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We sum up the triple boxset of Torque magazines with a cover article introducing the McClaren P1. In this editorial like previous issues you will find illustrated art very much tuning into the cars destinctive design and feel. This is the 3rd edition of Torque magazine in 2013. We will be looking at the dynamics of the P1 and going into detail about its facts and figures, comparing it to it’s rivals suming up some of the best hypercars at the Geneva Motor Show. So enjoy and look out for Torque magazine’s presence in 2014.
Andrew Protopapa
Editor
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CO THE FULL LOWDOWN ON THE F1’S SUCCESSOR 8-9
NT PIRELLI : MCLAREN AUTOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGY PARTNER
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P1 FACTS AND FIGURES
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RON DENNIS ON 20-23 THE MCLAREN P1 28-31 24-27 FRANK HOW DID STEPHENSON THE P1 DO TALKS ABOUT ROUND THE DESIGNING THE TRACK NEW HYBRID HYPERCAR 5 Torque - P1 edition - 2013
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ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW FROM GENEVA ABOUT MCLAREN’S LATEST HYPERCAR
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FORGET THE LEAKS AND TEASES: HERE’S THE FULL LOWDOWN ON
THE F1’S SUCCESSOR ew car companies wear their history like McLaren. Founded by a Kiwi who arrived in the UK in 1958 on a driving scholarship, in 1963 he put his name on the back of a sportscar and started a legend; a legend that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
And what better way to celebrate than to unveil the production version of its most anticipated road car yet? Here, after months of teases, concepts and a steady trickle of incredible stats, is the final version of its latest road-going monster: the McLaren P1. And we finally have the full story.
So what about that history? Well, so ensconced is the company’s deep and gloried victory roster in Formula One - think eight constructors’ world championships and 12 F1 world champions - the P1 is practically a road-going Formula One car.
We’ll come to that F1 influence in a bit, because first we need to tell you about that drivetrain. Underneath the trick aero
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body rests a tweaked version of the 3.8-litre twin turbo V8 from the MP4-12C, here producing 727bhp and 531lb ft of torque. It’s dry sumped, with a pair of water-cooled and oil lubricated turbochargers cranked up to 2.4 bar (0.2 bar more than the 12C’s). There’s also an electric motor producing another 176bhp - double the power of a Formula One car’s
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KERS - that “fills in the holes in the torque curve you get with turbo engines”, as McLaren’s test driver Chris Goodwin points out. There’s a lightweight battery pack on board too, able to deliver up to 176bhp instantly via a button on the steering wheel.
So what you’re looking at in total is 903bhp and 664lb ft of torque (limited to protect the clutch), with that electric motor permanently active - it doesn’t switch in and out - harnessed by a seven speed dual clutch automatic gearbox sending power to the rear wheels. Should have razor sharp steering too: it takes just 2.2 turns lock-to-lock, compared to 2.6 for the 12C.
The raw stats are thus: 0-62mph takes “less than” three seconds, 0-124mph is gone in under seven seconds, and 0-186mph takes 17 seconds. Compare this to the McLaren F1’s times of 3.2s to 62mph, 9.4s to 124mph, and 22s to 186mph, and you get some kind of impression that the P1 is fast.
Not only that, it’s slippery too, with a body honed using not only that original F1 as inspiration, but also Lewis Hamilton’s 2008 championship-winning McLaren F1 car. Ah yes, F1. Underneath, there’s a single carbon fibre tub, as in the 12C, that is five times stronger than titanium and even meets the FIA’s load regulations (hint), while every body panel is made from lightweight carbon fibre and shaped to guide air into where it’s needed most, almost ‘shrink-wrapping’ itself around the drivetrain. Even the light strips at the front were minimised to allow for a bigger surface area to let hot air escape.
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FACTS & FIGURES
These facts and figures are a prediction and review of Toque magazine and official data regarding the P1 shortly before it’s release.
