The new McLaren Senna to be fastest McLaren ever

Words by Afzal Rawuther

McLaren has taken the wraps off the most extreme track tool that they have ever created. Christened the McLaren Senna after the great Ayrton Senna and his three F1 title triumphs with McLaren, the hypercar comes packed to the gills with incredible performance and is McLaren’s  take on the ultimate track focused hypercar. The name carries with it a legacy that it has to live up to and McLaren has ensured it is more than well equipped to do so.  Powered by a 4.0 litre twin- turbocharged V8 that is the most powerful McLaren engine to date, producing  789bhp and 800Nm, the McLaren Senna doesn’t compromise on anything and that is evidenced by the fact that it has a power to weight to ratio of 679bhp per tonne. The P1 has a bit more power but the hybrid powertrain adds a ton of weight to it and McLAren says, that the P1 was never made with the single minded focus to be just a track day hero, unlike the Senna. The Senna, McLaren  claims, weighs in at 1198kgs dry. That makes it a good 270 odd kg lighter than the Porsche 911 GT2 RS and has 89 more horses to play with.  That puts the Nurburgring time that the GT2 RS recently set with much fanfare, dead centre in the Senna’s crosshairs.

Everythiing about the McLaren Senna is designed to amplify every bit of performance that it produces. The extreme track going nature of the car has ensured that it looks every bit as radical as the performance it promises. No bones have been made about the fact that the sheer dedication to track driving has resulted in certain ungainly elements, like the  cut-out windows below the belt line of the car. McLaren claims that downforce and aerodynamic efficiency were two of the guiding principles instrumental in the design.

A total of 500 examples will be produced with deliveries beginning in Q3 2018, and expectedly with something this surreal, each and every one of them has been accounted for. The McLAren Senna retails for upwards of an eye watering USD 1 million. McLaren will officially display the Senna to the public at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show.