News: McLaren's P1 supercar hits the test track

It was almost exactly 20 years ago that we car enthusiasts were getting all girlishly excited about the prospect of McLaren's first ever road car, the original F1. That went on to be the fastest car in the world, and to win Le Mans at its first attempt. So just imagine how excited we are at the prospect of this, the P1, McLaren's successor to the F1...

Just 500 of this amazing looking car will be built, and while its engine is structurally similar to the 3.8-litre V8 turbo that's in the existing MP4-12-C supercar, not only will the P1 get a power boost, it will also get a hybrid KERS setup that will boost power again for overtaking bursts. Quite what you'd need an overtaking burst to get past in one of these remains unexplained. A Veyron perhaps?

Anyway, expect power to be at least 750-800bhp, and with all the active aerodynamics and computer controlled suspension that you'd expect from McLaren. And judging from the still-camouflaged styling (why, when they showed the car un-disguised at the Paris Motor Show last year?) it will look remarkably like being violated by a Le Mans racer when it does overtake you, boost or no boost.

Enjoy the photos and check out the video too. It spits fire...

Feature: Mazda's Le Mans Legend

To say that Le Mans is magical is to grossly undersell it. While F1 becomes ever more tiresome, ever more mired in politics and ever more dull, the 24hrs of Le Mans remains as a true beacon of motorsports greatness. It’s a combination of motor race, camping, funfair, acid trip (especially at 3am) and group experience. It’s the ultimate, and has been since 1923.


And yet, in all that long and glorious history, from the Bentley Boys to the roaring GT40s to the unstoppable Porsches to the silent Audis and Peugeots, only one Japanese car maker has triumphed in an outright win at Le Mans. Toyota has tried (and will have another crack in 2013 with its fabulous TS030 hybrid), Nissan tried, Honda dabbled but only Mazda succeeded. 

Through a combination of sharp driving skills, clever manipulation of the rules and keeping their heads when all about were being lost, Mazda brought the remarkable 787B, with its eerie, howling triple-rotor rotary engine, home first in the 1991 Le Mans. And hasn’t been back since...

That could be all about to change, and we’ll get to that in a minute, but first, we took the opportunity of this remarkable 20th anniversary to talk to Irish racing legend David Kennedy, who was a lynchpin of the Mazda team in 1991.

“I was in several different motorsports businesses at the time and virtually knew every race driver as they were coming through. So I was well positioned to try and grab the next superstars coming through and bring them to the Mazda operation, after I’d driven with Mazda in the C2 category in the early eighties. So with my colleague Peirre Donaire, we were effectively the European arm of Mazda Motorsport.

“So we got hold of Nigel Stroud, who had been a designer at Porsche, and had had a hand in the dominant 956 racer, and had unique experience in building cars from aluminium honeycomb.

“The other cornerstone of the operation was a guy called Kio, who had been my mechanic in Formula 3, and between them they both bridged the gap in communication and culture between Japan and Europe, which was quite significant.”

To call Mazda the underdog in 1991 would be to lapse into understatement. Here was a small Japanese car maker, with a new car, a new team and a rotary engine going up against Porsche, Mercedes, Peugeot and Jaguar at the most storied race event in the world. How the hell did they pull it off?

“These cars were 800bhp, 230mph projectiles, they were fantastic to drive and unbelieveable to see, hurtling down the Mulsanne at 230mph, slipstreaming each other.

“But we were a very tight, very cost-effective organisation. A pure motor racing group, where as some of the other teams were maybe manufacturer heavy.

“As for the engine, the rotary was unique, and it had its advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages, it never gave you engine braking, so at the end of the Mulsanne, there was no help. But we managed to get carbon brakes on the car, so then it was a benefit because no engine braking means better fuel consumption. And because it was so smooth, it was like riding a magic carpet, and very good in the wet, with very progressive power. It felt like it would go on for ever.

“Against the turbos, they would accelerate off the corner faster, but you’d catch them at the end of the straight.”

Still though, up against the might of Mercedes (with a certain Michael Schumacher in one of their cars) and multiple winners Jaguar and Porsche, and even home favourites Peugeot with the new 905 racer (which would win in 1992), Mazda looked to be an also-ran.

But there was a secret weapon. Weight.