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Plus, there’s terribly sophisticated suspension trickery occurring in the shape of nitrogen-filled carbon-fibre accumulators that deal with heave stiffness and roll stiffness, and a self-levelling system that compensates for passengers and fuel up to a tolerance of 4mm. It’s allied to four modes: normal, sport, track and race, and rides low too; ‘Race’ mode drops the car by 50mm, stiffens the hydraulic springs and increases their rate by 300 per cent. For the humble sleeping policeman though, there’s also a function that raises the car’s height by 50mm at speeds of up to 37mph.
So because of this system of accumulators and springs, there are no anti-roll bars, with the P1 decoupling suspension in a straight line, and changing the damping and torsional stiffness when the road gets twisty. We’re told that in fullattack mode, there is no body roll.
Inside, McLaren has uprooted a forest of carbon fibre trees, as it’s everywhere: the dashboard, floor, headlining, doors, rockers and central control unit are all CF, all without a lacquer to save a whopping... 1.5kg.
There’s no sound deadening, carpet is an option, the racing bucket seats use but the merest whisper of foam padding, and even the glasshouse cabin takes its inspiration from a bare-boned fighter jet. All in, the whole car weighs in at 1,395kg - 100kg shy of the figure we guessed a while back.
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“ALL WITHOUT A LACQUER TO SAVE A WHOPPING... 1.5KG.” EVERY LITTLE HELPS
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The trick aero also includes a rear wing fitted with a moveable DRS-style flap, that extends by 120mm on the road, and by 300mm in ‘Race’ mode on a track - working like an inverted aeroplane wing - and a couple of flaps ahead of the front wheels. All in, the P1 develops a whopping 600kg of downforce at 160mph - it would be pointless, McLaren points out, to have such downforce at the car’s
Paul MacKenzie, P1 programme director, tells us: “It may not be the fastest car in the world in absolute top speed, but that was never our goal. Rather, we believe it is the fastest ever production car on a racing circuit, a much more important technical statement, and far more relevant for on-road driving.”
Impressive stuff, no? Just 375 P1s will be built, each costing £866,000 each, with production starting later this year. And what a year: this P1 now goes into battle against the new Ferrari - the most technologically advanced model from Maranello ever built - and the Porsche 918 Spider.
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Headquartered in Italy, Pirelli has recently become the exclusive tyre technology partner to McLaren Automotive. The close collaboration between Pirelli and McLaren guarantees the development of performance tyres tailored on the specific needs of each single car model and enables drivers to harness all of the power of the McLaren super cars while ensuring total control. The partnership acts as one of the technology labs for Pirelli leading to future cutting-edge tyre technologies being developed for McLaren road cars.
Just as the McLaren P1 shares much of its on-road technology with F1 cars (Drag Reduction System, KERStype hybrid, etc.), it also shares its tyre technology with F1’s tiremaker: Pirelli. Like F1 cars, the P Zero Corsas on the P1 aren’t off-the-shelf numbers. They’re bespoke, made exclusively for the P1, to maximize its handling and application of 903 hybrid horsepower.
With the P1’s unique P Zero Corsas, the car can corner and brake at more than 2g--twice the force of gravity--sustained. That’s a figure not often seen in road-legal cars, let alone full-bodied, 900-horsepower hypercars.
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“THEY’RE BESPOKE, MADE EXCLUSIVLY FOR THE P1”
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HOW DESI MCLA P TORQUE SPEAKS TO THE MAN WHO PENNED WOKING’S NEW HYBRID HYPERCAR 20
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You may think that car design involves pens and paper. But when you’re designing a McLaren P1, that isn’t always the case. “See the little shapes behind the front wheel?” says Frank Stephenson, the company’s design chief. “We didn’t draw those - they came out of a computer. We just refined them and made them look sexier.”
When Frank’s brief came down from Ron Dennis, it looked like this: build the successor to the legendary McLaren F1. A hypercar capable of defeating LaFerrari. Make it produce 600kg of downforce at 161mph. Find room for a KERS module. “When the brief came, you start going crazy,” he says. “You think, ‘how do we better a car that’s already iconic?’ Of course we have new technology and innovation but people were saying, ‘you can’t repeat an icon’. But I don’t think any of us had any worries or fear of creating it. Because as a designer you’re geared to think you can do something better than anybody else has done before.”
