The ultimate McLaren test – F1 GTR v P1 GTR v Senna GTR on track
There's an almighty legacy over the shoulder of the new McLaren W1 – that of Woking's 'ultimate series' hypercars. We test them on track in full-on GTR track spec
It’s one of the fabulous things about this car and this location: the way the sound travels over the huge, uninterrupted expanse of the airfield gives it a wonderful clarity. If I were standing on a pit wall, hearing it up close, then it would be almost too much – glorious in its physicality yet almost hard to comprehend. But at an eardrum-friendly distance like this it’s easier to appreciate the loud, almost animal, angry stabs of competition V12 as the car accelerates down nearly a mile of concrete. ‘Chassis zero-two-eight Romeo, runway two-five, cleared for take-off…’
The flashes of luminous orange make it easy to pick out against the broad, flat swathes of grey and green, but it’s a tiny spec on the landscape. A Hot Wheels on a path through a lawn. It seems incredible that something that looks so small can create such a sky-filling symphony.
Suddenly the sound dwindles; a whine from the gearbox enters the soundscape as the car slows. Three superbike-swift yelps signal a trio of perfect downshifts. This is the first time in 27 years that the driver has been behind the wheel of one of these Long Tails – last time was La Sarthe, June 1997 – but he sounds like he’s quite at home.
McLaren F1 GTR chassis 028R taxis towards us and parks up next to its younger siblings, the P1 GTR and Senna GTR. Having all three generations together would be amazing enough, but to have this trio in the same colour scheme looks almost too good to be true. Forza in real life, a Midjourney mixup. The Gulf Davidoff livery is iconic and obviously it’s meant to make you want to take a shower under a sump and then light up. But to my hopelessly romantic, possibly wired-wrong mind it always makes me think of an artistic interpretation of a winter sunset: the vivid orange contrasting with a cold, crystal-clear blue sky, sitting above the dark but not quite black silhouette of the countryside below. Money or Monet, the choice is yours.
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The F1’s dihedral door swings up and the man who steps out is taller than I expected. Broad-shouldered, strong and significantly over six foot, Ray Bellm is not the stereotypical racing driver build. He didn’t start until he was 30 years old but made up for lost time with a career lasting over a quarter of a century and which included stints in the BTCC, a bit of rallying, and nine trips to Le Mans. He also co-founded Spice Engineering and Team Dynamics, owned Grand Prix Racewear and served as chairman of the British Racing Drivers’ Club. Now 74, he lives in Monaco but he has flown in for the day because McLaren’s GTR story really started with him.
The year was 1994 and his friend Ron Dennis was in the intense media spotlight after Ayrton Senna’s death at Imola. Dennis asked if he could come and have lunch with Bellm to get away from it all, and over the soup Bellm brought up the subject of the F1 road car that he had on order (chassis 046, which has appeared in these pages on a couple of occasions). Ray, who was already racing in the BPR Global GT Series in a Porsche 911 RSR, said that he was going to convert his road car and go racing in it, the prospect of which made Ron’s week even worse.
Dennis pleaded with him not to – despite all its credentials, the F1 hadn’t been designed with competition in mind. Instead, Dennis made Bellm an offer: McLaren would build him a one-off, racing F1 for £1million, plus VAT. I can’t afford that, said Bellm over the bangers and mash. Dennis mulled it over and declared that if Bellm could find two other people who wanted such a thing then he’d build three racing F1s, bringing the cost down to £625,000 (plus VAT). By the sticky toffee it was settled and the legend of the F1 GTR was born. Menu choices may have varied.
By Le Mans the next year there were seven on the grid at the start of the 24-hour race, and after going twice round the clock the #59 car of Lehto, Dalmas and Sekiya crossed the line first overall for a famous victory. Sadly for Bellm, Blundell and Sala, their Gulf-liveried #24 car would finish just off the podium in fourth place.
Bellm wasn’t entirely happy with the winning team either. Ron Dennis had come to him earlier in the year and asked if he would run Ueno Clinic as a sponsor on his Gulf car, but contracts wouldn’t allow it so Dennis went to Lanzante and a new team was formed there. Bellm’s issue with this was that he saw it as a factory effort and his original contract had stipulated that F1s would only be run by privateers.
His robust comments after Le Mans attracted a few column inches in the press, which in turn riled Ron, but it all simmered down eventually and he and Lehto were teammates next year when they took the BPR championship. In fact Bellm holds the record for most wins in a McLaren F1, the number standing at nine or 11 depending on whether you count the Porsche 911 GT1 victories in ’96 (Brands Hatch and Spa), given that they were racing as invitational entries and ineligible for championship points.
