At last year's Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, McLaren showed the P1 GTR design concept, previewing its most powerful, exclusive model to date. After intensive testing and fine-tuning, McLaren is nearly ready to introduce the production version, announcing plans to do so at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show in March. The already light, virile P1 is about to get even more outrageous.
The last we heard, the journey to building the "most powerful and most exclusive McLaren model to date" included flirting with 1,000 hp. McLaren hasn't released a finalized output figure just yet, but the supercar maker does say that the production GTR will put out about 700 hp per tonne, more than 10 percent above and beyond the road-going P1. That power density is sure to figure prominently in the car's claim of being the best driver's track car in the world.
McLaren has been working both sides of the fence to reach that 700 hp per tonne figure, using motorsport-derived technologies to slice the GTR's weight while optimizing the 3.8-liter twin-turbo V8-based hybrid powertrain for the track. Unless McLaren has added even more power since Pebble Beach, the latter will include a horsepower spike to 986 hp, from 903 in the standard P1.
We'll have to await the Geneva debut – or at least closer to it – to get the final power and weight specs, but McLaren promises that the P1 GTR's cooling and aerodynamics have evolved since Pebble Beach based on the thousands of kilometers of testing that it has put the car through around Europe, Bahrain and Qatar.
P1 GTR production will begin later this year. We'll find out more about the production car's ins and outs when the 2015 Geneva Motor Show gets underway on March 3. In the meantime, check out McLaren's teaser video.
Source: McLaren