Christian von Koenigsegg's latest creation has just done something rather spectacular at the Top Gear test track. The Jesko Attack - which sounds more like a military operation than a car - has just set a new lap record around that familiar airfield circuit in Surrey. And when I say "set a record," I mean it absolutely demolished the previous best time. The Jesko managed a 1 minute 10.9 second lap, which is four-tenths quicker than Ferrari's SF90. Now, four-tenths might not sound like much, but at Top Gear's test track, that's the equivalent of turning up to a knife fight with a tactical nuclear weapon. Let's put this into perspective. The Jesko Attack is powered by what can only be described as Thor's own V8 engine. It's a 5.0-liter twin-turbo unit that makes 1,280 horsepower on regular fuel, or a completely absurd 1,600 horsepower if you feed it E85. That's the sort of power figure that makes nuclear power station operators feel inadequate. But it's not just about raw power. The "Attack" part of its name comes from the fact that this is the high-downforce version, which means it has more wings and spoilers than your average aircraft carrier. The aerodynamics were clearly working overtime around the track's notorious Hammerhead corner, where most cars would prefer to end up in a different postal code. Then there's what Koenigsegg calls the Light Speed Transmission. It's a 9-speed multi-clutch gearbox that changes gears so quickly, physicists are still arguing about whether it breaks the laws of time and space. It's the sort of technology that makes dual-clutch transmissions look like something from the Stone Age. This lap time is particularly impressive given that earlier this year, the Jesko had already set a record at Laguna Seca - only to have it snatched away by the Czinger 21C a month later. Clearly, someone at Koenigsegg took that personally, because they've now gone and conquered what might be the most famous test track in the world. And let's be honest - while the Nürburgring might be the ultimate test of a car's capabilities, it's the Top Gear test track where legends are made. This is where The Stig has tested everything from reasonably priced cars to unreasonably powerful hypercars, and now the Jesko sits at the top of that very prestigious pile. What makes this even more remarkable is that the Jesko Attack did this with a proper number plate. This isn't some stripped-out race car - it's a road-legal hypercar that you could theoretically drive to the shops. Though I suspect finding a parking space might be somewhat challenging, given that it's wider than most small countries. And on that bombshell, I need to go explain to my calculator why it just displayed "ERROR" when I tried to work out the Jesko's power-to-weight ratio. Though I suspect even the calculator was just too embarrassed to show such a ridiculous number.