Anyway, today he has given his seal of approval to chassis 028R and now it’s my turn. Starting the F1 GTR is relatively straightforward but there are a couple more stages than in the road car. What was a passenger footwell on your right is now filled with electronics and this is where you need to reach first, pushing down the double-width master switch to wake the car up.
Then move to the panel on the right of the instrument binnacle where you’ll find a toggle at the top to flick the ignition on. Some whirring will occur at this point and the dash will come to life, telling you the fuel situation and what gear the car is in. After that, it’s just press and hold an anonymous little black button below the ignition toggle to spin the starter and fill the cabin with the music of the BMW S70/2.
The 1995 and ’96 iterations of the GTR had H-pattern manuals (a weak point in ’95 and therefore strengthened in ’96) but with the advent of the Porsche 911 GT1 and Mercedes CLK GTR (which used an F1 GTR as a mule in development) the F1 needed to be upgraded to keep pace in ’97 and one of the big changes, other than the long-tail body, was the switch to a sequential gearbox. The gearlever, canted as close to the steering wheel as possible, is an impressive piece of hardware with the majority of the gold-coloured mechanism matching the clutch and brake pedal.
This car’s lever is topped with a smooth purple ball that looks like an errant Christmas bauble, but most of the GTRs had a knob covered with golf-ball dimples. I’m glad that this car has the later, revised shift pattern, because the first sequentials in GTRs were set up so that you punched forwards to go up a gear and pulled back to go down – the opposite of every sequential I have ever used or heard of. Apparently Gordon Murray had worked out that it was quicker to punch than pull and therefore fractions of seconds were saved on the more crucial upshifts. However, the old adage ‘to finish first, first you must finish’ came into play after a few engines had been blown up by drivers absent-mindedly mis-shifting in the heat of the moment, and the shift direction was swapped around.
Although I’ve been lucky enough to spend a few days driving regular road-going F1s, this is my first time behind the wheel of a GTR of any description. It’s instantly so much more unfiltered and immediate, as you would expect of something re-engineered and stripped out for competition, but the unassisted steering has a familiar feel to it in the way it weights up.
The wheel itself looks, if anything, slightly larger, which helps keep inputs calm and measured. Roll in the corners is almost non-existent compared with the road car, although not absent entirely, and you can push against the limits of the tyres with much more confidence and precision, particularly at the front. Some of the race cars got rear anti-roll bars according to Bellm, but this does without and you can still sense a bit of momentum in that V12 behind you in the bends adding a note of caution not to trail-brake too much or get on the throttle too early.
One of the trickiest yet most rewarding things to do in a McLaren F1 road car is to ace a 7000rpm upshift. Two or three in succession if possible. That narrow, H-pattern gate requires perfect placement and timing, particularly in the crucial change from second to third. You need to feel absolutely dialled in to the car because the consequences of a wrong-slot don’t bear thinking about.
But when you summon the courage and flash the lever forwards with a corresponding lift/dip in the footwell and barely a missed beat of the beautiful bark, it unlocks another dimension in the F1’s performance. The almost seamlessly sustained acceleration suddenly gives you the full picture of the car’s potency. Where previously there had been bursts, now the rush is relentless; paddling in the shallows has become full, hold-your-breath immersion. As you can imagine, it’s an incredible experience but the conditions have to be just right and as such it’s not something that happens very often. Pretty much on a par with total solar eclipses. Which is why today is a bit special.
Point the GTR’s nose down the runway, look along the central orange stripe framed by the light blue louvred arches, clear your mind and squeeze the throttle wide open. Feel the pressure on your back, listen to the revs climb quickly, watch the black bars build on the digital… NOW.
And with just a momentary lift off the throttle, pull back firmly on the tall sequential lever. Straight on the throttle again, full travel, no messing, and before you know it your right limbs are doing the lift/pull move once more. It’s like pulling on a one-armed bandit over and over again and hitting the jackpot every time.
It’s almost as satisfying as a traditional manual, because so many of the same sensations are there: the weight of the action, the feel as the next gear engages, the tactility of the smooth, cool metal sphere on top of the lever, the need for timing. But there is also certainty in that single plane of motion. Reliable repeatability. And that means easier, more frequent access to that immersive rush.
The acceleration and noise just keep piling on, and even though the huge runway should diminish the sense of speed it feels as vivid as anything I’ve ever experienced, the rear tyres barely containing the raw, rampant power.
