McLaren P1

Frank Stephenson led the exterior and the rule was that nothing existed that did not do a job. The body is shrink-wrapped over the hard points, the cabin sits at the centre of it, and the shape is a downforce argument rather than a styling one: 600 kg at 160 mph with a drag coefficient of 0.34, from a deployable rear wing and active aero rather than a fixed spoiler. The famous detail is a fish. Stephenson saw a sailfish on holiday in Miami, bought one, had it stuffed and shipped to Woking, and had McLaren's aerodynamics department laser-scan it. The two small bumps near a sailfish's tail solved the wind noise coming off the P1's extended mirror stalks, so five teardrop bumps went onto each stalk and the noise stopped. The scale texture that reduces a sailfish's drag through water was copied onto the engine inlet ducts to move more air. Butterfly doors, as on the F1 and every McLaren since. And on the 2016 P1 by MSO, a 24-carat gold exhaust heat shield, which is neither a coincidence nor subtle.

The P1 never entered a race, and that was deliberate. There was no series it fitted: GT racing had settled on GT3 and GTE, and McLaren's own customer programme in those years ran the 12C GT3 through 2014 and the 650S GT3 from 2015, both built from Super Series cars rather than the flagship. What McLaren built instead was the P1 GTR: 58 track-only cars sold to P1 owners, run and serviced by McLaren Special Operations, and used for an owners' track programme rather than a championship. Owners got events at Formula One circuits, time in the McLaren Racing simulator, their own race technicians and Bruno Senna as mentor. It is a driving club with a very expensive membership card, and calling it a racing programme would be generous. The one competitive number the P1 family owns came from outside the factory. Lanzante's P1 LM prototype, XP1 LM, ran the Nordschleife in 6:43.22 on 27 April 2017 with Kenny Brack driving, on road-legal Pirelli Trofeo R tyres but without the front number plate a road car needs. The same car set the fastest road-car time up the Goodwood hill in 2016, at 47.07 seconds.

The P1's place in culture is welded to two other cars. It arrived alongside the LaFerrari and the 918 Spyder, the press named the three the Holy Trinity within months, and no P1 story has been told without them since. Getting all three together took work: Ferrari and McLaren would not lend cars for Top Gear's own track test, and it was Chris Harris who eventually put factory cars from all three makers on Portimao with Tiff Needell and Marino Franchitti for a 52-minute film. Top Gear's written verdict, when it came, was that the P1 is the one that demands most and rewards commitment. In games it has done better than the F1 ever did. Forza Motorsport 5 had it at launch and every main title has carried it since, with the GTR arriving in Forza Motorsport 6. Need for Speed Rivals ran it as a racer car unlocked at rank 20, and No Limits gave it away for a week-long event in 2017. Gran Turismo Sport took the GTR rather than the road car. Then Hot Wheels, Lego Speed Champions, Scalextric, an Amalgam 1:8, and from October 2016 a ride-on electric P1 for children.

The P1 is a modern McLaren to own, which makes it far less frightening than an F1 and far more dependent on one component. The hybrid pack is the thing. Cells dating from 2010 onwards do not improve with age, degraded packs have stopped cars entirely, and the fix is either McLaren's upgraded pack at a quoted $156,700 or the aftermarket answer from V Engineering. Owners report single modules replaced for around $45,000 where the whole pack does not need to go. Storage matters more than mileage here. McLaren's guidance is not to leave the pack unattended beyond three or four weeks, and the marque's 12V batteries flatten in seven to fourteen days without a tender, so a car that has been properly looked after in a collection is fine and one that has simply been parked is not. Everything else is ordinary hypercar upkeep. Annual servicing runs around $2,200, carbon-ceramic sets $12,000 to $25,000, and McLarens of this era are known for coolant hose clamp seepage and low-mounted radiators that stones find. The 2016 bonnet latch recall covered 122 cars and was done free.