The rev-limter was removed. All of the customer cars had their limiters in place so NO Customer F-1 is capable of doing 240MPH
Compared to the F-1? Carbon ceramic brakes , McLaren tried to to make them for the F1 and could not make them work. The DSG dual clutch transmission is eons better than the F-1s manual transmission. It's all wheel drive system , it's cooling , F-1 had low speed cooling issues , the Veyron doesn't. It's a true grand touring car with real air conditioning and creature comforts , the F-1's air conditioner was described as have warm dogs breath on your face. lol despite it's weight the Veyron's performance is on another level.
They Veyron is older than the new hybrids and still is comparable in terms of performance , and wait until the Veyron successor comes out it will be a game changer. Both Ferrari and Mclaren are playing catch up to Bugattii. Neither the P1 or LaFerrari are eclipsing the Veyron in terms of speed either.
page 262-263 of Driving Ambition covers the world record run. It was done Marche 31,1998.
They were on VW's Ehra-Lessien Test Track, which is the same test track that Bugatti used to make it's record run. The car was a production spec, and it was XP5. It was "meticulously prepared".
There were three runs, on run two, driver Andy Wallace reported that the car was close to it's rev limiter at 384 km/h. He reported on the last run that the car would not go further than 391 km/h. Corrected maximum speed was 386.7, which converts to 240.1 mph. No mention of removing the rev limiter or the cats.
Yes, the Mclaren's brakes compared to Veyron, are not as good. In fact, before the Veyron, they tested the Enzo against it (Martin Brundle did the test on video) and he declared that the F1's brakes couldn't compare to the Enzo's.
The Mclaren was way ahead of it 's time in terms of packaging, weight distribution, grip, and build.
The Veyron shows what happens when you can throw money at something.
And, when it's said and done, the Mclaren will command a lot more on the auction block than the Veyron. It just might be commanding Ferrari 250 GTO prices in a few years.