It shouldn’t be surprising really, because although this F1 GTR is nearly 30 years old, more than 600 naturally aspirated horsepower propelling just 920kg through a short-ratio sequential gearbox is always going to hold your attention. And when the acceleration stops there is, thankfully, better braking to lean on than in the road car – carbon-ceramics in the case of this particular example.
It’s also worth mentioning that the engines in these ’97 cars are very slightly smaller than those found in other F1s. Normally the swept capacity of the F1’s V12 is 6064cc but this is 5990cc. By dipping under rather than over 6 litres, the F1 was entitled to run a slightly larger restrictor in competition, and although the power output was the same either way, BMW discovered that the engine’s other attributes were marginally improved.
It still has the familiar, deep well of torque that makes it so smooth and the incredible top end that is so spine-tingling. The glorious sound is certainly unchanged and one more lap, purely as a public service for others on the airfield, seems only right.
There was always a danger in bringing these cars together that the P1 and Senna would sit so firmly in the shadow of the OG that they were diminished forever. But in terms of aesthetics, the P1 is if anything elevated in my eyes. When I first clocked all three together it was the P1 that my eyes kept being drawn back to for sheer beauty. The Paul Howse-designed curves are stunning in the standard car, but with the addition of this GTR’s long tail they seem even more flowing and fluid.
There is a softness and greater curvaceousness compared with the F1, but also a real sense that the two are related despite the 20-year age gap. The side windows are perhaps the area of most obvious continuity, but the low noses and high front arches, the roof scoops and the way the A-pillars flare all look related. Move round to the back and I love the way the P1’s sinuous swoops are contrasted with the four sharp, stubby, no-nonsense exhaust pipes. And although the regular rear wing from the factory is like a work of art, the new LT version with its slanting stays sets off the whole shape perfectly.
Drop inside and the connecting cues continue. The wafer-thin grey carbon seat with blue belts draped over its shoulders is just like the F1’s. In fact the whole interior with its subdued ambience has been decked out to bring the older car to mind. The fabulous view out may not be from the centre of the car but you still feel like you’re sitting towards the tip of the arrow. A bright orange stripe running down the nose and louvres clearly visible on the arches completes the familiar picture.
There is nothing recognisable about the way it accelerates though. In some ways it is less intimidating because the process is easier with paddles and power assistance. But on the flip side, the manner in which it delivers its almighty initial thump is almost sickening. Even when you’re in control of the throttle it’s like you’ve been caught off-guard by a sucker punch to the stomach for which you didn’t have time to tense your core. It’s a sensation familiar to anyone who’s experienced an EV launch, but in the hybrid P1 GTR the surge is sustained by the mighty internal combustion engine, and this particular GTR hits even harder because it has an upgraded 4-litre V8 from Litchfield, putting out 1080bhp.
The way the powertrain seems to show such utter disdain for the mass it’s being asked to propel means the sensation inside the car is like horizontal freefall. This lightness comes over you and you feel like you’ve just been swept off your feet. Quicker than the F1? Of that there is absolutely no doubt. And the rush towards the horizon is even more seamless with the upchange clicks (acoustically very like those of the magnesium paddles on the 992 GT3 RS) the only punctuation.
Of course, the soundtrack isn’t the same, but I’d forgotten just how prominent and distinctive are the noises from the P1’s turbos. Yes, the gruff, gravelly V8 is the constant, but what stands out is the way the hisses, whooshes and chirrups of forced induction pop in and out as you work the throttle. Think of it as the ‘wind section’, though there is certainly one sound that is more like a crash of cymbals breaking through.
Given the awesomeness of the powertrain, you might think that the chassis would play second fiddle and driving the P1 would feel like an exercise in waiting for the straights, but that’s not the case at all. The steering wheel has the top cut off, but the rack is quick enough that holding your hands at quarter to three feels easy and the hydraulic power assistance means there is plenty of feel. You can immediately sense how hard the front tyres are working and quickly push them to the point of a little understeer creeping in, which gives you confidence.
What’s really surprising, though, is how easy it then feels to bring the back end into play with the throttle. You seem to be right on top of the front wheels, but there is superb balance in the way you can play with both ends through bends and start to hustle it. For all its ferocity there is an approachability, a harmony and a smoothness to the driving experience in the corners that is all the more apparent after the F1. Then you hit a straight and all hell breaks loose again!
After the long gap between GTRs one and two, there was hardly any time at all before number three arrived. What’s more, it was very nearly much more like GTR one than two, and I feel like an idiot for not taking more notice at the time, because all the signs were there. It was the 2018 Geneva motor show and McLaren’s centrepiece was the wild Senna GTR concept. It was unveiled to the world in a silvery-orange livery that looked like a futuristic leopard print under the lights. I remember thinking that someone would trip over the vast splitter that was large enough to take a Scalextric track and overhung the turntable.
