The nerves set in about three days beforehand. Up until the phone call, I’d been telling myself the P1 GTR was just a car. A car with four wheels, an engine, two seats and a steering wheel. Practically a Mazda MX-5. What was there to be intimidated by? But then my memory bank would churn a bit, “You’ve driven a McLaren P1”, it would say, “was that just a car? Let me twang a few nerve endings to remind you what 900bhp felt like through the rear wheels on a damp road.” And I’d have to confess to myself that, no, the P1 had more in common with an especially volatile and creatively destructive piece of military hardware than a car.
And then McLaren phoned up. “We’re going to send someone down to show you the ropes, tell you what’s what, give it a bit of a demo run for you”. Someone, in other words, to hold my hand, someone to make sure I don’t sling £2 million worth of race-bred, track-ready hypercar into the wall at Turn 1 on the Red Bull Ring (far more likely to be Turn 3, actually – the downhill braking zone there is an utter nightmare). “Anyway,” the voice continued – and I could tell he was building up to something here, “Bruno Senna will be flying into…”
I can’t remember what was said after that, other than I felt slightly dazed as I walked back up the office to tell my colleagues that McLaren was sending a driving instructor out to impart some tips.
Bruno is imparting tips. I’m trying to listen, but I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed. I mean, just look at the GTR. More specifically, look at that rear wing. That’s 400kg of downforce right there. It’s nuts. Earlier I watched it being backed off the truck. We all did, in fact, because although there’s some mighty tasty metal in the pitlane, this is, well, this is it. The star of the show. The big kahuna. The main event.
So we gathered as a stadium tour’s worth of cables, trundle cases and spares was offloaded and watched as the McLaren roadies (OK, pit crew) set up shop in garage 19. And while the rest of the team whistled at the Inconel exhausts, pointed at the wing, said “Wiiiiiiing!” and picked up one of the aluminium wheels clad in slick Michelin rubber (“Sliiiiiiick!”), I retreated to the back of the garage to take stock and drink in the scene. Charlie Turner, who’s sensitive to these kind of things, came over, “Just be safe, mate,” he said, “no one’s expecting you to be as fast as Bruno. Enjoy it.” From across the garage, Tom Ford piped up, “He’s only saying that – you’d better be bloody fast!”
Fast. How much fast do you want? How fast can a road car, or even an extreme track car, actually be? How far can they be taken? There are no lines drawn, the only limits are those provided by physics. So we start with 1,000bhp, and to that we add racing slicks to help transfer that to the tarmac, and to make doubly sure it doesn’t come unstuck we plonk on 660kg of total downforce at 150mph. The GTR hits 150mph three times on each lap, a lap that takes under 93 seconds at an average of over 105mph. Nothing else here would get within 12 seconds of it.
The P1 GTR is being built on the production line at Woking alongside the ‘regular’ P1. It does a stint at MSO (McLaren Special Operations) a few miles away late on in the build process, but for the most part the underpinnings are common: carbon tub, front and rear aluminium subframes, a twin-turbo 3.8-litre V8 and an electric motor nestled under the left flank of the vee, drawing power from a battery pack behind the seats and adding its torque to the driveshaft before the gearbox.
There’s now 197bhp from the e-motor (up 21bhp) and a heftily unnecessary 789bhp from the fossil-fuel-fed one (plus 62bhp), yielding a pretty heady 1,000PS (986bhp). Oh, and weight has been stripped out almost everywhere – the fixed rear wing means there’s no need for heavy hydraulic struts, polycarbonate replaces glass all round, including the windscreen and there’s extra carbon. In total, about 150kg has been shaved out. Plus the suspension conponents and geometry have been heavily revised – although that’s all adjustable anyway.
This is a track car after all. McLaren isn’t as prescriptive as Ferrari is with its XX cars: it will let you take your car home (and rumour has it Lanzante has McLaren’s tacit approval to convert customer GTRs to road use), but this is meant to be the ultimate track-day weapon. And we’re at a track, where an ex-F1 driver is attempting to bolster my confidence…
“Really, you have nothing to worry about,” says Bruno (he’s a genuinely lovely bloke), “I think you’ll find it friendly to drive.” You won’t find ‘friendly’ among the many adjectives I’d use to describe the standard P1. We look at the steering wheel (it’s based on the design of Lewis’s 2008 F1 rim), talk about the controls, the IPAS and DRS, get comfortable in the car, pull the straps down tight. Bruno is going to take me out in it to start with. The wheels, freshly removed from tyre-warmers, go on with a fierce screech from the airguns, the internal jacks are retracted and, when instructed, Bruno fires the GTR into life and we’re waved out.
Let’s cut to the chase. It’s PREPOSTEROUS.
I have no idea how I’m going to get close to it. Bruno may be laid back and endearing in real life, but he’s the last of the late-brakers. Twice, slowing from 170mph, he overshoots the braking point for the Remus hairpin. Thank the god of all track marshals for tarmac run-off.
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