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McLaren goes from hyper to ludicrous with the track-only McLaren P1 GTR

Alexander Kalogianni
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McLaren’s P1 is currently in a very exclusive club of hypercars, often mentioned in the company of the Porsche 918 and Ferrari LaFerrari, the trio of cars currently setting supercar standards. Today, McLaren took things further, abandoning any street legal concerns and making its hyper road car into a hyper track beast: the McLaren P1 GTR.

We’ve seen it in concept form before, when McLaren revealed their intentions to build the track-only P1 at Pebble Beach last year. The total power output has been increased, upping the power from its 3.8-liter twin turbo V8 from 727 horsepower to 789 hp, as well as tweaking the electric motor of the hybrid track monster to increase its previous contribution of 176 hp to 197 hp.

McLaren P1 GTR
Image used with permission by copyright holder

The car as given a significant lightness treatment, ditching anything that has nothing to do with performance as well as swapping the glass with polycarbonate sheets and a multitude of panels with carbon fibre. Track has been widened by 80 millimeters on the front and the whole thing sits 50 millimeters lower to the tarmac. New bodywork and the inclusion of a fixed rear wing give the P1 GTR a ten percent increase in downforce when it hits speeds upwards of 150 mph. The wing also has a DRS (drag reduction system) just as its Formula 1 cousin does, trimming the pitch of the wing from 32 degrees to zero, trading downforce for straight-line, overtaking speed.

McLaren P1 GTR
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Right, so you’ve smashed a few piggy banks and you’ve got just enough to get a P1 GTR of your own: what do you do with it? Owners of the car will be enrolled in the McLaren P1 driving program, where drivers will be fitness assessed, fitted to a seat, then prepped to race the cars on tracks like the Circuit de Catalunya in Spain and England’s Silverstone track.

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Those of us not being shuttled out to McLaren’s Woking Technology Centre will join the rest of the world, seeing the P1 on the stand next to the McLaren 675LT as both make their debuts at the 2015 Geneva Auto Show.

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Alexander Kalogianni
Alexander Kalogianni
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Alex K is an automotive writer based in New York. When not at his keyboard or behind the wheel of a car, Alex spends a lot of…
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