But of course it wasn’t the GTR that we have here. A concept, they said. A U-turn more like. That motor show Senna was a GTR in the spirit of the F1 GTR. In fact until just weeks beforehand the whole project had been geared towards going racing. A Senna was going to compete at Le Mans. Thus it had podium lights down the door, the diffuser at the back had clearly been stretched to fit within FIA regulations and I suspect that under the skin there was a proper sequential in place of the road car’s DCT.
There were numbers and sponsor stickers on it, for goodness sake! Yet we were told that it was intended to be a track-only version of the road car in the vein of the P1 GTR. I think the fact that the Senna GTR was originally designed with racing in mind adds considerably to its kudos. Obviously it would have been even better had it actually lined up on a grid, but the thought definitely counts for something.
Walking around the Senna GTR today, looking at the wild shadows it casts, I think it has aged well, which is a bit of a surprise. It’s fascinating trying to figure out how the air flows as it is squeezed and tumbled and tripped by some of the most extraordinary bodywork ever seen on a car. Lanzante has cleverly remodelled the edges of parts that were too sharp for road use but you’d never guess. The dive planes still make my calf muscles twitch.
Open the driver’s door and then step back. The upswept dihedral peels away part of the roof with it and as a result you’re left with a real sense of the bare bones beneath the sculpted skin. Drop into the tub and you find the family hues and cues from the F1 and P1, but with the added theatre of buttons in the roof. The clatter and click of harness hardware, the scraaape-clack of seat runners, these and other familiar sounds, followed by the 4-litre V8 firing, all seem to gain extra volume and sharpness in the slightly emptier, echoey interior.
It would be wrong to describe the Senna GTR as slow, but after the P1 it is remarkable how normal 814bhp feels, and of course on the straight there is the added drag of all that aero (even with DRS deployed). The soundtrack is just like that of the P1 but with a slightly harder edge and none of the turbo histrionics, to the extent that it almost sounds and feels naturally aspirated. In fact it’s testament to how well sorted the turbocharged delivery of the power is that you instantly feel happy pushing the Senna hard.
With no hybrid assistance, you need to really stay on top of the gears and concentrate on keeping the engine on the boil. The next thing you notice is that compared with both the older cars, the Senna feels like it has much greater traction and general stability at the rear of the car. So you really don’t worry too much about getting on the power early once the tyres are warm, and actually it’s the front end that feels like the limiting factor in slower corners.
Once you get your head round that, you realise that you really need to drive it like a race car, braking as late as possible, loading up the front tyres under the weight transfer so that you can squeeze them into the tarmac and use the extra grip to help carry more speed to the apex.
It helps that the Senna has the best braking of the three; its prowess in this regard was something that was apparent even on the road car when it was launched. So you have a wonderfully firm but feelsome pedal that you can really hit hard and then modulate with ease.
Combine this with a 207kg lighter kerb weight than the P1 GTR, passive dampers that give a more natural sense of connection with the surface beneath you (even though they are dialled back very slightly in the case of this car for some road compliance) and there’s a more insistent, track-orientated character than you find with the P1. That unfulfilled race-car DNA is in there and to that extent I’d love it to have a more aggressive transmission than the DCT. Not a swifter-shifting ’box, because I’m not sure I could imagine one, but just one with an extra layer of motorsport menace and mechanical muscle to match the rest of the car.
Another slight difference that I noticed in the Senna is that you seem to sit closer to the middle, rather than forward as you do in the F1 and P1. I also found myself tightening the belts more than in the other two, really clamping myself in place so that I could squeeze the absolute most from the tyres. Because it feels like it wants and needs to be driven really hard to unlock the magic in it, working the natural mechanical grip for all it’s worth in the slower corners and then trusting the downforce in the quicker stuff. You’d probably want to look at telemetry after every session.
A day at Dunsfold with these three McLarens is not only a dreamlike thrill but fascinating. Despite shared nomenclature and liveries, each has its own character.
The F1 inevitably steals the show in so many ways with its history and its analogue nature, but the other two are also extraordinary experiences: Bellm was blown away by the P1 GTR with its rocketship performance, and I can’t help wondering what might have been had the Senna GTR gone racing as originally intended.
They are all extreme machines but all started life as road cars before each went in a slightly different direction, doubling down on its core attributes to perform better on track, thereby encapsulating the three letters, G, T, and R. Gran Tourismo Racing.
