The McLaren P1 GTR is something special. Not only is it one of the most extreme track hypercars in existence, but it also holds great personal significance for me as the P1 GTR happens to be the first hypercar I ever got to photograph in person (more on that story here). I did say I was going to dedicate a proper post to this extreme hypercar sometime, and what better of an occasion to do so than around the time of the first anniversary of the creation of this website, which happens to be close to Christmas Day.
In August 2014, McLaren unveiled the concept car version of the P1 GTR at the prestigious Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance event as a track version of their hypercar, the P1. It was obvious this car was going to be something insane. A few months later at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show, the production P1 GTR was revealed for the first time in the same color combination as F1 GTR Chassis #06R, the car that finished 3rd in the 1995 24 Hours Of Le Mans.
Now, the P1 GTR was offered to all 375 P1 owners but not all of them were ready or interested in having an extreme track-only variant of it, and in the end, there were only 58 units produced. With a price of around $3 million, the P1 GTR is also one of the most expensive McLaren cars, which isn’t much of a surprise considering its exclusive nature and rarity.
With 986 horsepower, the P1 GTR was one of the most powerful McLarens made at the time. There were several changes to make the car more track suited such as the addition of a large fixed rear wing as well as several carbon fiber bits to make the car more lightweight. The P1 GTR is often compared to the Ferrari FXX K due to their exclusivity and being specialized track-only cars.
One downside to the P1 GTR is that being a non-road legal car meant you couldn’t drive it anywhere except for the race track and not all owners had the luxury to live close enough to one. This is where a company called Lanzante Limited comes in.
Lanzante is an automotive specialist company, which started to offer road-legal conversions for the P1 GTR. A good amount of P1 GTRs have since undergone this conversion but with that being said, I am pretty sure the P1 GTR I saw in the Auto Madness event at the Dubai Autodrome did not have this conversion done as it was transported to the venue by a trailer.
After the P1 GTR’s production ended in 2016, McLaren launched the Senna GTR in 2019 and that remains the most recent of McLaren’s track-exclusive hypercars as of now.
The P1 GTR will forever have a place in history as not only one of McLaren’s most extreme creations, but also a great example of the kind of performance potential a hypercar can reach, which is why it has been considered one of the greatest track hypercars of all time.
Featured Photo © Rohan Dixit
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