Because of the compact, light rotary and thanks to come clever chasssis design, the 787B was actually running in a slightly different rule class to its rivals, meaning it could carry around 150kg less weight. A crucial factor. As was the main Mazda driver trio of Johnny Herbert, Bertrand Gachot and Volker Weidler. Despite both Herbert and Weidler still recovering from massive F3000 accidents, all three drove magnificently.

And as the Porsche, Mercedes and Jaguar challeneges faded all around them, the shocking-looking (that wild orange and green paint job), shocking sounding (David relates that he couldn’t sleep inbetween his driving stints because he kept listening to the distinctive rotary engine wail, heard above all the other engine noises. Herbert says much the same.) 787B worked its way up steadily through the field until, with just a few hours left, the leading Mercedes, driven by Jo Schlesser, Jochen Mass and Alain Ferte, pitted with an overheating engine, and suddenly car no. 55 was in the lead.

Famously, Johnny Herbert’s final to-the-flag two hour stint in the baking hot cockpit pretty much finished him off. He brought the car home to the chequered flag, then promply collapsed from heat exhaustion, leaving Gachot and Weidler to take to the top step of the podium without their comrade.

“There was a Japanese report done by Mazda, and as ever Japanese reports aren’t small” says Kennedy. “It was of biblical proportions, on the reasons why we had won. And on the last page it said, ‘maybe it was because the car was blessed by a Bhuddist monk at the foothills of the snow-capped Mt Fuji.’ I was there for that blessing, it was a fabulous ceremony. And sometimes you scractch your head and say who knows?”

Twenty years is a very, very long time in motor racing. For half of that time, Audi has utterly dominated at Le Mans with its mighty diesel cars, and Peugeot has only been recently able to offer it stiff opposition. But now, Jaguar, Porsche, Toyota, Bentley and others are looking at reviving their Le Mans campaigns. What of Mazda?

Well, David attended the recent 20th anniversary celebrations, which saw the 787B return to Le Mans for an emotional ceremony, one which was thronged with crowds. “You know what, I think a lot of the Mazda guys clicked that there’s something they’re missing out on.”

So there’s hope then. Hope that the Mulsanne, Arnage and Tetre Rouge will once again vibrate to a banshee rotary wail.

News: McLaren gearing up for 50th birthday celebrations

“Life is measured in achievement, not in years alone.”

When a 27-year-old Bruce McLaren penned those words in 1964, his new company, Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd, was less than a year old.

In those days, Bruce’s vision was shared by fewer than half a dozen loyal souls, who slogged across the world to race his self-made cars. Nowadays, the McLaren Group employs more than 2000 people, all of whom still share Bruce’s ideals of combining sportsmanship with solid engineering practice and cutting-edge technical expertise.
On September 2nd 2013, the McLaren Group will celebrate its 50th anniversary.

If you were to follow Bruce’s words to the letter, there’d be little time for recollection, but on the eve of McLaren's half-century there’s surely time for the briefest of breaths and the opportunity to take a look behind at the sweeping vista built up in the indelible shadow of its founder.

The McLaren Formula 1 team has become a global household name; since its arrival in
the sport, at the 1966 Monaco Grand Prix, it has won more races (182) than any other
constructor, started from pole position 155 times and scored 151 fastest laps. In 2012,
McLaren achieved the fastest-ever time for a Formula 1 pitstop (2.31s at Hockenheim),
recorded its 58th consecutive points-scoring finish, an all-time record, and has now led
more than 10,000 racing laps.

McLaren went to the Indy 500 for the first time in 1970, returning with greater strength until
we won the USA’s most famous motor race in 1974 with Johnny Rutherford, and repeated
the feat with Rutherford in 1976, too.

Today, every single car in Formula 1, the Indycar Series and NASCAR relies upon
McLaren Electronics’ standardised ECUs to control their engines and feed data back to the
garage.

Introduced back in 1993, the McLaren F1 road car has lost none of its unique appeal and
is still considered by many to be automotive world’s definitive supercar. To this day, it
remains the fastest naturally aspirated production car in the world. In GTR racing guise, it
won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, also scooping third, fourth and fifth places on its debut in
1995.

