McLaren P1 track version confirmed for 2015

By Tim Pollard

Motor Industry

05 June 2014 12:08

Wrapped up in yesterday's announcement about McLaren Automotive breaking into profit for the first time was the news that a new, hardcore McLaren P1 track version will be launched next year.

It seems incredible to think that anyone would want an even faster, more focused McLaren P1. But Woking has consulted the 375 owners and found out that their appetite for speed apparently knows no bounds.

The McLaren P1 is not just quick on the road - it also flew out of dealer showrooms; all 375 models were snapped up within six months of its announcement at the 2013 Geneva Motor Show. One hundred P1s have been built and delivered to customers already and the production run is due to end in summer 2015.

That's when McLaren will turn its attention to the P1 track-day pack. It will be a beefed-up version of the P1 and will not be road-legal.

It will only be offered to existing P1 owners, CAR understands; no extra cars will be built and nobody else can jump the queue, according to our sources.

Incredibly, the P1 track car will have even more power than the 903bhp road car. Whether the extra horses will be squeezed from the 727bhp bi-turbo 3.8-litre V8 or the 176bhp electric motor is unknown at this point.

'This project is in the relatively early stages,' said an official. 'We know there is interest and we are consulting with owners to see how extreme it should be. But it is likely to get a wider track, a fixed ride height and more aggressive styling. Because it is not road-legal, it won't have to drive over speed bumps and suchlike.'

That's the $64m question. The 'regular' P1 is an extraordinary achievement, which left CAR's Gavin Green - a veteran of every fast supercar of the past four decades - reaching for his superlatives.

'There's never been a car so fast, so thrilling, so deliciously rewarding to power and manipulate around a track,' he wrote in CAR magazine. 'There's never been a car that offers such an astonishing breadth of capabilities. Just as they did with the wonderful F1 road car, the men from McLaren have once again redefined the supercar.'

McLaren quotes a 217mph limited top speed and 0-62mph in just 2.8sec for the 'regular' P1. Yet with its hybrid powertrain, it musters 34mpg and 194g/km of CO2 on the combined cycle.

The mind boggles to think how an even faster P1 would drive...

McLaren delivered 36 P1s in the 2013, has now delivered more than 100 to customers and is on course to build the rest of the 375-strong run by this time next year.

The £866,000 hypercar has helped McLaren Automotive post its first profit; yesterday it announced a £4.5m pre-tax profit in 2013 off the back of turnover swollen to £285m.

By Tim Pollard