Chris Harris - Quick Steer McLaren Senna GTR #senna#GTR#mclaren
While McLaren is based in the UK, the founder of the original marque was of course born in New Zealand. A race-winner from his early teens, Bruce McLaren soon moved through the tiers into Formula Two, before travelling to the UK in 1958 as part of New Zealand’s ‘Driver to Europe’ scheme to expose young talent to championship-winning teams.
McLaren’s racing career saw him notch up no fewer than 27 podiums and four outright wins in the Formula One World Championship. Not only that, but in 1966 he and co-driver Chris Amon won the 24 Hours of Le Mans driving a Ford GT40 Mk II. McLaren would also go on to dominate Can-Am racing at the end of that decade.
In the late 1960s, in between storming to victory in the Can-Am Challenge Cup, Bruce was developing a prototype for the first McLaren-branded road car. A logical step in the program of creating a competitor for Le Mans; it was envisaged as a homologation car for FIA Group 4 racing. The car would feature a 370bhp 5.7-litre V8, while its lightweight aluminium monocoque construction meant it tipped the scale as just 725kg. Ultimately, the project would be disrupted by McLaren’s untimely death in 1970, and another McLaren road car would not be conceived until the late 1980s.
The now-legendary McLaren F1 was revealed to the world in Monaco in May 1992, just a few days before Ayrton Senna would take victory in that year’s Monaco Grand Prix behind the wheel of the McLaren MP4/7A. Using an innovative carbon composite chassis and bodywork, the F1 was remarkably light, incredibly well-packaged, and boasted a 6.1-litre naturally aspirated V12 producing 627hp. The combination of its power, low weight and stability, enabled the F1 to achieve a top speed of 240.1mph at the famous Ehra-Lessien proving ground in Germany in 1998, setting a new record as the world’s fastest production car.
The F1 is retroactively considered the first car in McLaren’s ‘Ultimate Series’, with the second being the P1 that was revealed in 2012. The P1 featured an incredible hybrid powertrain, with a maximum of 903bhp and 664lb-ft of torque via a twin-turbocharged 3.8-litre V8 combined with an electric motor. Just 375 customer road cars were built, as well as a limited number of track-only GTRs and a handful of P1 LMs.
While not a direct successor to either the F1 or the P1, the McLaren Senna is the third car in the series. Even the standard road car was conceived and developed to deliver remarkable lap times on track, with its bodywork featuring aggressive aero-optimised elements, and with power coming from a mighty twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8.
Just under a year following the launch of the road-going model, McLaren unveiled the Senna GTR. Sitting 34mm lower to the ground, it was also equipped with a dramatic front splitter, vast rear wing, revised diffuser, and front ‘canards’. It tipped the scales at just 1188kg dry, boasted an additional 200kg of downforce at 155mph, and its suspension was swapped to the lightweight racing setup from the 720S GT3 race car.
At the heart of the Senna GTR, the hugely powerful twin-turbocharged V8 was revised to produce up to 825hp and 800Nm of torque, driven through the rear wheels via a seven-speed dual-clutch race transmission with paddle shifters.
Significantly, the name of the car of course pays homage to the Brazilian three-time F1 World Champion, Ayrton Senna, who notched up a remarkable 35 Grand Prix race wins during his time with McLaren, and helped the team to secure four Constructors’ Championship titles.
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