Since its launch in 2010, McLaren Automotive has developed into a world-class road car
manufacturer, successfully developing and building the 12C and the 12C Spider high
performance sports cars. Both models exploit an unparalleled understanding of carbon
fibre and electronic driver systems to create a groundbreaking product of unequalled
weight, strength, performance and driveability.

It’s all a long way from that small south London lock-up back in 1963. But Bruce wouldn’t wish to merely look backwards without looking forwards, too.

Accordingly, echoes of the past will reverberate throughout a series of unique events and celebrations to be held across the anniversary year.

From the McLaren 50 logos on team shirts, through a specially commissioned heritage video features, to the launch of our new MP4-28 Formula 1 car with Jenson Button and Sergio Perez on January 31st, every lap, every corner, every mile and every road taken will be an opportunity to revel in McLaren’s present while recalling its 50-year past.

Ron Dennis CBE, executive chairman, McLaren Group and McLaren Automotive, said: “McLaren’s history is long and storied, but McLaren’s legacy is harder to define – and that’s because it’s still being vividly written every day by the dedicated men and women who work at the McLaren Technology Centre.

“Bruce McLaren wrote the beginning of the story, and the legend is going to continue for many years to come. I’m only a chapter, not the book, and I want other people to come in and write their own chapters as time goes by.”

“This is a book that’s still being written, and that, perhaps, is the greatest legacy of McLaren.”

News: Renault & Caterham team up to revive Alpine

Renault is going ahead with its revival of the classic Alpine sports car brand, and it's bringing in sports car specialists (and burgeoning F1 team) Caterham to help it out.

The Alpines which came from the original factory in the French seaside town of Dieppe were rallying legends back in the seventies, especially the achingly pretty A110 (pictured, bottom) which won the Monte Carlo Rally. The Alpine team was also instrumental in Renault's 1978 Le Mans 24hrs win, even though by then, the process to turn independent Alpine into wholly-Renault-owned RenaultSport had already begun.

Alpine's days as a road car maker ended in the mid-nineties when the little-seen A610, a rival for the Porsche 911, went out of production and the brand has been dormant since, even though its Dieppe home-base has still been busy with RenaultSport projects, including the much-loved hot versions of the Clio and Megane.

Now though, the Alpine badge is going to be revived for a series of road cars, which Renault teased earlier this year with a concept, based on the Dezir sports car concept (above). And to help it get future Alpines designed and into production, Renault has brought Caterham on board.

Caterham is well known to motoring enthusiasts as the makers of the long-lived Caterham 7 sports car, a no-frills, back-to-basics two-seater that generally regarded as one of the best-to-drive, and fastest, cars around. The two companies, Renault and Caterham, already have a connection as Caterham's Formula One team uses Renault F1 engines. Caterham was bought last year by Malaysian businessman Tony Fernandes, who owns the Air Asia airline and who brought the Lotus name back into Formula One three years ago, only to buy up Caterham following a gruelling court battle that saw Lotus Cars take the name back off him. Now, Caterham doesn't just have its small sports car factory and its F1 team, it also has CTI, Caterham Technologies International, which is the bit that Renault is interested in – CTI's expertise in low-volume designs and carbon-fibre construction is just the ticket to get Alpine back on the road.

So what can we expect? Well, Alpine's traditions are based around mid-or-rear-engined sports cars, using relatively simple, low-powered (compared to some of the competition) Renault engines and majoring on light weight and agility. The hefty-looking concept version, which was based around the engine and chassis of a Megane race car, will likely not make it through to production.

“This innovative partnership with Caterham embodies a longstanding ambition: the creation of a sports car with the Alpine DNA. It carries both opportunities for the Dieppe plant and the development of its historic know-how" said Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault.

“I have not felt as excited about a new venture since I launched AirAsia in 2001 and I want to thank Carlos Ghosn and Carlos Tavares and everyone in our new Renault family for having the belief in Caterham Group to create this partnership" said Tony Fernandes. "Many people doubted us 11 years ago when we launched our airline and I am sure that there will be doubters again this time, but we will not fail your trust. We know the markets we are going into and, particularly in my playground in Asia, there is a huge opportunity to replicate the AirAsia model and give consumers access to exciting, affordable products that marry our interests in F1 and technology and help make their dreams come true.”