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he Ferrari v McLaren rivalry is so entrenched it’s quite possibly depicted in a cave painting in some ancient land. So the newly unveiled presence of the Ferrari LaFerrari
- or whatever we’re meant to call it - at Geneva earlier this week under the same vast hangar roof as the productionready McLaren P1 had long-term observers of the two old foes dribbling in anticipation. As it happens, Torque had been offered an audience with McLaren boss Ron Dennis, and duly made its way to the stand in time to watch him present his intriguingly styled new car to the media hordes in an occasionally stilted three-way with 2013 McLaren F1 driver Sergio Perez and the
BBC’s pit-lane lady Lee Mackenzie. There were some useful updates, though. McLaren will be making 375 P1s, at £866,000 a pop, with around 45 destined for the Middle East. Ron was very pointedly talking up the car’s investment potential, which explains why there was an F1 LM on the stand (current market value: up to £3m). And he went on to reveal that he himself had beaten the current Star In A Reasonably Priced Car record around Dunsfold in the P1 by 10 seconds. Finally, he claimed that nobody else would be able to get near the P1’s performance. When we sat down together 15 minutes later, Jean-Christophe
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Babin, the super smooth boss of TAG Heuer who’s off soon to run Italian luxury goods behemoth and hotelier Bulgari, joined us. As you’d expect of one of Formula One’s most enduring relationships, there will be a TAG Heuer P1 chronograph in the fullness of, er, time, powered by an ‘engine’. ‘You can tell the time accurately for about five quid,’ Ron conceded in his famously honest manner, ‘but this is about technology, style and differentiation. A TAG Heuer watch isn’t just about how it
‘YOU CAN TELL THE TIME ACCURATELY FOR ABOUT FIVE QUID,’ looks, it’s about how it works, which is a great fit for McLaren. Yes, life has been very challenging recently, but we’re not just fair-weather friends, and something very dramatic indeed would have to happen to end our relationship.’
On the P1 itself, Ron sums it up in one word: ‘exclusivity. I want our customers to have an appreciating asset.’ This represents something of a tactical shift, in the six months since the car first broke cover at Paris, when the emphasis was firmly on performance and the ultimate in track ability. Of course, that’s not all that’s changed since last September: McLaren sources have confirmed that McLaren Automotive managing director Antony Sheriff is on gardening leave, even though, as one added waggishly, ‘he doesn’t actually have a garden’. COO Mike Flewitt is in charge while Sheriff is ‘away’. Which surely begs the question, is all well at Woking?
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As my 15 minutes with Ron ticked their last, I had to ask about the P1’s Ferrari rival, which was being unveiled at precisely the same moment. ‘Well,’ Ron smiled, ‘all I can say is that there’s nothing la la about our car...’ A good line, and delivered with perhaps unexpected panache. Turns out I would get another go at him on the subject, because who should I find myself standing next to on the Ferrari stand 45 minutes later than Ron Dennis. The name LaFerrari is undoubtedly a bit cuckoo, but the rest of it more than holds up to scrutiny, as the expression on Ron’s face began to suggest. Ferrari will be making 124 more LaFerraris than McLaren is planning P1s, so technically it’s already won the exclusivity battle. That, however, is just the start of it. ‘Interesting,’ Ron mused. ‘I think the market is big enough for both cars. But why that name? I bet if you googled the coverage on the car its name would be the most talked-about aspect.’
‘ALL I CAN SAY IS THAT THERE’S NOTHING LA LA ABOUT OUR CAR...’ At which point Torque shuffled discreetly into the background as Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo greeted his old friend and rival Ron Dennis warmly, and the banter began. ‘The name? You don’t like the name?? Why?’ Montezemolo said, flicking a perfectly coiffed lock of hair away.
This one’s going to run and run.
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