The announcement of McLarens successor to the biblical F1 supercar of the 90’s last week got me more excited than any other car launch that I can remember. The P1 was unleashed in the form of 3 images and nothing else as the worlds media went into overdrive with speculation. It has been 20 years since McLaren have built a road car of this caliber. Can the P1 become a legend much like the car that preceded it?

The striking visuals of this car just blow you away. Any critics who say it is just like the MP4-12C and is too safe in terms of its design, can go and take a running jump. It’s aggressive in its assault on the eyes, barging into your retinas in all of its orange glory. New images reveal that the P1 sports a large rear wing that was stowed away inside its shrink rapped body. The press release stated that this car thanks, in part to that wing, can produce 600KG of downforce, that is 12X more than the current MP4-12C and almost on par with a GT3 racing car! The wing is deployable and also uses an F1 inspired DRS (drag reduction system) that alters the angle of the wing at higher speeds to reduce drag. Active aerodynamics can be found all over the car inside ducts and particularly at the front end. Another trick the P1 has up its sleeve to improve downforce is a banned Formula One technology. Ground effect uses sills and the underside of the car to create a vacuum that sucks the machine to the ground improving downforce and thus grip. All of the same equipment used to design an F1 car was used to build the McLaren P1in a bid to make it the fastest supercar to ever lap a track. Obviously a key focus was the cars weight and thanks to an entirely carbon fibre body structure the power to weight ratio is over 600BHP per tonne. Just like the F1, many exotic materials such as gold have been used inits construction.

McLaren will reveal the finished production version next spring along with full technical details. The P1 is set to cost from £700,000-£800,000.