GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: McLaren Senna GTR gets racy

First there was the McLaren Senna hypercar, eschewing taste and style in search of speed, now the Senna GTR goes even further.

Unveiled today at the Geneva motor show, the McLaren Senna GTR Concept has honed McLaren’s Ultimate Series to a point where it can no longer be driven on the road. Which will mean that fewer people will look at it.

McLaren CEO Mike Flewitt insisted it would sell 75 versions of the Senna GTR, all hand-built next year.

“Excelling on the track underpins the heritage of the McLaren brand and is as important and relevant today as it has ever been,” Flewitt said.

“The track-only McLaren Senna GTR will have more power, more grip and more downforce – up to 1000kg – than the McLaren Senna and post even faster lap times.

“The very limited number of customers who secure this car will be buying the closest experience you can get to a race car without actually lining up on a circuit grid.”

The GTR is built around the Senna’s Monocage III carbon-fibre tub, weighing just 1198kg, or about the same as the stock Senna.

The 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 has been retuned to deliver 800Nm and 607kW, up about 25 horsepower on the road-going Senna.

It will come standard with slick Pirelli racing tyres and McLaren insists it will post the fastest lap times out of the box of any McLaren outside the Formula 1 car. Well, this year’s Formula 1 car.

It uses a larger front splitter and a bigger rear diffuser add to the downforce package, with the splitter stretching further in front and the diffuser stretching further rearwards, and there’s an active rear wing.

“The McLaren Senna was designed from the outset with the full spectrum of road and track requirements in mind, so developing a GTR version is within the scope of the original project,” said McLaren’s Automotive Design Engineering Director, Dan Parry-Williams.

“The McLaren Senna GTR Concept unveiled in Geneva is not the finished article but it does give a clear indication of our thinking for the car, which promises to be the most extreme and exciting McLaren to drive for many years, if not ever.”