![McLaren P1 GTR front](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2015/12/30/McLaren-P1-GTR-Qatar-front-1_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqpw0V0vVlboup7gDmse_SEeJKmOY2cLQ88aSjbvc7epE.jpg?imwidth=680)
McLaren P1 GTR review: the ultimate track-day car
![McLaren P1 GTR front](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/images/2015/12/30/McLaren-P1-GTR-Qatar-front-1_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqpw0V0vVlboup7gDmse_SEeJKmOY2cLQ88aSjbvc7epE.jpg?imwidth=680)
The P1 GTR is the heir to the Le Mans-winning F1 GTR, and the most extreme McLaren you can buy. Andrew Frankel drives it
Driving a McLaren P1 hypercar is not something those lucky enough to have had the experience are likely to forget. And yet, the P1 is actually nothing like as fast as it could be.
Its petrol-electric hybrid powertrain might develop more than 900bhp, but it also has to pass global emissions tests, and that costs horsepower. The aerodynamics must provide downforce when needed, but not add too much drag when it’s not, and that’s a compromise too. And its tyres must work in all weathers, provide reasonable ride comfort and last for months. But what would a P1 be like if its powertrain, aerodynamics and chassis were all tuned so that it was simply as fast and exhilarating as possible? The answer is before you.
The McLaren P1 GTR is a P1 with no strings attached, save its £1.98 million price (a standard P1 costs £866,000) and its closed order book. Its engine runs unrestricted to 986bhp, its rear wing is fixed in the most aerodynamically advantage place, and its tyres are race specification slicks with a life expectancy measurable in minutes. It might be the most unhinged car based on a production design ever created. And I’m in Qatar to drive it.
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Like Ferrari with its FXX programme, McLaren will organise events all over the world for P1 GTR owners, where they will receive driver training as well as advice about fitness and nutrition. But unlike Ferrari, McLaren will also let you take it home and drive it at a local track day if you prefer.
Visually, it is utterly intimidating. While “normal” P1s have a race mode that allows them to sink nearer to the ground, the GTR doesn’t have anything else, so with its shrink wrapped surfaces, minimal ground clearance, pumped out body work and vast front splitter, it appears to be not so much hugging the ground as sprouting from it.
The interior is passingly familiar to what you get inside a P1, albeit with the major buttons relocated to the steering wheel. But while a P1 will idle quietly when you start it, the GTR blasts into life with so much noise that your first inclination is to duck, your second to hide. Is all that energy going to be containable for a mere mortal? There is but one way to find out.
In the regular P1, the electronics have to intervene in the lower gears to stop you boiling the tyres with wheelspin. But this isn’t necessary in the GTR, with its hot slicks. It not only has more power, it can use it too. The acceleration doesn’t feel strong, so much as an act of violence. Instinctively you lift.
It’s the same in the corners and under braking. At first driving the P1 GTR can be quite demoralising. You push the car hard, yet the way it sheds speed far faster than you’d anticipated and hits every apex, it appears not to be taxed at all. On the straights it will do almost 200mph, yet will lose half that speed in the blink of an eye while crushing your body into the seat.
But then something curious happens: thanks to the wonders of the human mind, you adapt. During a short break I had time to process the information force fed into my head and steel myself before getting back into the car.
So when the acceleration came I relished every scenery-shrinking second of it. I enjoyed watching numbers appear on the speedo faster than I could count. And the way the thrust continued unabated when I tapped the shift panel, the engine apparently unaffected by the higher gear. I became determined not to quit until I had pushed it to the limit.
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But there’s a problem. The faster you go, the more grip is provided by the downforce, so the car doesn’t feel less stable as speeds rise, but more so. Physics ensure there is a speed at which the car will not negotiate a turn, but with the car feeling better and better as the speeds rise higher and higher, what happens when you reach that point?
This is where the P1 GTR is cleverest of all. McLaren knew it would be driven by owners of differing skill levels and that, above even the need for it to be fast the GTR needed to be fun too. And it is; when finally you feel the front tyres start to slip, the signal is communicated so clearly you find yourself not being scared, but actually relieved. You realise it’s not going to mug you.
So you probe further and find a car of immaculate manners. Soon you reach the stage where you can feel it moving around beneath you at both ends, and if you feel the back step out, instead of backing off to save yourself, the car gives you the confidence to ride it out, correcting with the steering while keeping the taps open.
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Only the brakes required more time than I had. Because of the downforce, you can hit the left-hand pedal at 190mph with all the force your thigh can muster and you won’t trigger the ABS. But as the car sheds speed, so too does it shed downforce, so, you actually have to reduce brake pressure. It’s not an inherently difficult technique, but it takes time.
By the time you’re finished with the McLaren P1 GTR, the thing that had frightened you most at the start, that 986bhp kick in the kidneys, is what you’ll actually remember least about driving the car. Indeed the power becomes merely a means to reach the speed at which the GTR can do what it’s really good at: namely cornering so hard you wonder how your head is staying on your shoulders, and slowing like you’d driven into a vat of treacle. In my experience, no machine based on a road car design ever had a performance envelope like it.
On one level the McLaren P1 GTR is of course irrelevant. But as a device to show just what can be achieved when one of the fastest road cars ever built is released from its duties to comply with international legislation, it is not just thrilling, but fascinating too.
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