electric hypercars like the Rimac Nevera, the Tourbillon bets on a different character: a naturally aspirated V16, mechanical feel and analog drama. But all that theater ends in four contact patches. If they don’t work, 1,800 hp stops being an engineering miracle and turns into an expensive problem.